Guilty party.

AuthorPeters, Charles
PositionTILTING at windmills

"G.O.P. Edge As Dynamics Shift in House Races," read a frightening headline in the New York Times this summer. How can this be happening after a record of ceaseless obstructionism by congressional Republicans? Much of the explanation, of course, rests on the media's far too frequent reliance on blaming Congress rather than Republicans in Congress. On this matter, the new HBO series The Newsroom's preaching is on the right track when it challenges the media to tell the truth about the Tea Partiers and the harm they have caused.

As for the Senate, Michael Grunwald, in The New New Deal, confirms a point I raised in my most recent column about the claim that Obama could have gotten a bigger stimulus bill--maddeningly, the assertion continues to be made, most recently in a front-page story in the Washington Post's Outlook section.

What really happened was summed up for Grunwald by Joe Biden: "I spoke to seven different Republican Senators, who said, 'Joe, I'm not going to be able to help you on anything.' ... The way it was characterized to me was: 'For the next two years, we can't let you succeed in anything. That's our ticket to coming back.'" And one Obama aide told Grunwald that "he received a similar...

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