Left Hand, Meet Right Hand

The once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, in today's editorial "The GOP's Uncivil Debate:"

The Republican presidential race, the headlines tell us, suddenly turned civil and substantive this week.  When the candidates faced off in their last debate before Tuesday’s crucial primaries in Florida and Ohio, they did not trade petty insults or discuss body parts. Instead, Donald Trump merely stated that “there is tremendous hate” among “large portions” of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. “We better solve the problem before it’s too late,” Mr. Trump said.

A debate is not civil when it includes this kind of ignorant stereotyping. It is not substantive when such rank prejudice earns inadequate protest from the others onstage. In fact, it is a measure of how crude Mr. Trump has made GOP politics that the front-runner’s hateful spewing seems increasingly normal.  (our emphasis)

Here's what the Bugle's own headline (and front page story) said just yesterday (paper edition):

Novel approach:  Talk about policy
GOP candidates set aside insults
Debate is sometimes sharp but also serious

As we and others noted yesterday, much of the initial Beltway media reaction to the last Republican "debate" was one of relief that, finally (!), the candidates were pulling themselves out of the gutter! No insults! Serious!  Less widely noted, except by the usual suspects, was the fact that what the candidates were actually saying was every bit as godawful mindless and extreme as what they were saying before, but now it was being said with an "inside voice."  Many crack Republican- wired journalists stenographers somehow missed that minor point, though the Bezos editorial board is happy to glide past the reality that its own left and right hands apparently don't know what the other is doing.

Delete Tweet of the Day

22 million emails deleted by the Bush/Cheney White House. Now please forget you read this and be outraged at Hillary Clinton. - your media.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) August 23, 2015

Beltway media resentment at Bill Clinton and now Hillary Clinton will be a fact of life through the election, and likely beyond.  They snubbed the major media's Georgetown cocktail circuit in the '90s, ably represented by Sally Quinn, Cokie Roberts and Maureen Dowd, and that clique has a very long memory.

BONUS:  Case in point - pearl clutcher emeritus Ruth Marcus.

BONUS II:  Here's Joe Conason (please read his entire post):

Obscured by sensational and often stupid media coverage, the fundamental facts are simple. There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton violated any law in her use of a private email server, however badly advised. There is no evidence that she knowingly sent any previously classified information to anyone at any time. There is no evidence that any national security breach occurred in her email system. And there is no statute under which she can be held liable for sending information that was retroactively classified, many months after she sent it, when the State Department was reviewing her emails for public release.

The true scandal is the Republican attempt to invent a scandal that will derail the Democratic presidential candidate they fear most, by misusing the oversight powers of Congress—and the eagerness of major media outlets, including the nation’s most important newspaper, to collude in that scheme.