During tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Florida, both former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tried to run away from their past more liberal positions. In fact, Fox News moderators Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, and Carl Cameron repeatedly asked Giuliani and Romney to prove their conservative credentials. And while the mainstream media allows the GOP to cater to its conservative base and ideology, political pundits don’t extend the same privilege to Democrats.

As the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has pointed out, the mainstream media often pulls Democratic candidates to the right and suggests that representing liberal causes or “catering” to progressive organizations like MoveOn.org will lose them the election.

Media advocates of centrism typically call on Democrats to reject their natural supporters, often denigrated as “special interests”: liberals, unions, civil rights and feminist groups, and environmental and consumer rights organizations. Meanwhile, corporate-friendly policies and conservative-leaning “moral values” are presented as the road to electoral success. Many political pundits say going centrist is not only the right thing—it’s the only way Democrats can win.

During today’s address to the Value Voters Summit, the year’s largest gathering of religious right activists, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani “tried to find peace with a restless bloc of the Republican Party…telling religious conservatives not to fear him for his stand on issues such as abortion or expect he would change purely for political advantage.”

“We may not always agree,” he said. “I don’t always agree with myself. But I will give you reason to trust me.”

Giuliani’s quote may be more revealing than he hoped. As The Body Politik has previously noted, Giuliani has “changed purely for political advantage.” Since announcing his candidacy for president, Giuliani has shifted his positions and outlook on immigration and the threat of terrorism to reflect the views of GOP primary voters.

While mayor, Giuliani sued the federal government over a provision in a welfare reform bill which he believed would lead to “inhumane” treatment of illegal immigrants. He defended immigrants “as valuable contributors to the city’s economy and culture” and acknowledged that “we’re never going to be able to totally control immigration to a country that is as large as ours.”

Now, Giuliani is certain that we can. In a recent speech Giuliani promised that “we can end illegal immigration” with “stricter border control, tamper-proof identification cards for noncitizens and the deportation of foreign-born criminals.”

Giuliani’s rhetoric on terror also contrasts with his record. These days, Giuliani says that he understands terrorism “better than anyone else running for President,” and portrays himself as “deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.”

“But for most of Giuliani’s career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York’s chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda…Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system — the same approach he now condemns.”

In fact, Giuliani framed “terrorism in the language of crime” in the weeks after September 11th and “as mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers.”

World events and shifting political realities can surely cause politicians’ views and positions to evolve. But Giuliani’s disingenuous attempts to portray himself as a consistent, tough and even visionary candidate only highlight the contradictions of his image.

In today’s New York Times, Stephen Colbert guest-writes Maureen Dowd’s column. Colbert offers penetrating insights, for example,”winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.” Check out the whole column HERE.

In today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman weirdly and unfairly criticizes American college students for not being “radical and politically engaged” enough, and suggests they lack “courage.”

Friedman’s meandering op-ed calling for mass youth protest is odd considering his early, consistent, and stubborn support for the war in Iraq. As this Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting article and this Center for American Progress interactive graphic show, Friedman argued over a dozen times between 2003 and 2006 that “the next six months” would be crucial to success in Iraq. This led to the creation of a term popular in the blogosphere: the Friedman Unit. The term, coined by Atrios, describes the perpetual reference by war supporters to “the next six months” during which the success of our mission in Iraq will be determined. Finally, in September 2007, Friedman admitted on The Colbert Report that “we’re out of six months” - long after this became clear to most of the American public.

As Friedman himself notes, current college students are “volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers” as they “quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.” Meanwhile, the “Greediest Generation,” which currently holds the reins of power, “just keep piling [problems] on them.”

Sadly, in criticizing this generation of young Americans supposed lack of “courage,” Friedman confuses loudly proclaiming one’s own viewpoint with actually getting to work on the country’s problems without feeling the need to call attention to oneself. In doing so, Friedman illustrates the foundations of the very problems his generation has been so successful in generating.

Mainstream media coverage of President Bush’s veto of the popular SCHIP legislation, failed to fact-check the president. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times adopted a less than informative political process framework, quoting bickering Congressional Democrats, Republicans and White House officials, while ignoring the inaccuracies in Bush’s reasons for vetoing SCHIP.

- New York Times: Noting that the veto “brought immediate statements of anger from Democrats,” the Times explained that “Mr. Bush and his backers argue that the bill would steer the program away from its core purpose of providing insurance for poor children and toward covering children from middle-class families.

- Washington Post: Similarly, before regurgitating Bush’s veto explanation, the Post conceded that “in vetoing the bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the president finds himself isolated politically” but he “appears to have the votes to sustain his veto.”

- Los Angeles Times: “Bush has criticized the legislation as too costly, and complained that it would undermine private insurance by extending benefits to some middle-class families at the expense of the poor. He has also questioned the decision by Congress to use tobacco taxes to pay for children’s healthcare, saying cigarette taxes are not a reliable source of permanent funding, since fewer people are smoking.” Without challenging these claims, the paper resorts to covering the political bickering. “Republicans accused Democrats of politicizing a program that until now has enjoyed support from both parties.”

Despite Bush’s claims, however, “the overwhelming majority of children who would gain health coverage under the emerging agreement are precisely the low-income children the President says he wants to focus on.” A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the SCHIP bill “found that at least 85 percent of the otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill have incomes below states’ current SCHIP eligibility limits;” two-thirds of “those who gain SCHIP coverage…would otherwise be uninsured.”

