FOX News Contradicts Itself Bashing Kennedy
Reported by Ellen - February 17, 2005
I should have known it was Major Garrett doing the FOXNews.com story that was so eager to bash Ted Kennedy and Democrats that it wound up contradicting itself. The article starts off by saying he's too liberal for the times but ends up saying that he has helped move the party toward mainstream positions.
Garrett starts off with one of his typical snide bashes by calling Kennedy "a liberal's liberal" who SOME political analysts say is "out of step with several of the issues that have strong support across party lines." Who are the "some?" We get ONE quote from Michael Barone, of U.S. News & World Report, saying that "Ted Kennedy has been a man working against his times." On the other hand, Garrett says, "All agree that at age 72, Kennedy remains a vital force in American politics." Even Barone says, "He is a very active, hard-working and often effective United States senator."
Of course, Garrett gets in a few of his usual anti-Democratic digs. "In the mid-1990s, Kennedy opposed welfare reform, labeling it "legislative child abuse." It's now regarded as a social policy success. The Massachusetts senator also opposed Republican tax cuts for married couples and the child tax credit, but reversed course when 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, also from Massachusetts, endorsed them during the campaign."
But later, he says that it was Kennedy, not Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who "first softened the Democratic rhetoric on abortion" and "Kennedy was also the first to ask Evangelical progressive Jim Wallis to teach Democrats how to relate policy to religious faith."
So which is it? Is Kennedy out of step or leading the way "back" to the mainstream? Is FOX News so eager to bash Hillary that it didn't realize it was praising Kennedy as it did so? I report, you decide.
