The Topsy-Turvy World of the Post

It’s true what they say about the Washington Post. Normally a very good, albeit Democratic, newspaper, during the election season it turns partisan.
Dana Milbank, of course, is partisan all the time, so his spectacularly stupid column titled “Curtain Goes Up on Glass-House Attack” is no surprise. Milbank begins:

Well, isn’t that special.
On Thursday, the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign sent an e-mail to 6 million people with an Internet advertisement attacking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) over his special-interest money. The ad, subtly titled “Unprincipled,” took on Bush’s likely opponent for his claim that he will kick out “the special interests.”
The ad accurately points out that Kerry has raised $640,000 from lobbyists, “more special-interest money than any other senator.” And it fairly questions whether Kerry is disingenuous to accept money from those he would vanquish.
But the Center for Responsive Politics, which calculated the figure Bush cited about Kerry ($638,358 raised from lobbyists since 1989, to be exact), has some bad news for Bush, too. The president raised $842,262 from lobbyists in the current election cycle — almost four times the $226,450 Kerry raised. And if you take away the funds Kerry collected for the presidential campaign, he is no longer the Senate’s top recipient of special-interest funds.
Does Bush have a glass-houses problem here?

But it is John Kerry who has made the claim that President Bush is beholden to “special interests”–which means interests that don’t fund Democrats–the centerpiece of his campaign. It is John Kerry who has vowed to kick the “special interests” out of Washington, and not let the door slam them on their way out. The Republican ad is a defense to Kerry’s glass-house attack on Bush. For Milbank not to understand this is a marvel of obtuseness or partisanship, one or the other.

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