NYT Attempts to Pre-Empt, Discredit Missouri Vote Against ObamaCare By Marginalizing Tea Parties
By Kevin Mooney
Big government activists knew they were going to lose this one going into it.
On Tuesday, Missouri became the first of at least three states to vote on a ballot measure aimed against a key component of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul. By a margin of 71 percent to 29 percent, voters approved Proposition C, which invalidated the new federal law requiring individuals to either buy health insurance or pay a tax. The vote could add momentum to other efforts at the state level aimed against ObamaCare.
This would explain why the New York Times saw fit to run an article that made every effort to dismiss Proposition C as an inconsequential, low-turnout affair fueled by tea party activists who do not speak for mainstream opinion.
Proposition C is politically meaningless because it is only popular among a core group of activists who will be washed out by larger national trends over time, the NYT suggests.
“The referendum on the measure, known as Proposition C, is seen as an organizational test for the Tea Party and like-minded conservatives in a swing state that President Obama lost narrowly in 2008 and that has since moved measurably away from him,” the report says.
The report continues, “But the campaign has been a low-key affair, with no television advertising, debates or celebrity Facebook endorsements. Leading Democrats, from Mr. Obama to Gov. Jay Nixon, have kept their distance, seeing little to be gained by contesting what strategists dismiss as a Republican straw poll with a foregone conclusion. The most competitive elections in Tuesday’s primary are on the Republican side, meaning turnout should be higher among those with natural sympathies for Proposition C.”
But even The Times is forced to concede that a majority of likely Democratic voters were not likely to vote against the proposal. It could become politically difficult for the Obama Administration to implement a law that lacks significant support in both major political parties; a point that goes missing in the report.
Moreover, the tea party’s connection to Proposition C is indicative of support that extends beyond the orbit of Republican and Democratic establishments. There is more at work here than just a narrow slice of the Republican establishment oriented against Obama’s policies for raw political reasons. There is a now a renewed interest in the values of the founding period that has helped galvanize efforts like Proposition C. The NYT and other liberal media outlets do not understand this phenomenon because from their perspective America began with New Deal, not with the Constitutional Convention.
This particular report’s fixation with “conservative activism” also misses the mark because in reality Missouri is a purple state. The two major parties are more or less evenly matched with slight edge to the Democrats in recent election cycles. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is a far-left activist with ties to George Soros and the ACORN organization who is expected to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has teamed up with Carnahan over the past few election cycles to block conservative ballot initiatives.
The Republican Party has not exactly been front and center in supporting small government initiatives that enjoy broad political support either, which speaks to the necessity of tea party movements that oppose established political entities.
Niger Ennis, a spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), said in an interview that liberal media personalities deliberately ignore the contributions black Americans have made to tea party rallies. A concerted effort has been made to circulate false allegations so as undermine grassroots activism that unites Americans across racial and party lines, he added.
This would explain why reckless and inaccurate statements from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are reported without critical examination, Ennis observed.
“The idea of racism has political currency in our environment these days,” he said. “The worst insult today is to call someone who is white a racist. That’s very valuable unfortunately in our political discourse. That’s why the media continues to report unfounded accusations from the NAACP.”
Just one day after the tea party victory in Missouri, Ennis joined with other CORE activists for a tea party event in D.C. the featured prominent black Americans who support the restoration of limited, constitutional government. That’s the kind of news that does not fit with the NYT narrative. Neither does the 3-1 vote in favor Missouri’s Proposition C, which was buried on the lower right corner of the newspaper’s national news section Thursday.
Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau and the Executive Editor of TimesCheck.com.
