Oh, Reporters

The right wingers have had their chance to run the party, and they did so poorly.

That's the "big idea" from The Other Paper's Dan Williamson in the November 2nd issue, in his piece titled "Out of the driver's seat and back to the pews." It's like when they printed the paper, they wanted to save people the trouble of actually reading Williamson's article - the above quote is the excerpt highlighted in the center of the page. The title and the quote aren't so much biased as completely stupid.

Which "right wingers" are Mr. Williamson referring to, and when did they "run the party"? In the paragraphs preceding our quote, he talks about evangelical turnout in the 2004 presidential campaign... and about May 2nd of this year, when Ken Blackwell and Sandra O'Brien won their primaries. That's it.

Either the voting on those two dates is equivalent to "[having] their chance to run the party," or Dan Williamson thinks the Republican leadership we've had for the past few cycles is a deeply conservative one. I'm really not sure which of those assertions would be more silly. Reading the article, it seems like this quote fits in more as generic celebration than anything. The mindless Jesus-drones are being dragged out of public office, and it's about time! That wild right-wing Bob Taft and his... er... tax increases?

If Ken Blackwell loses on Tuesday, it won't be because his faith was too conservative or his ideas were outlandish. It will be because Ted Strickland held the liberals by being one of them, and held enough of the rest of us by virtue of having a D next to his name. Dan Williamson and every center-left/left/scary-left pundit and politician can pretend this is a failure of conservatism if they'd like. But, had the R's currently in charge led like conservatives instead of tax and spenders with conservative rhetoric, we'd be reading more whining and less gloating in the press about now.