NY Times Shills For Dems – 7/17/07

NYT reporter Sheryl Stolberg and her editors shilled for the Dems with “Rove Strategy Paper Found in Nixon Archive.” (July 14). The “story” begins:

The year was 1973, and Karl Rove was looking for help — from the Nixon White House.

Tucked away inside 78,000 pages of documents from the Nixon administration, released by the National Archives earlier this week, is a little gem: a strategy memorandum from the man who would go on to become the architect of President Bush’s rise to political power.

Gee, “the Nixon White House." A “strategy memorandum” that’s “a little gem” from “the man who would go on to become the architect of President Bush’s rise to political power.”

And that was 1973, right? Thirty-four years ago. Who knew Rove was planning Bush’s rise back then?

This sounds like a very important document. Let’s find out more.

Mr. Rove, then a 22-year-old aide on Capitol Hill, was planning a run to become chairman of the College Republicans, a position he would ultimately win twice. So he wrote to Anne Armstrong, then counselor to Nixon.

Mrs. Armstrong had been co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, and therefore Mr. Rove’s ultimate boss the previous year when he was executive director of the college group.

In the memorandum, he thanked her for “taking time out of your busy schedule” to talk with him, and offered up his musings — in the form of a nine-page typed outline — on how to strengthen the Republican Party by motivating students.

“Appreciate anything you might be able to do for me,” he wrote, on simple stationery with only his name, Karl C. Rove, at the top. “I have taken the liberty of enclosing the rough outline of my platform. Of special interest is the ‘New Federalism Advocates’ mentioned in the campaign section.”

Well now, just a minute.

This doesn’t sound very important. It something from a kid just out of college who’s hoping to advance his career. He's talking about routine political activities of the sort both parties engage in.

And there can’t be anything in the document that could be used to smear Rove or the Times would have had it in the first paragraph.

The Times presses on:

The document, intended to develop an election program for the 1974 midterm campaigns, suggests that even then, Mr. Rove had a keen eye for organization, and a propensity for slicing and dicing the electorate, the kind of microtargeting that has since become a hallmark of his campaigns.

Folks, you know microtargeting is a “hallmark” of every national campaign. Both parties do it. In 2004 the Times/Democratic Kerry-Edwards ticket did all the microtargeting it could.

But can you recall the Times saying Kerry-Edwards was “slicing and dicing the electorate?” Wasn't it more like “reaching out to diverse populations?”

"Slicing and dicing the electorate" is used in the "story" because Stolberg and her editors shill for the Dems.

The entire Times' "story" is here.

The New York Times: The gold standard of political party newspapers.