{"id":9024,"date":"2006-11-10T09:45:06","date_gmt":"2006-11-10T14:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9024.html"},"modified":"2006-11-10T09:45:06","modified_gmt":"2006-11-10T14:45:06","slug":"democrats-can-take-back-congress-but-they-cant-meet-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/democrats-can-take-back-congress-but-they-cant-meet-the-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats can take back Congress, but they can’t ‘meet the press’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fact the conservative voices have dominated the Sunday-morning public affairs shows in recent years is well-documented<\/a>. Some have suggested that shows like Meet the Press simply go where the action is — if Republicans have power, than it’s Republicans who’ll get the invitations. Since the GOP has been the majority party in recent years, it stands to reason they’ll get more on-air time. Perhaps.<\/p>\n

This week, however, Dems came roaring back and reclaimed the majority in both chambers. Surely, Tim Russert will want to get some sense of the Democratic perspective to understand why the party excelled and where the Congress is going, right? Wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2006 election was defined by a) a repudiation of the war in Iraq and the current Iraq strategy, and b) widespread national victories for Democratic House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates.<\/p>\n

Yet, according to a press aide, this Sunday’s edition of NBC’s Meet the Press will include two interviews: one with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), an Iraq war supporter who defeated Ned Lamont (D-CT), and one with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who recently called for 20,000 additional U.S. troops to be sent to Iraq, and who was not up for reelection in 2006.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same week Dems sweep into power for the first time in 12 years, and the same week in which every single Republican challenger for Congress lost, Meet the Press will talk to two people: a pro-war Republican and a pro-war independent who won thanks to Republican votes. Perfect.<\/p>\n

Media Matters<\/a> helpfully went back and found the Meet the Press line-up from this week 12 years ago: “[W]hen Republicans won control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, the guest list for the first Meet the Press following that election included then-Sens. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY), and then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (MO).”<\/p>\n

I sometimes get the sense we’re playing a game in which the ref has been paid off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact the conservative voices have dominated the Sunday-morning public affairs shows in recent years is well-documented. Some have suggested that shows like Meet the Press simply go where the action is — if Republicans have power, than it’s Republicans who’ll get the invitations. Since the GOP has been the majority party in recent years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}