Yes, the Republicans benefited from corporate donors and other political entities that offered up critical financial support in the run up to 2012. But, even the New York Times is forced to admit that on balance the Democrats raised more money. So what was the decisive factor? Shady “outside organizations” and anonymous donors? How bout ideology? The GOP’s renewed commitment to constitutional limited government struck a chord with Tea Party activists and average citizens who are rightly concerned about Team Obama’s big government schemes.

Republican operatives should be credited and recognized for their aggressive fundraising efforts, shrewd communication tactics and for cultivating an alliance with “outside interests” and corporate benefactors. But party’s renewed commitment to constitutional limited government had very little bearing on the 2010 election returns.

This is the central message of a New York Times post-election report that somersaults away from acknowledging the powerful influence Tea Party activists had on independent voters. While it is evident from the election returns and opinions polls that the public favors tighter restraints on federal power, the newspaper takes care to sidestep any discussion of ideological. Instead, the report peddles alternative explanations for the 2010 results that fixate on corporate interests that supposedly have impure motives and shady political entities tied with Karl Rove, the former political advisor President George W. Bush.

There’s a disconnect here because the article concedes that Democrats by and large also raised more money than they Republican counterparts thanks to organized labor and other left leaning pressure groups.

“The White House struggled to keep Democrats in line, with a misplaced confidence in the power of the coalition that propelled Mr. Obama into office,” the report says. “Republicans capitalized on backlash to the ambitious agenda Mr. Obama and his party pursued, which fueled unrestricted and often anonymous contributions to conservative groups, some advised by a nemesis Democrats thought they had shaken, Karl Rove.

That money so strengthened the Republican assault across the country that an exasperated Democratic Party strategist likened it to `nuclear Whac-a-Mole.’ Most of all, Republican leaders had the foresight to imagine the possibility of winning again. Even now, they believe they could have taken back the Senate if they had just managed to block at least two Tea Party candidates who proved unelectable.”

This assessment has to be balanced against the grass roots efforts that ultimately propelled other Republican candidates with strong libertarian leanings to victory. Recall, that the NYT (and other press organs) were highly dismissive of Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida. Both candidates challenged the elite establishments of their own parties and connected with an antagonized electorate opposed to the Democratic Party’s spending schemes. Both candidates preserved through negative press coverage with considerable Tea Party support.

It should also be noted that the liberal media’s antipathy toward the Citizens United Supreme Court decision expanding First Amendment freedoms is lurking behind the report. On the question of anonymous donations and the relationship between corporations and the Republican Party, some key facts are in order.

While President Obama has accused the Chamber of Commerce of accepting foreign donations to influence the elections, which would be a violation of the law, his statement is provably false.

“You don’t know,” Obama told a Philadelphia rally for Joe Sestak, the defeated Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. “It could even be foreign-owned corporations. You don’t know because they don’t have to disclose.”

Only, they do have to disclose. Obama’s statement is actually provably false. You see, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually operates a political action committee, which is required to file reports with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

You can read the U.S. Chamber PAC’s filings for yourself at http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cancomsrs/?_10+C00082040.

Additionally, the PAC’s “secret” donor lists are at http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_ind/2009_C00082040 and http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_rcvd/2009_C00082040. These are all FEC filings. PAC’s are already required to disclose donors under federal law.

In fact, this is a part of the Chamber that is expressly engaged in electioneering, subject to full disclosure. Here are the PAC’s expenditures, all public for the world to see: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_supopp/2009_C00082040.

While it is true that the Chamber’s 501(c)6 filings are not public, that does not mean such disclosures do not exist. Many of them actually should already be available to the Obama Administration. How?

“Any organization, whether or not it engages in electioneering must file tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which include who donates,” Americans for Limited Government President  Bill Wilson recently explained

Organizations must file form 990’s, which include Schedule B’s for disclosing donations over specified amounts depending on the type of organization. Minimum net donations which must be included in the forms can range from $1,000 to $5,000, depending on the group.

If the Obama Administration has reason to believe that the Chamber — or any other organization — is using foreign donations to engage in electioneering, it could have the IRS simply conduct an audit, which would quickly get to the truth of the matter.

The obsession with anonymous donors who are not so anonymous is served up to distract from the ideological factors that collapsed the Democratic majority in the House and eroded its position in the Senate. That’s the story.

