Eric Boehlert: The press keeps chasing unicorns -- "moderate" Republicans offering "compromise"

[babylonsister]

The press keeps chasing unicorns — “moderate” Republicans offering “compromise”
They're not a thing

Eric Boehlert
4 hr ago


Busy pursuing the mythical creature known as the Republican "moderate" — that rare species of conservative who's willing to work with Democrats— the Beltway press recently announced a key sighting. A gaggle of influential "moderates" were willing to work with President Joe Biden to pass a sweeping infrastructure bill.

Those handful of GOP senators include Shelly Capito (R-W.V.), Patrick Toomey (R-PA), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Roger Wicker (R-MS), and they've been eagerly portrayed in the press as middle-of-the-road deal-makers in search of bipartisan compromise. Slight problem, there's nothing "moderate" about these Republicans, all of whom were Trump loyalists for four years and served as his lapdogs in the Senate. Also, the comically small infrastructure "compromise" they offered up last week was deeply unserious.

This kind of misleading coverage has been a long running staple of the Beltway media, which loves the idea of "moderate" Republican stepping forward, in part because journalists have been ceaselessly harping on the idea that all legislation in the Biden era needs to be bipartisan because the Democrat had promised to "unite" the country during the campaign. Also, because the press embraces the narrative that there's a group of thoughtful centrists at the heart of today's GOP — pragmatic do-gooders, happy to occupy the middle ground.

The media bar is set so low for Republicans that apparently the simple act of being willing to discuss a pressing piece of lawmaking with a Democratic White House makes GOP senators "moderates.” But are the Republicans actually "moderates"? Do they hold a worldview that places them in the middle of the political spectrum, and do they often work with both sides of the aisle?

No, no, and no. In fact, it's not even close. The so-called moderates spent the last four years voting with Trump 80 and 90 percent of the time. There's nothing centrist about their view, not when they were in bed with the most radical player in modern American politics. Still, the press loves to tell a pleasing tale about Republicans.

more...

https://pressrun.media/p/the-press-keeps-chasing-unicorns

[Borchkins]

1. Occasionally

Lisa Murkowski gets it right. But not often enough.

[Walleye]

2. It's more accurate to say that no Republicans are going to vote for any Democratic bills

They stand an almost hundred percent chance of being right if they go with that. There’s no possibility of any Republican votes on any of our bills. That has to be accepted as a fact of life. Anything else is delusional.

[onecaliberal]

3. They are NOT moderate. They are supporters of Insurrection.