Pity the poor American media. Forced to still cover six different ‘contenders’ for the Republican Presidential nomination, when they could be working to sharpen the alleged differences between a moderate-Republican-turned-frothing conservative-who-will-tack-back-to-the-middle as soon as he gets the nomination and an allegedly liberal-but-not-on-pretty-much-every-issue President, it was only a matter of time before the media would run out of patience for this whole exercise of ‘democracy’ and ‘primaries’.
Writing for something called The Ticket on Yahoo! News, David Chalian uses stunningly little logic to ask ‘Is it over?’. First, Chalian points out that none of the Republican challengers seem willing to do anything to challenge Romney, leaving one to wonder if, like much of America, he was watching NFL Wild-Card weekend instead of Saturday night’s debate, when pretty much everybody on the stage took their shots at Romney.
He also manages to mention and summarily ignore the fact that Romney won by only eight votes in Iowa, trails Gingrich in Florida, and is polling at all of 33% in South Carolina. Yes, he’s likely going to win New Hampshire by a fair number, unsurprising given his sphere of influence in New Hampshire. At best, it reads like he just really wants to be the first to say ‘See? I said it was over.’
No, what Chalian really should be saying is that Romney is the inevitable candidate because, besides having campaigned for the presidency since 2006, he’s also big-business approved. He has a crapload of money in the campaign coffers, and with the corporatocracy seal of approval, he’ll continue to have the media’s tacit confirmation of that inevitability. Though, that would mean acknowledging that the media is a) lazy and b) as complicit in making sure we don’t get a candidate who might upset the apple cart as the rest of corporate America.