Several paragraphs down into a report on the “One Nation” rally readers finally learn that liberal activists could not match the crowds Glenn Beck attracted to the Lincoln Memorial in August. The key sponsors of the event, which include organized labor, are permitted to offer up factually dubious quotes without any criticism or examination.

Left wing activists who organized the “One Nation Coming Together” event at the Lincoln Memorial earlier this month as a rejoinder to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally fell flat in terms of attendance, energy and enthusiasm. Even the New York Times was forced to concede that liberal demonstrators could not match attendance figures for Beck’s Aug. 28 rally also held at the Lincoln Memorial. The first few paragraphs are sympathetic and supportive of “One Nation,” which was funded and supported by organized labor.

“More than 300 groups organized Saturday’s march to build momentum for progressive causes like increased job-creation programs and to mobilize liberal voters to flock to the polls next month,” readers are told. “The rally’s sponsors, including the N.A.A.C.P., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Sierra Club and the National Council of La Raza, said they also hoped to demonstrate that they, not the Tea Party, represented the nation’s majority.”

Tens of thousands were reportedly in attendance on a bright, sunny auspicious day replete with American flags and unifying themes that contrast with what organizers called the “divisiveness” of the Tea Party. But this is a very debatable assertion. It can be argued that each of the “One Nation” sponsors have advanced divisive polices that are offensive to mainstream sensibilities. This point is not raised here and as a general rule reporters should not interject themselves into the debate. However, the NYT has not operated in a restrained, detached manner when reporting on Tea Party activism. As TimesCheck has previously noted, reporter Kate Zernik has often invoked race as a way to delegitimize small government activists.

If this approach carried over to coverage of liberal activists, questions would be raised about the motivations and ethics of liberal demonstrators.  Of course, the NYT is not inclined in this direction.  However, it does deserve credit for reporting on a key fact; 13 paragraphs down into the story, but that’s still progress.

“Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty,” the report acknowledges. “In a broadcast on Thursday, Mr. Beck criticized the liberals’ march, saying his supporters paid their own way to drive to Washington, while labor unions chartered hundreds of buses to ferry demonstrators to Saturday’s rally.”

If the reverse were true, it would most likely be reported in both the headline and lead paragraph. “Liberal Activists Surge Past Glenn Beck’s Divisive Rally,” the NYT would have fit nicely with the paper’s preferred narrative.

Remarkably, the NYT does inform readers that at least some of Beck’s observations about the liberal rally are on the money.

“On Thursday Mr. Beck warned that the march included Marxist, Communist and revolutionary groups,” the report says. “Among the organizations endorsing the march were the Communist Party USA, the United Church of Christ, Jewish Funds for Justice, the National Urban League, the National Baptist Convention, People for the American Way and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.”

But then again, the NYT has a different view of extremism.

Apparently, Andrew Cuomo’s Republican challenger has a real shot at winning the race for governor of New York. Otherwise the NYT would not be so fixated against Carl P. Paladino, a Tea Party candidate, who secured the GOP nomination and is now gaining in the general election. He is “angry” and so is the electorate, the NYT declares.

How much is too much?

That is the question the New York Times asks in yet another hit piece aimed against Carl P. Paladino, the Republican candidate for governor who is gaining against Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic nominee.  Paladino is also a Tea Party favorite, which naturally lends itself to negative coverage. But he is also said to be “angry.”

This front page piece is interlinked with a series of reports that essentially does the bidding of Democratic operatives who are out to sully Paladino’s reputation and to undermine Tea Party activists.

The first few paragraphs here are built around the confrontation Paladino had with a reporter from the New York Post last week who has been targeting his family. While there may be room for legitimate criticisms and questions the relate back to Paladino’s private life, media professionals also have good cause to raise concerns about the techniques and tactics Fredic U. Dicker, the Post reporter, has applied against the Republican candidate. He has made it harder for all them to properly scrutinize Paladino’s record and history, while giving a free pass to Cuomo.

The question included here in the opening sentences “In an election season defined by anger, how much is too much?” should be turned back on the NYT. In anticipation of significant Republican mid-term election gains, a concerted effort is underway to explain away and delegitimize conservative victories.  The electorate is not rational it is angry; this is the narrative the NYT has been advancing for at least the past few months.

