CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, May 9, 2005

Deny the obvious by moving the goal posts

When elections, both here and Great Britain, do not go their way, you gotta love the way the left-leaning mainstream media (MSM) move the goal posts.

Initially, during the presidential election campaign of 2004, when Republican President George W. Bush was being challenged by the Democratic ticket of Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, the left-leaning mainstream media (MSM) said Kerry and Edwards were sure to win. Later, the MSM waffled by saying: if President Bush did win reelection, he would not be able to hold onto the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, or even in one of those chambers.

The MSM went on to opine that if Bush did win reelection and held both the House and the Senate, then that would be an unprecedented electoral mandate. Moreover, if the Republicans were to increase their majorities in both the House and Senate, that would be a crushing defeat for the Democrats of tsunami proportions. It would be such a disastrous defeat for the Democrats that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee would have to resign.

So what happened? President Bush won reelection. Not only did George W. Bush win reelection, he won it by the largest popular vote in American history. On top of that, the Republicans not only retained their majorities in both the House and the Senate, they increased their numbers in both chambers. And, as soon as the dust settled, Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, was forced to resign.

And what, pray tell, was the MSM’s verdict after George W. Bush and the GOP so easily reached the MSM’s goal posts and surpassed them? The MSM opined that Bush and the Republicans had not won a mandate from the voters. Go figure.

Now, we turn to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Prior to the recent election in Great Britain, the MSM in both Britain and the U.S. opined that Blair’s support for the Coalition’s invasion of Iraq would cost him his seat in Parliament and, consequently, his role as the leader of the Labour Party and that of Prime Minister. The MSM predicted the Labour Party would be defeated and that the Conservative Party would come to power. The MSM set the goal posts way down the field, too far for even the eloquent Tony Blair to reach.

But, in case you didn’t notice, Prime Minister Tony Blair won an unprecedented third straight term as British Prime Minister. Let me amplify the third term part. Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, won election three times; however, no post-World War II leader of the Labour Party ever won the post of Prime Minister three times, much less three times in a row.

True, Britain’s Labour Party lost some seats to the Conservatives; however, Labour did not even come close to losing its electoral majority. So, the Conservative Party did not come to power. And, it was the leader of the Conservative Party who had to resign.

So, what was the reaction of the MSM to Tony Blair’s historic and unprecedented election to a third term? You guessed it. To hear the MSM tell it, Blair almost lost the election for the Labour Party.

Now, given the fact that Britain’s Labour Party is the equivalent to America’s Democrat Party, how come the left-leaning MSM in both countries were so against the reelection of Tony Blair? Simple. Blair and George W. Bush are close personal friends who see the threat posed by radical Islam in the same way: It must be fought both at home and abroad, not just at home.

Therefore, Blair must be treated just like Bush whose goal posts, despite Bush’s over 4,000,000-vote margin of victory, were moved way down the field. No matter that Tony Blair just won an unprecedented third term, his goals posts must now be moved almost out of sight as well.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2005. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com