"Best FReeper handle, ever." 
Posted on 05/31/2006 4:38:17 PM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
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Run for Your Lives! It's a Landslide!--II In an item yesterday we asked if readers could come up with news articles from 1994 that anticipated the Republican landslide that year. A reader named Pete said he tried and failed to do so at the time:
This comment brought to mind a senior high school project we helped our son with that year (not going to mention his name because he's in the "think-tank world"). We had collected all the New York Times print versions from Labor Day through November to look for bias in their reporting leading up to the election and after the election.
When it turned out to be a GOP landslide, we went back through, searching for articles referring to the Contract With America or other things that might have signaled dissatisfaction or what might be the preconditions leading to a landslide. We catalogued placement (first page above the fold or below the fold; national page; editorial page).
I don't have our son's paper to remember all the analysis and conclusions but here's a summary recollection:
Except for the day the Contract was announced (and even that got very little reporting, as I recall), there was no follow-up article, no article of consequence sensing any political unease or vulnerability for the Democrats, nothing indicating that the Republicans were "on to something".
I hate to give OpinionJournal's staff any work, but you might want to go back and explore the Times archives to repeat this experiment: if there was a budding landslide, the New York Times was completely ignorant of it. And after the fact, they seemed completely uninterested in what, if anything, had caused it.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Congratulations! And whereas the NYT couldn't predict anything back then, they have been predicting/trying to cause a Dem takeover in 2008 since November 2000. Go figure.
Clintoon's landslide was caused by reading GHWB's lips - and they lied!
Taranto is a real jewel.
What do you think his IQ is? I'll bet it's in the 150 range, better than Sharon Stone's
Meltdown of the Magical Thinking Party: GOP holds the House and Senate
FR's signed-up-yesterday trolls greatly annoyed
"Best FReeper handle, ever."
Seems to me we ought to have a FREEPERS BEST OF THE WEB from the conservative viewpoint as a regular feature.
Or is there one I'm not aware of?
Way to go! Interesting research! Great job!
Thanks, Stultis.
I followed Jim Robinson over from Prodigy's Whitewater Bulletin Board (he was kicked off, so he started up Free Republic). When I got here, we were still in pursuit of the Clinton scandals and I loved the image of Boss Burn's hounds being let go to go after Bubba: "ReleaseTheHounds!"
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