“Mr. Paladino’s broader challenge echoes those of other Tea Party insurgents around the country, as passionate but untested candidates have toppled more-established Republicans in primaries only to struggle under the bright lights and scrutiny of general election campaigns,” the report declares.

“But even in a year when anger is the dominant theme of national politics, Mr. Paladino has stood out as a candidate defined by his ire,” the report continues. “He has often promised to take a baseball bat with him to the State Capitol and referred to Albany denizens as leeches, pigs and wimps, and — in the case of Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the Assembly and an Orthodox Jew — as the Antichrist.”

Left wing activities and their newspaper allies are terrified that Paladino might actually capture the State House in a critical blue state and help catapult other Republican candidates. Perhaps it is the news media is becoming angry and unhinged. If Dicker is not angry than what else is he? Inquisitive?  He’s certainly not detached and dispassionate.

Finally a few paragraphs done into the story the NYT does hint at the possibility that Paladino may not have been entirely at fault in his exchange with The Post reporter.

“Not everyone thought Mr. Paladino was the bad guy in the exchange,” the report says. “Some questioned whether Mr. Dicker, who repeatedly wagged his finger in Mr. Paladino’s face, had been overly aggressive. Even Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, while saying that Mr. Paladino had responded inappropriately, said he sympathized with Mr. Paladino’s anguish about news media intrusion into his family life.”

The report is also sprinkled with suggestions and innuendos that Paladino has become radioactive in the eyes of high ranking Republican officials and other candidates. But when the NYT finally produces quotes  that actual statements are much more equivocal and reflective.

Consider these comments from Rep. Peter King, the Long Island Republican congressman.

“Some Republicans found their doubts ripening overnight,” the report says. “In an interview earlier in the week, Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, said that Mr. Paladino “may be reading the public mood better than anyone.” But in a follow-up interview on Thursday, Mr. King expressed concern about Mr. Paladino’s behavior.

`I’m always skeptical and concerned when a candidate goes into his opponent’s personal life,’Mr. King said, declining to elaborate.”

Rep. King is a very careful politician. That’s not news.

Is it possible for the NYT to run a piece about a Tea Party candidate that does not involve the race card? The Republican candidate for governor in New York, who is also a Tea Party favorite, certainly deserves scrutiny and attention.  But the unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks subtract from what could have been an informative report that fills in biographical details voters should know…

Let’s take this from the perspective of a reader who is not familiar with the Tea Party candidate running for governor of New York as a Republican. Carl P. Paladino comes across as an unstable, overly emotional man with no sense of style. You know a political race has taken an unexpected turn against liberal elites when the challenger earns an unflattering front page spread in The New York Times.

The first few paragraphs are laced with subjective comments and observations that serve to persuade rather than inform. The idea here is convince readers that Paladino lacks statesmanship. In comparison to who? Eliot Spitzer.

“Mr. Paladino, 64, a rumpled, weary-eyed developer from western New York, seemed to emerge from nowhere to capture the Republican nomination for governor, a political unknown who became a vessel for Tea Party-tinged anger against insiders and incumbents,” the report says. “But for decades he has been an outsized, impulsive and often outrageous figure: polarizing in his politics, relentless in amassing his real estate empire and irrepressible in seeking to impose his will on civic life.”

“Interviews with dozens of people who know him — friends, relatives, admirers and adversaries — revealed a highly emotional man who oscillates between cursing his enemies and crying over his friends’ sorrows, who believes in elbows-out confrontation no matter the cost and whose lifelong dealings with the government have fueled his enormous wealth and his bottomless rage,” the report continues.

The article then proceeds to review Paladino’s family history and early work experience, which is fair enough. But it concludes with a section entitled “The Style of a Bully” that is very one-sided and overloaded with innuendo. No Tea Party report is complete unless the race card is inserted in some form.

While in Buffalo, Paladino clashed with James W. Pitts, the city council president.

“Mr. Pitts was the ranking black official in Buffalo and Mr. Paladino’s efforts were denounced  as an attempt to erode emerging black political power,” The Times tells readers. “Undeterred, Mr. Paladino financed repeated charter-reform campaigns that sharply reduced the powers of the office that Mr. Pitts held.”

