David Weigel’s recent Slate piece on Jim DeMint (R, SC) is a perfect example of a gentle leftwing undertone sprinkled into a story like seasoning salt in order to gently spin a story to negatively effect conservatives, or at the very least to artificially heighten tensions in order to make it seem as if conservatives are at each other’s throats.

Weigel’s piece was a report on the first ever meeting of the Senate’s Tea Party Caucus headed up by Senator Jim DeMint and Weigel was bound and determined to make the meeting into some sort of conservative slugfest where all parties were taking each other on in a cage match to top even the World Wrestling Federation’s best brawls.

Mr. Weigel started out with an account of DeMint’s encounter with Tea Party activist Lisa Miller from Alexandria, Virginia. Miller was insisting that DeMint balance the budget but opposed any constitutional amendment to require it. DeMint, on the other hand, was adamant that it would take a constitutional amendment to balance the budget because regardless that congress always has had the tools to balance the budget anytime they wish — as Miller pointed out – he maintains that congress does not have the “institutional discipline” to do so.

DeMint kept walking her back. “The reason a lot of us are supporting a constitutional amendment,” he said, “is that they’ve done things before and made laws like pay-go–you can’t pass anything without paying for it. But every time it came up they’d waive it, with 51 votes. It was like a joke. The Social Security lockbox was supposed to keep us from spending Social Security funds. We kept spending them. There’s no institutional discipline.”

Weigel presented this as a contentious exchange, most especially by insisting that, “DeMint kept trying to convince her that he–Jim DeMint!–was not a squish.” But there is no real indication that it was ever that contentious. Sure Miller and DeMint had a small disagreement over policy direction, but no one was calling DeMint a squish. Especially Miller because even Weigel was forced to admit at the end of his piece that Miller thought the whole meeting “had gone brilliantly.”

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Stooping to a new low, even by Southern Poverty Law Center’s standards, the SPLC recently smeared well-regarded family-values organizations as ‘hate groups’ for championing faith-based moral views, including opposition to gay marriage and support for the military’s DADT policy.

The Family Research Council (FRC) was among the insulted parties and decided to fight back, using the modern tools of intellectual warfare.

On December 15th the organization launched StartDebatingStopHating.com, a website and newspaper ad (the latter appearing in Politico and the Washington Examiner) that denounced the speech-chilling “character assassination” tactics of the SPLC, while supporting the “vigorous” and “responsible” exercise of free speech. Those who sign an online petition show their solidarity with the FRC, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and others who are protecting the traditional family. Many heavy hitters signed the full-page ad including Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint, Tim Pawlenty, Phyllis Schlafly, Frank Gaffney, Alveda King, and David Limbaugh.

The Alabama-based non-profit, started by attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph Levin, Jr. in 1971, tracks the speech and conduct of those they dub as ‘haters’ (e.g. the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), and champions the civil rights of destitute minorities. But in recent years the SPLC has become known for its aggressive campaign of slamming mainstream conservatives and independent thinkers by likening their views to, say, those of the National Knights of the KKK. In addition to the FRC, the SPLC has slimed Iowa Congressman Steve King, Indian-born writer Dinesh D’Souza, African-American law professor Carol Swain, and prominent immigration enforcement leaders and writers, to name a few. Even the films “Gods and Generals” and “The Lord of the Rings” are suspect. The former is scorned because the Civil War flick “is told from the Confederate perspective,” and the latter is suspect because it is “Eurocentric.”

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Michael Gerson became the latest former Bush operative to escalate the post election war on the tea party and Sarah Palin in his Washington Post column “The GOP’s Sarah Palin Problem.”  He mangles the facts terribly, even blaming Palin and Senator Jim DeMint for Sharon Angle’s ill-fated nomination in spite of the fact neither endorsed Angle until after she won the nomination.  Doug Brady dismantled effectively the rest of Gerson’s specious argument at Conservatives4Palin.  But most ironic was his closing statement that “the leading figure of the Tea Party movement seems increasingly indifferent to Republican fortunes and increasingly tolerant of disturbing extremism.”

I wonder how it comports with President Bush that just as he comes forth from seclusion to begin his book tour and rehab his image with the public and perhaps with conservatives, a number of his former operatives like Gerson have been reminding everyone of their war on the tea party and Sarah Palin.  While Bush’s big government policies might be excused, generously, given his wartime presidency and small mandate as the best conservatives could have hoped for at the time, those who once believed he was only compromising conservatism out of circumstantial necessity have become rapidly disabused of such notions.  The risk for the president is that conservatives become much less generous in those presumptions and excuses the more his operatives refuse to allow the Republican Party to move on.

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When a story ends the way the MSM doesn’t want to end, it has a simple solution. It largely ignores it.

Recently, Big Journalism’s Mark Klugmann illustrated how the MSM shaped the story concerning the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to fit a “pre-shaped comic book narrative.”

To be fair, ABC’s Charlie Gibson did, though, air an unbiased report during the early stage of the story.

But most of the MSM coverage leaned more toward that offered by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who, at the 1:30 mark in this video, accused Senator Jim DeMint (R.SC) of committing treason by opposing the Obama administration’s support of Zelaya. (Watch the entire video at your own risk.) (more…)