Broder at the Obama Kool Aid trough

I’ve heard a thousand times how Washington Post’s David Broder is a fair journalist, how he treats Democrats just as he treats Republicans. Well, if that were ever true, it’s not true now. He wrote a piece this morning on Obama’s appointment of Republican Ray LaHood entitled “The GOP Goes South“.  I don’t know how he does it, but he calls Bush’s appointment of Democrat Norman Minetta to the post of Transportation Secretary as a “token Democrat” addition to his cabinet in 2001. However, Obama’s appointment of LaHood to the same post draws praise – all within a few sentences.

LaHood is no ordinary member of Congress. He has been, as [Mark] Shields pointed out, one of the most widely respected members of the House; a leader in the uphill struggle for comity between the parties; and a throwback to the days of his old boss Bob Michel, the minority leader who resisted the scorched-earth tactics of Newt Gingrich. Such was LaHood’s reputation for fairness that he was the natural choice to preside over the House during the explosive impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton.

The significance of his accepting Obama’s offer goes beyond the signal it sends of the new president’s seriousness about outreach to moderate Republicans.

You’d hardly recognize Broder’s LaHood from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial board’s assessment of him;

Mr. LaHood facilitated the incontinent spending that helped Republicans lose their majority in 2006. And he did so unapologetically, once telling a reporter for the Peoria Journal Star, “The reason I went on the Appropriations Committee, the reason other people go on the Appropriations Committee, is they know that it puts them in a position to know where the money is at, to know the people who are doling the money out and to be in the room when the money is being doled out.”

Mr. LaHood was also among those who most resisted backbench GOP efforts to curb earmarks. “If people like Ray LaHood and others aren’t able to earmark dollars, that money will be spent by some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.,” he said earlier this year. “And who knows better how to spend money on worthwhile projects than a community and an individual Congressman?”

Yeah, I guess we know the real reason Obama chose LaHood now – because he’s one of those old Republicans who couldn’t take over Congress in the 80s and one of the ones who lost Congress in 2006. In other words, he’s one of those dreaded RINOs that the Washington elite (i.e., Broder) love to drag out occasionally as an example of what the rest of us should become.

Here’s screen shot if they move it again

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Liberals suck, Politics