There’s certainly ample room to be critical where personal missteps have affected Paladino’s family relationships and private life. But there is nothing described in the report that is out of proportion with or even up to the level of many transgressions that involve career politicians in state houses and on Capitol Hill.

This could have been an informative and helpful news piece for voters who are unfamiliar with Paladino. Instead, the reporting is intermixed with too many ad hominem attacks to serve as a reliable source of straight news. Paladino should have been permitted to respond to at least some of the criticisms and attacks that his political enemies put into circulation.

Being a candidate for high office, he should expect to be the focus of critical news stories that probe into his background. Frankly, voters are entitled to know about any personal transgressions that could have ramifications for him in office.

But, at the same time, the criticisms should be balanced against comments from friends and allies who are not quoted here.

A non-profit group called “Americans for Job Security” comes in for some sharp criticism from the NYT, which is now in election mode. The idea here is to undermine Republican efforts that appear to be ascendant and to mischaracterize a Supreme Court ruling that expands First Amendment protections

Non-profit advocacy groups that support private sector interests are operating by way of subterfuge and stealth to advance public policy measures that favor a select few, according to a front page piece that ran Sunday.

Pejorative words like “cloak” and hidden” are used in the headline to set the tone for a highly critical piece that probes into an organization called “Americans for Job Security” based in the Washington D.C. area. But the real targets are the Tea Party movement, the Republican Party and First Amendment freedoms.

AJS is supporting a referendum that would restrict the operations of a gold and copper mine located in Bristol Bay, Alaska. After the mine’s supporters filed a complaint, investigators concluded that the organization was set up to protect the indentify of wealthy activists, the report argues.

“With every election cycle comes a shadow army of benignly titled nonprofit groups like Americans for Job Security, devoted to politically charged `issue advocacy,’ much of it negative,” the report says. “But they are now being heard as never before — in this year of midterm discontent, Tea Party ferment and the first test of the Supreme Court decision  allowing unlimited, and often anonymous, corporate political spending. Already they have spent more than $100 million — mostly for Republicans and more than twice as much as at this point four years ago. None have been more active than Americans for Job Security, which spent $6 million on ads during the primary season. This week, emboldened by the court ruling, the group paid close to $4 million more for ads directly attacking nine Democratic candidates for Congress. That made it among the first to abandon the old approach of running ads that stopped just short of explicitly urging voters to elect or reject individual candidates.”

The idea here is to shut down advocacy work that takes full advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United V. FEC decision earlier this year, which set aside previous restrictions on unions and corporations. It also serves as a not subtle propaganda piece on behalf of the Disclose Act that is now the subject of intense debate on Capitol Hill.

It would not be unreasonable for readers to ask if there is anything said or written  here that could be improved upon by a Democratic consultant? It is very evident the report is crafted with an eye toward dismantling advocacy work that is at odds with a big government agenda.

Under the sub head – “Blurred Boundaries” – the NYT suggests to readers that AJS is skirting the law by operating in close concert with  Republican leaning groups. Although the group has been the subject of complaints filed with the International Revenue Service (IRS) and Federal Election Commission (FEC), there is no hard evidence presented here that demonstrates it violated campaign finance rules.

Additional allegations are also listed under the final section of the report entitled “A Hidden Hand in Alaska.” Here the NYT comments on the results of its own public information request that sought to expose more of the group’s finances and connections. It also reports on legal settlement AJS reached with authorities in Alaska.

This is nothing more than veiled, indirect attempt to complicate Republican campaign efforts and to besmirch average Americans who are part of the Tea Party

Just make it up. That appears to be mindset at work in a front page story and subsequent business section report that takes aim at Tea Party activists who helped to shift public sentiment against President Obama’s agenda and the Democratic Party. An anonymous source is used to advance the idea that Tea Party is synonymous with extremism...

Somehow average Americans who pine for constitutional limited government and the ideals of the founding period are considered extreme and unhinged. Meanwhile, White House officials and career legislators who expand the national debt and subjugate free enterprise are viewed as mainstream. That’s the world, according to the New York Times.

Consider the sub-head used on a front page story that ran on Monday about Obama Administration officials who now speculate that their party’s fortunes could be uplifted by interlinking the GOP with the Tea Party movement.

