One of the burdens of being a very serious Beltway journalist is that you want to maintain access (relationships, really) to people on both sides of the aisle. That makes it hard to simply report, for example, that you talked to Eric Cantor and he’s lying through his goddamned teeth. If you do honest reporting like that, Eric Cantor won’t answer your calls the next time you want to interview him or get a catchy response quote for your article. In broader terms, this phenomenon allows the Republicans to do or say almost anything and still avoid getting treated like fringe-lunatics or shameless shilling liars. That is what is happening right now with the Medicare debate.
The media does report the facts about Paul Ryan’s plan, but they balance that out by accusing the Democrats of “trying to scare seniors” when they talk about the same facts. The Republicans proposed ending Medicare as we know it and replacing it with inadequate subsidy that would leave soon-to-be seniors broke and lacking access to health care. Then the Republicans offered to take the savings to the government and not apply it to the deficit but to cutting corporate tax-rates and personal income tax-rates on the extremely affluent.
Why wouldn’t seniors and soon-to-be seniors be afraid of that? What’s wrong with pointing out the truth?
