Sloppy seconds. Moonlighting from his job as Bill Keller's official ambassador to the conservative movement, David Kirkpatrick does his best to kick the Democrats while they're down:

In their search for middle ground on the subject of abortion, Democrats are encountering a mixture of resistance and retreat from abortion rights advocates in their own party.

Since its defeats in the November elections, nothing has put the fractured soul of the Democratic Party on display more vividly than abortion. Party leaders, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the new chairman, Howard Dean, have repeatedly signaled an effort to recalibrate the party's thinking about new restrictions on abortion.

"For Democrats, Rethinking Abortion Runs Risks"

Kirkpatrick's bias is apparent from the first sentence: clearly, "middle ground" is the place to be, for a party in recovery. (The fact that not all Democrats, or even most, are engaged in this putative "search" is neatly overwritten in Kirkpatrick's lead.) The rethinkers and recalibrators are the reasonable folks, in this treatment; since it's that kind of piece, Kirkpatrick ratifies them with an approving quote from a Republican, Sen. Sam Brownback, who speaks of the Democrats' "open[ing] up and even encourag[ing] people to run for office" as "an enormously positive development." [Brownback is sponsoring the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, aka the How Can We Make You Realize What a Monster You Are You Aborting Witch Act, which would require physicians to offer fetal anesthesia in abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.] Pro-lifer Harry Reid gets the final word, and Kirkpatrick's implicit endorsement, offering a seen-it-all dismissal of pro-choice concerns as merely the goings-on of people who "have to keep their folks geared up, just like people who work for more highways."

The abortion rights folks, on the other hand, are "roiled," "sounding alarms" and issuing "rallying cries" and threatening "revolt"—note the overloaded use of emotionally charged language, as against a term like "recalibrate." Add to the suggestion of irrationalism Kirkpatrick's crass flattening of the debate on the pro-choice side. Again, he appeals first to a Republican to make his point (funny how often GOP operatives turn out to be the best sources in stories about internal Democratic politics, isn't it?):

Ann Stone, president of Republicans for Choice, an abortion rights group, said her organization's members had not been re-examining their positions, as their Democratic counterparts have. Ms. Stone added a cautionary note that cut across each party's support base. "The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up undercutting themselves with the donor base," Ms. Stone said. "The pro-choice donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy." ...

Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood, said ... "When the day is done, I don't believe [the Democrats] will backslide," in part because of the importance of abortion rights advocates to the party's base of activists and contributors.

As in its coverage of the DNC chairmanship campaign, here too the Times seems incapable of attesting to any intellectual or moral component whatever in a political contest between Democratic party tendencies; it's all merely about money and position.

Kirkpatrick begins to seem like prime evidence that it really isn't healthy to spend all your professional time whoring after access to right wingers. But post-election A1 just can't find too many opportunites to peddle the "broken Democrats at risk" line. Apparently it's so avid for such stuff that in a pinch it's willing to serve up what amounts to Adam Nagourney's sloppy seconds.

posted by michael  5:06:41 PM  
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