The sub-head reads: “Democrats Could Cast Rivals as Being Taken Over By Extremists.” That is to say, with a little help from the NYT. Political analysts from across the political spectrum see strong indications that control of both congressional chambers are in play for the mid-term elections.  Larry Sabato, a political science professor with the University of Virginia, has said definitively that the GOP will at least take the House.

However, White House operatives believe that can use Tea Party candidates as a foil in key races, the report claims. This idea is predicated on the notion that a significant number of voters could react against Republican budget-cutting ideas they find offensive, the NYT tells readers.

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” an anonymous Democratic strategist is quoted as saying. This source has been in touch with White House officials but cannot give his name since the strategy talks were private, the article explains.

Right away, this approach to reporting should raise concerns. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and other media associations now question the use of anonymity as a reporting tool. This is not a hard and fast rule and exceptions can be made in compelling situations. But ideally, an anonymous source should be intermixed with identifiable, on the record sources who substantiate the major points made by another individual who is in a compromised situation.

For their part, White House officials deny there is any kind of orchestrated effort that would pivot against Tea Party activism. The NYT appears to be working overtime to manufacture its own news.  The anonymous source is quoted again later in the same front page report.

“The Democratic strategist said voters did not now see much threat to them from a Republican takeover of Congress, even though some Tea Party-backed candidates and other Republicans have taken positions that many voters consider extreme, like shutting down the government to get their way, privatizing Social Security and Medicare and ending unemployment insurance,” the report continues. “So far, Mr. Obama has largely limited his campaigning to fundraisers and small events. That will change soon as he plays a bigger role to rally the flagging faithful, officials said.

If the NYT would like to suggest that a large percentage of voters would recoil and react against Republican budget cutting plans, this idea should be sourced and attributed. Instead, the reports offer up blanket assertions meant to marginalize the Tea Party movement. In reality, there is just as much polling evidence indicative of growing appetite for entitlement reform and fiscal restraint at the federal level.

Just one day after its front page report on the alleged White House election plot ran, the NYT ran another piece appearing in its Tuesday business section that took another swipe at Tea Party activists.  This latest report was built around a town hall chat in Washington D.C. with President Obama. Here, he challenged Tea Party participants to offer up specifics about which federal benefits they would cut.

But the most telling part of the story concerns White House reaction to the earlier report based on anonymous sourcing that detailed fall campaign strategy.

“The White House denied an article in The New York Times on Monday saying that Mr. Obama’s political advisers were considering national advertising to cast the Republican Party as having been all but taken over by the Tea Party movement,” the report says.

`The story that led The New York Times yesterday was flat out wrong,’ Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in an e-mail message. “The White House has never discussed, contemplated or weighed such an ad campaign.” Mr. Pfeiffer said the article `was based on the thinnest of reeds,’ an anonymous source. The Times stood by the report.”

But the White House has a point and unless the NYT can produce on the record sources, the two reports coupled together give the appearance of agenda-laced, manufactured reporting that takes aim against small government activists.

There’s no question that Democratic operatives will attempt to seize specific comments and policy stances in key states where they suspect that some Tea Party candidates may have liabilities. But that’s not the real story. The energy and activism of Tea Party movements is a huge net plus for Republicans going into a mid-term election cycle when turnout tends to be lower.

The attempt to discredit and defame a growing, vibrant political movement that has helped to reawaken America’s revolutionary roots will continue unabated up to Nov. 2. But it will not go unchecked and unchallenged.

Contemporary civil rights organizations that support race conscious policies in contradiction to Martin Luther King’s emphasis on equality and character get a free pass from the New York Times, which repeats and recycles unfounded accusations aimed against Tea Party participants and Glenn Beck of Fox News. In many respects, the small government activists who took part in Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally are more in step with MLK’s convictions than their critics. It is the ideals of the founding period that make liberty possible. Not outdated, collapsing entitlements.

False allegations of racism aimed against Tea Party activists who favor constitutional restraints on federal power predictably resurfaced in a New York Times report that sought to discredit Glenn Beck’s Washington D.C. rally. Reporter Kate Zernike has a long history of invoking race as a way to discredit and marginalize Tea Party activism.

As TimesCheck has previously noted, there is a concerted effort in the news media to interlink small government activists with radical elements. “They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65,” Zernike laments in an earlier report. Their memories are of a different time, when the country was less diverse.”

