"Shove it" vs "winnable" flip-flop

Where is the "Liberal Media" when you need them?

Remember all the folderol over Tereza Heinz-Kerry’s “shove it” to a particularly aggressive reporter? Personally, I always felt that the excessive coverage was the media’s attempt to offset all the air time they devoted to Cheney’s expletive on the Senate floor just a couple of weeks prior. No matter, the point of mentioning either of these “news items” is to point out the kind of play a non-news event can get. Now, contrast that with the huge self-contradiction of the president regarding the question of eventual victory in the war on terror. On July 30 in a speech he made in Springfield, MO, he said, “We have a clear vision on how to win the war on terror and bring peace to the world.” Then on August 30, in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer we saw him flip-flop in this exchange:

Lauer: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you'll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?
President Bush: I have never said we can win it in four years.
Lauer: So I’m just saying can we win it? Do you see that?
President Bush: I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way.

And then the very next day he flop-flips back saying “we will win” the war on terror. This from the man whose campaign for the presidency rests upon two “issues”: first, the lie that John Kerry deserves none of his medals and was merely vacationing in Vietnam; and secondly, the gross misrepresentation that Kerry “flip flops” on his positions. This is the kind of hypocrisy that the press eats up, right?

Well, let’s take a look at this data which came to us via an e-mail dispatch from Media Matters for America. Looking at the number of LexisNexis hits covering these two news items we see…

	Heinz Kerry/		Bush/war on terror
	"shove it"		unwinnable
	Daily Total	Cumulative Total	Daily Total	Cumulative Total
Day 1	97	97	75	75
Day 2	241	338	190	265
Day 3	227	565	113	378
Day 4	116	681	19	397
Day 5	66	747
Day 6	43	790
Day 7	59	849
Day 8	41	890
Day 9	37	927
Day 10	36	963
Day 11	20	983
Day 12	15	998

Methodology: Based on searches of the LexisNexis database of "All News" conducted September 2. Totals for "Heinz Kerry”/"shove it" include all hits that return for the search: Teresa Heinz Kerry and "shove it" for July 26-August 6 (Heinz Kerry made the comment on the night of July 25). Totals for "Bush/war on terror unwinnable" include all hits for the search: Bush and "I don't think we can win it" for August 30-September 2 (Bush made the comment on the morning of August 30).

*As of noon on September 2.

Now, one would think that a “liberal” press would be jumping all over this latest misstep by W, but the numbers clearly show that it is the Dems that get the brunt of the negative press no matter what Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly and the rest of the Republican noise machine would have us believe. But even if this does start to get traction and make the news, you just know that the right wing cabal will start screaming “Liberal bias!” even louder. That’s their typical strategy: when confronted with facts that disprove your thesis, simply yell louder.