Short answer: No.
Jim Tarnato, that is: it’s defined as “the press’s failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left’s bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.”
True.
Anyway, Jim notes this passage as a possible rebuttal to said principle:
“Democrats got a heads-up,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster with dozens of clients in the midterm election. “They can raise more money, do opposition research against opponents, do focus-group testing on how to beat these guys. … In 1994, they had very little notice a wave was coming.”
…it’s very interesting: every story I read about the looming disaster for Congressional Democrats takes the time and wordcount to make sure that the reader knows that, by gum, the Democrats have a head’s-up about the possibility of another 1994! – And then they never actually do anything to stave off that possibility. There are somewhere around forty-five competitive, Democratic-held House seats where the Cook PVI is R+3 or better; and those seats are competitive because the Democrats jammed through unpopular stimulus and health care bills, not in spite of. And they will become even more competitive if the Democrats try to jam through cap-and-trade and immigration reform, too. Which they probably will. In short, it’s like the Democrats’ response to looking up and seeing a sixteen-ton cartoon weight descending on their heads is to cower under an umbrella.
And everybody reading this knows how that cartoon ends.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.