The data does not substantiate the allegations. Even the New York Times/CBS poll, which typically oversamples Democrats, concluded Tea Party activists were sophisticated and well-educated. There’s also a Washington Post/ABC Poll that shows 20 percent of voters concur with the Tea Party’s economic concerns; that’s hardly suggestive of an irrelevant, radical fringe.

Glenn Beck, the Fox News conservative broadcaster who joined forces with the Tea Party in Washington D.C., has been accused by some of dishonoring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial took place on the 47^th anniversary of King’s civil rights speech.

Zernike opens her “Political Memo” by citing unnamed critics who have made claims of racial insensitivity.

“It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago,” the report says. “After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.”

The overarching purpose of the rally was to help reclaim the ideals civil rights movement from corrupt political elements that have a separate agenda, Beck explained in an interview with Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday.

On his radio program, Beck has argued that many of the key points King made in his “I Have a Dream” Speech have been lost. Organizations like the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) and the Congressional Black Caucus are off the mark in the criticisms and have lost sight of long-standing principles, Tea Party leaders have suggested.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” King declared.

In her article, Zernike quotes from portions of Beck’s radio program that she later seeks to discredit and dismiss.

“We are the people of the civil rights movement,” Beck is quoted as saying. “We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice.”

While it’s perfectly appropriate to question and analyze Beck’s commentary, the report proceeds to give critics a free pass. If Beck is so far off the mark, then why are self-described civil rights organizations like the NAACP pushing race based affirmative programs that discriminate on the basis of skin color?

Although the liberal news media has thus far failed to provide any concrete, tangible evidence of coordinated racism within Tea Party events, Zernike implies that these elements will be uncovered and exposed in due time.

“It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies – `Go Back to Kenya’ directed at President Obama, is just one example – are carried by Democratic plants sent to make the Tea Party look bad,” she wrote.

For that matter, it is an “article of faith” among liberal media elites that the  best way to silence and shut down libertarian movements is to equate federalism and constitutionalism with racism.

Consider the following:

“In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.”

She doesn’t stop there:

“Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination,” the report continues. “It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.”

All very debatable propositions.

There’s a considerable amount of scholarship that shows how government programs have actually perpetuated dependency and poverty. The point about the minimum wage is equally problematic. Younger Americans just entering the workforce, be they black or white, tend to suffer the most when federal officials coerce higher wages.

An argument can be made that Tea Party activists are much closer in mind and spirit to the sentiments expressed by Dr. King than the contemporary civil rights establishment.

“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” he said in his speech. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked `insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation…”

Unlike their liberal media critics, Tea Party activists understand that it is the ideals of the founding period and the constitutional order that helped make liberty possible in the first place; not bankrupt government programs.

Despite an avalanche of negative press coverage, Nevada U.S  Senate Candidate Sharron Angle remains very competitive in her race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. For this reason, she needs to be taken down and discredited along with Tea Party activists who are changing American politics…

After taking direction from left wing editors opposed to constitutional limited government and Tea Party activism, New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney glared in disgust at the video image, before launching into his agenda laced, hysterical, high-pitched, condescending, factually dubious front page smear piece aimed against Nevada’s rising star Sharron Angle.

No doubt, Nagourney took cues from the big government activists who masquerade as detached news professionals. He also makes blanket assertions about the political viability of conservative policy stances that are very debatable. The remaining observations from the preceding paragraph are skewed and overly speculative in their own way.

But they are also written very much in the spirit of the Nagourney’s own report, which maintains a derisive, opinionated tone from beginning to end. Consider the lead paragraph.

“Sharron Angle leaned across a table in her campaign office here, defending her suddenly embattled campaign to defeat Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, under the gaze of a half-dozen advisers and an official videographer packed into the room.”

This is the kind of hackneyed, trite, biased and unseemly approach to campaign coverage that necessitates media watchdogs like TimesCheck. Is there anything written or said here that a paid operative of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would have done differently and to greater effect to sully the reputation of his election challenger? In reality, there is a little room for improvement.

“Harry Reid should be brought up on wage and hour law violations, if he does not pay the reporter,” Don Todd, a former Labor Department official now with Americans for Limited Government said in an interview. “The left wing incorrectly assumes women are naturally part of their constituency, so they become alarmed when they see someone out there who does not follow that script.”

