Ground Game

Two online, liberal publications today provide us with examples of items intended to portray Sarah Palin in a negative light. One is substantive, the other reaching. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein offers the "reaching" entry, saying Palin has made a "potentially major gaffe," after stating the following at a campaign event:

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."

Stein follows that with anti-Palin quotes from liberal policy tanks and the libertarian Cato Institute, which is incorrectly identified as "conservative."

Compare that to this piece from Ari Melber in the Washington Independent. Melber has tracked down a photo of Palin wearing a t-shirt during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign that appears to endorse the "bridge to nowhere" pork barrel project that Palin has since taken credit for opposing. There's already been evidence that Palin's reformer role in this story has been exaggereated, and Melber does a fine job of adding something to that narrative:



Meanwhile, Christina Bellantoni has an article on an Obama verbal slip in the Washington Times, a paper viewed by some as leaning toward the political right:

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Sen. Barack Obama's foes seized Sunday upon a brief slip of the tongue, when the Democratic presidential nominee was outlining his Christianity but accidentally said, "my Muslim faith."

However, while Bellantoni details how Obama's critics are attempting to use the comment against him, she puts it in its proper context. Comparatively, if this were McCain or Palin making the same utterance, I'd assume Stein would also call it "major," or perhaps "evidence" of their actual inclinations.