It\u2019s as if Post reporters made a conscious decision to confront my post yesterday.<\/p>\n
If I were [Leslie Byrne], I\u2019d be battling the media from day one whenever they write off the race as a classic fight between liberals and conservatives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mike Shear and Chris Jenkins in today\u2019s story<\/a>:<\/p>\n
Voters also nominated Leslie L. Byrne, a former state senator and member of Congress, as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, rounding out the three-person ticket with a classic liberal politician.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So what is a classic liberal? If you think you have a definition that is substantive, please also give me your definition of a \u201cclassic conservative.\u201d <\/p>\n
They also write:<\/p>\n
Republicans chose Sen. Bill Bolling (R-Hanover) for lieutenant governor and Del. Robert F. McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach) for attorney general. Both men defeated candidates who campaigned with the backing of centrist Republicans and moderate business executives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So who are the classic conservatives? Bolling and McDonnell or Baril and Connaughton?<\/p>\n
If I were Byrne\u2019s media advisor, I would be on the phone this morning to Shear and Jenkins. The drumbeat of lazy labels will serve neither voters nor Post readers well. Already, the GOP is using the well-worn canard of accusing the Kaine\/Byrne\/Deeds ticket of being \u201cliberals,\u201d as if that\u2019s all you need to know about them to intelligently cast your vote. That\u2019s certainly the right of any politician, but journalists ought not abet the tactic by regurgitating it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve sent this post to Jenkins<\/a> and Shear<\/a> and Post Ombudsman Mike Getler<\/a>, and I invite others to, also. They\u2019ll listen if they hear it enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s as if Post reporters made a conscious decision to confront my post yesterday. If I were [Leslie Byrne], I\u2019d be battling the media from day one whenever they write off the race as a classic fight between liberals and conservatives. Mike Shear and Chris Jenkins in today\u2019s story: Voters also nominated Leslie L. Byrne,… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}