Angle is a Tea Party favorite who prevailed over moderate, establishment Republicans in her party’s primary. While NYT does not deny that Reid is in political trouble, it does peddle out the idea that he would be far easy to dislodge with a conventional Republican candidate. One of Angle’s primary opponents is trotted out here to help substantiate liberal spin that is passed off as reporting.

The special election held earlier this year in Pennsylvania 12 demonstrates that conservative-leaning candidates in both parties now have traction with voters. Here a centrist Republican lost out to a Democrat who opposed ObamaCare and environmental regulations, while supporting Second Amendment rights. Yet, in Nevada the NYT tells readers that conservatism is somehow a liability.

“Since Ms. Angle won, her campaign has been rocked by a series of politically intemperate remarks and awkward efforts to retreat from hard-line positions she has embraced in the past like phasing out Social Security. There have also been a staff shake-up and run-ins with Nevada journalists, including one in which a television reporter chased her through a parking lot trying to get her to answer a question.”

Apparently, the misuse of reconciliation to force through unpopular, coercive and costly healthcare legislation is not a hardline position. Advancing the agenda of big labor and environmental extremists at the expense of average Americans is also considered mainstream.

There is no denying how beneficial the Tea Party movement was to Angle in her primary, the NYT concedes. Even so, he views are unacceptable to the larger electorate, the report claims. Faint praise is always followed up with a qualifying point.

“But some of her conservative positions could prove to be a hurdle come November,” the report says. “She has for example called for the elimination of the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency…”

In her interview with Nagourney, Angle draws a connection between the modern conservative movement and the founding period that helps to put her candidacy into proper perspective. Names like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin still resonate in America. Meanwhile, Sen. Reid’s son Rory is reticent to invoke the family surname in his own separate race for Nevada governor.

After orchestrating an incessant chain of negative, misleading press coverage crafted to sabotage her candidacy, the NYT is miffed to find that Angle is not exactly enthusiastic about interacting with the liberal media.

“In the course of the interview, Ms. Angle spoke slowly and cautiously,” the report says. “She appeared reluctant to engage, frequently citing stock answers to questions.” Not too subtle.

The report also ends on a note of criticism compliments of the Republican establishment, which claims Angle is not open to outside advice. Here the NYT concurs. But the key point is missed.

With an eye toward history, Angle places a greater premium on restoring the founding period than she does on placating elite opinion inside either major party.

Tea Party activists have scored an important victory against ObamaCare in the state of Missouri where Proposition C passed by an overwhelming margin. In anticipation of  Tuesday’s vote, the NYT sought to discredit the effort with snide suggestions about “conservative activists.” Now that the ballot has passed, the news is buried.

Big government activists knew they were going to lose this one going into it.

On Tuesday, Missouri became the first of at least three states to vote on a ballot measure aimed against a key component of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul. By a margin of 71 percent to 29 percent, voters approved Proposition C, which invalidated the new federal law requiring individuals to either buy health insurance or pay a tax. The vote could add momentum to other efforts at the state level aimed against ObamaCare.

This would explain why the New York Times saw fit to run an article that made every effort to dismiss Proposition C as an inconsequential, low-turnout affair fueled by Tea Party activists who do not speak for mainstream opinion.

Proposition C is politically meaningless because it is only popular among a core group of activists who will be washed out by larger national trends over time, the NYT suggests.

“The referendum on the measure, known as Proposition C, is seen as an organizational test for the Tea Party and like-minded conservatives in a swing state that President Obama lost narrowly in 2008 and that has since moved measurably away from him,” the report says.

“But the campaign has been a low-key affair, with no television advertising, debates or celebrity Facebook endorsements. Leading Democrats, from Mr. Obama to Gov. Jay Nixon, have kept their distance, seeing little to be gained by contesting what strategists dismiss as a Republican straw poll with a foregone conclusion. The most competitive elections in Tuesday’s primary are on the Republican side, meaning turnout should be higher among those with natural sympathies for Proposition C.”

But even The Times is forced to concede that a majority of likely Democratic voters were not likely to vote against the proposal. It could become politically difficult for the Obama Administration to implement a law that lacks significant support in both major political parties; a point that goes missing in the report.

