Comments on: Your Newest Congressional Media Star: Rep. Joseph Cao

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:12:30 +0000

At least he was being open and honest with what he was doing – keeping his constituents in mind when he was voting. I do not think, though, that one Republican makes a bill bi-partisan. And there are media outlets who agree with that. http://www.newsy.com/videos/lone_republican_votes_for_health_care_reform

By: TfT

TfT — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:56:08 +0000

The newest GOP member to get all the attention because he went with Pelosi. Although his vote didn’t make a hill of beans difference, since he voted yes, only after Queen Nancy already had the 218 votes she needed to pass the bill.

Matters not though, he gets the attention because he went against the GOP and that makes him a shining star with the liberal media.

Who were those 39 democrats? (Media: duh, we don’t know and we don’t care).

Bias galore.

By: ImNotBlue

ImNotBlue — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:15:23 +0000

Steve Krakauer says:
November 9, 2009 at 2:05 pm

With the vote passing, the GOP defector gets it. In fact, if there were two our three, they may get less attention, but because there was just one, it adds a different wrinkle to it.

Well, I think that does agree with what I’m saying. The ONE guy is much, MUCH easier to cover than the 39 guys. But that media laziness, not a good thing.

However, I’m not sure I agree with the notion that if it hadn’t passed, the Democratic defectors would get the attention. After all, we’ve seen a number of these debates throughout the past few months, and it seems to be “the Republicans” who get associated with stopping Obamacare, when it’s really more about the Democrats within their own party. They control everything by a wide margin… but still haven’t been able to put through anything until now. The Republicans can try as they might, but without the Blue Dogs or other Democrats, there’s not much they can do. The closest they get to bringing up that point, is attacking Lieberman, but that’s fits in with the media’s SOP, as they hate him almost as much as the blue-blogs do.

I think the media is hesitant to attack or talk about those guys with any specificity for a number of reasons:
-It hurts the Democrats to point out dissention
-Even a Blue Dog is still a Democrat, so an attack that creates results could effect the balance of power
-Most Blue Dog’s don’t want to be publicized nationally, because national attention could hurt their re-election campaigns… best to stay local
-There are enough of them to make reporting difficult… again, too many to talk about

IMO, bias combined with laziness is the culprit.

By: Steve Krakauer

Steve Krakauer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:05:10 +0000

I disagree, guys.

The “winning” side will get the attention. If there had been enough Democrats voting no that the bill didn’t pass, those Dems would be getting the majority of the attention (in my opinion).

With the vote passing, the GOP defector gets it. In fact, if there were two our three, they may get less attention, but because there was just one, it adds a different wrinkle to it.

By: ImNotBlue

ImNotBlue — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:27:04 +0000

Well, tim… I think that’s part of it. But I was serious when I said it was more work than they’re willing to put in. Doing a story on 39 Democratic defectors would take a long time to put together, and they’d have to talk to a lot of people. It’s easier to hype one person, and just interview them. Laziness, combined with bias, is responsible (IMO).

By: timzank

timzank — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:21:08 +0000

Imnotblue…If they (the MSM) paid attention to the 39 Dems, that would be “dissing” their own (Dems)…No news there, move along. Gotta be a Republican out there causing headaches for his party.

By: ImNotBlue

ImNotBlue — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:51:45 +0000

I still don’t understand why the focus should be on Cao… and not the 39 Democrats who broke rank. Seems that 39 are more important and influential than 1… but perhaps that would take more work that the media is willing to put in.