Showing posts with label Red/Blue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red/Blue. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Why I Disagree With The Red/Blue Blog

I want to first thank Jere Nash for linking here as a website to go to for political news. We appreciate the recognition. This was especially good of him seeing as it came after I posted this attack on the Red/Blue blog.

The Clarion Ledger's idea of a source where you could get the Republican (Red) and Democratic (blue) positions on an issue is a good one. The execution is bad.

As I said before Andy Taggart does an excellent job. His posts promote Republicans or attack Democrats and are written in a way that is easily readable and are clear in their partisanship.

Jere Nash draws from a strong grasp of state politics and history and is a Democrat, but he does not argue the Democratic postion well or even consistently.

When Jere Nash posts an issue post often Andy Taggart will step in with a rebuttal. When Andy Taggart posts a clear attack on Democrats often Jere Nash will step in to add details, but fail to defend Democrats.

Jere Nash is clearly very bright and very articulate. His analysis in his own seperate space would be a valuable addition to the political discourse. Unfortunately in his current position he makes poor use of his position for Democrats in this most critical of election years.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Hannity and "liberal"

When Fox News wanted to launch, as it put its schedule together the show now known as "Hannity and Colmes" was titled "Hannity and liberal." This is because they found a conservative who they felt could represent their views well and could argue and wanted to build a show around him. For his counterpart they picked Alan Colmes a moderate-to-liberal who easily backs down and agrees with his Hannity as often as he can. When I saw the creation of the Red/Blue blog on the Clarion Ledger, I feared the same and my fear has proved to be right.

For the conservative position Andy Taggart was chosen. He is an excellent choice for an opinion blog as a former state party chair and current Republican office holder. He is in the business of winning elections and has led other Republicans with remarkable message control and success. He makes an excelent champion, like Hannity, for the Republicans.

For the liberal position Jere Nash is chosen. He has far less experience. He doesn't have a particularly strong history of winning, but does have a lot of experience with liberals. He doesn't write from a particularly partisan perspective and appears careful to not anger his co-writer. He makes an excellent Colmes in giving the look of balance without actually performing any actual balance.

On May 10th Taggart made the argument that not only does ultra conservative Judge Leslie Southwick deserve to be seated on the federal bench, but that Democrats are also somehow racist for opposing his seating.

On May 11th Nash agrees without attempting to refute any of the slander against Democrats.

On May 14th Taggart paints the whole state Democratic Party with the conflict around the certification of George Dale

On the same day Nash uses the same point to springboard into a separate attack on the Democratic Party.

Taggart is an active, partisan Republican and Nash as he said on May 12th is glad to be on the sidelines. This is in no way balanced or proper and should not be advanced as such.