Moreover, the Tea Party’s connection to Proposition C is indicative of support that extends beyond the orbit of Republican and Democratic establishments. There is more at work here than just a narrow slice of the Republican establishment oriented against Obama’s policies for raw political reasons. There is a now a renewed interest in the values of the founding period that has helped galvanize efforts like Proposition C. The NYT and other liberal media outlets do not understand this phenomenon because from their perspective American began with New Deal, not with the Constitutional Convention.

This particular report’s fixation with “conservative activism” also misses the mark because in reality Missouri is a purple state. The two major parties are more or less evenly matched with slight edge to the Democrats in recent election cycles. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is a far-left activist with ties to George Soros and the ACORN organization who is expected to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has teamed up with Carnahan over the past few election cycles to block conservative ballot initiatives.

The Republican has not exactly been front and center in supporting small government initiatives that enjoy broad political support either, which speaks to the necessity of Tea Party movements that oppose established political entities.

Niger Ennis, a spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), said in an interview that liberal media personalities deliberately ignore the contributions black Americans have made to Tea Party rallies. A concerted has been made to circulate false allegations so as undermine grassroots activism that unites Americans across racial and party lines, he added. This would explain why reckless and inaccurate statements from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are reported without critical examination, Ennis observed.

“The idea of racism has political currency in our environment these days,” he said. “The worst insult today is to call someone who is white a racist. That’s very valuable unfortunately in our political discourse. That’s why the media continues to report unfounded accusations from the NAACP.”

Just one day after the Tea Party victory in Missouri, Ennis joined with other CORE activists for a Tea Party event in D.C. the featured prominent black Americans who support the restoration of limited, constitutional government. That’s kind of news that does not fit with the NYT narrative. Neither does the 3-1 vote in favor Missouri’s Proposition C, which is buried on the lower right corner of the newspaper’s national news section today.

Suppose for a moment that the “moderate” Republicans favored in the news media and the Republican Party establishment prevailed over the more conservative leaning candidates  in the June primaries. Ideology would not go missing in coverage under that scenario. But when Tea Party favorites and conservative endorsements win out, that’s not news…

If the election results in Utah, South Carolina and North Carolina had gone differently in the June Republican primary elections, The New York Times would run headlines celebrating conservative setbacks. But because the establishment candidates went down, there is no mention of ideology in the coverage.

Nikki Haley, who won the Republican nomination for governor of South Carolina, had strong support from Tea Party activists. She was not considered a favorite to win and worked tenaciously to overcome various allegations that were not substantiated.

The report reviewing election results makes no mention of Haley’s conservative credentials or her connection with the Tea Party movement. Instead, readers are told that she was “strongly embraced by Republican leaders in Washington and touted as one of the party’s next leaders.” But that’s after the fact. If Haley, had been defeated her affiliation with Tea Party activists would have not have gone unmentioned.

But there’s more here.

Rep. Bob Inglis, (R-S.C.), who favored a deal on global warming legislation and joined with congressional leftists to censure his colleague Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) ,was defeated by Trey Gowdy, a local prosecutor with conservative credentials.

These details do not find their way into the following paragraph:

“Representative Bob Inglis, a six-term Republican from South Carolina, was defeated in a runoff election. He became the fifth incumbent congressman or senator to be turned out of office in the latest round of primaries that have upended the midterm election year.”

But if Inglis emerged as the winner, he would been touted as a champion of moderation and enlightened thinking in the Republican Party. His support for “cap and trade” would have been held up as evidence that climate change legislation had traction with the electorate.

The race is worthy of closer examination took place in Utah where Mike Lee won a narrow victory as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. It was an intense contest replete with negative advertising. But Lee had the backing of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) who appealed to the party’s conservative base. There’s doubt that he his connection with Lee would have been mentioned in the report if the election results went the other way.

Here again the report is short on details:

“In Utah, Republicans nominated Mike Lee, an attorney, in a race for the United States Senate. He defeated Tim Bridgewater, a businessman, in the primary Tuesday, one month after both men knocked out Senator Robert F. Bennett, a three-term Republican.”

The coverage here is deliberately bland because it does fit in with an inaccurate news media narrative that says Tea Party candidates are radioactive to mainstream voters in both parties.