Since SCHIP needs “14 billion more over the next five years to keep covering current enrollees, let alone reach more of the nation’s nearly 9 million uninsured children,” Bush’s willingness to pony up just $5 billion is “tantamount to a cut.” Bush’s plan of providing “tax breaks for the purchase of private insurance,” would cover less than one-quarter of the uninsured, according to an analysis by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber.

As for the alleged tax increase on cigarettes, a recent study found that “higher state taxes on smokers have produced sharp declines in consumption.” Economist Frank Chaloupka of the University of Illinois predicts that “smoking will drop 6% if the 61-cent-per-pack tax hike is passed.” “I expect a bigger drop than almost anything we’ve seen before,” he says.

By focusing on the politics of Bush’s veto and leaving the president’s reasons unchallenged, the mainstream press adds legitimacy to Bush’s reasoning and provides the administration with an uncritical platform for its spin.

On tonight’s Hannity & Colmes, co-host Alan Colmes asked Ann Coulter, who was promoting her new book, to defend her statement that all Arabs are “camel jockeys.”

COLMES: So you have no problem referring to Arabs as camel jockeys?
COULTER: Oh, yeah no, they killed 3,000 Americans, I’ll be very careful with my language!
COLMES: All Arabs killed 3,000 Americans?
COULTER: The point is they were a little slower to attack me for that than the Jews were.
COLMES: But when you refer to an entire ethnicity as camel jockeys, it sounds bigoted.
COULTER: Yes, and it’s so mean after they killed 3,000 Americans. And I shouldn’t be mean.
COLMES: But they were not all Arabs.
COULTER: We have sure moved from the day when we called them krauts and nips.
COLMES: You are very proud of yourself, aren’t you?
COULTER: No, I am making a point. We’re at war and what liberals are concerned about is what language we’re using. I’m describing humanity.
COLMES: Language is very important and in fact if you are going to try prosecute a war or try to win a war, you do not win it by using nasty language toward your opponent or calling everyone who is an Arab…

Colmes is right. As former CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid noted recently, “the battle of words is meaningful, especially in the Middle East to people.” In fact, by giving sensationalist commentators like Ann Coulter a platform, the Fox News Channel “makes it ‘very, very difficult’ to ‘work together’ with mainline regional leaders to keep extremism “from becoming mainstream.”

Not contented by the Senate’s recent threat to “‘combat, contain and [stop]’ Iran via ‘military instruments,’” nor by the constant attempts of Fox News to promote war with Iran, the Wall Street Journal writes today, the President “has an obligation to do whatever it takes to stop [Iran].”

With shrill rhetoric, the WSJ argues for the declaration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization and faults Bush for not blocking Mohamed ElBaradei’s nomination as chief the IAEA over John Bolton’s “warnings.” “Now, the U.S. has to live with his pro-Iranian machinations,” the WSJ writes.

The WSJ ought to be reminded: while they were trumpeting the cause for war with Iraq, it was El Baradei who “spoke up against the White House’s campaign of misinformation” and provided “intelligence that shot down White House rationales for going to war.” And it was El Baradei who was right.

On his new blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” Paul Krugman writes that too many political journalists may be in the wrong profession:

One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business – namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race. …

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats. …

But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out.

Krugman apologizes in the beginning of his piece for it being a “a bit of a rant.” Sadly, however, his “rant” is an accurate picture of the state of political reporting.

Reports about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) health care proposal compare her plan with those of fellow Democratic challengers Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and John Edwards (D-NC), but omit any discussion of a single-payer proposal championed by presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

While the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times review the details of Clinton’s attempts to reform health care in 1994 and compare and contrast the Clinton-Obama-Edwards health care proposals, all three papers exclude progressive critics of ‘universal health insurance’ coverage and their legislative alternatives.

In fact, Kucinich and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a single-payer proposal in January 2007. ‘The U.S. National Health Insurance Act’ (HR-676), which has attracted 77 co-sponsors, “would create a publicly financed, privately delivered health care program that uses the already existing Medicare program by expanding and improving it to all U.S. residents.”

Most Americans support single-payer health care. During a Clinton campaign stop in Iowa, the Washington Post reported that the audience favored a single-payer approach.

In keeping with her expressed desire to hold a “conversation with Iowans,” Clinton asked at one point for a show of hands from the audience to see how many would prefer employer-based health insurance, how many would prefer a system in which individuals purchased insurance, with help from the government if necessary, and how many would prefer a system modeled on Medicare. The audience overwhelmingly favored moving toward a Medicare-like system for all Americans.

Support for such a program transcends the Democratic base. According to a 2003 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62% of Americans support a universal health care system in which everyone is covered “under a program like Medicare run by the government and financed by taxpayers.”

And while Clinton incorporated an expanded Medicare program into her health care proposal, the press excluded progressive voices and choices from their coverage and artificially narrowed the spectrum of political debate.

In today’s New York Times, reporter Michael Gordon relies on questionable military statics to report that “American forces have made some headway toward a crucial goal of protecting the Iraqi population.”

Gordon’s piece fails to quote a single critic of “the methods the Pentagon used to compile its data,” misuses data from the British-based nongovernmental group Iraq Body Count to bolster the military’s statistics, misrepresents the motivation of Sunni tribes for cooperating with American forces, and ignores facts he himself has reported in the past.

The military’s contention that “violence in Iraq has dropped” is disputed by public reports and government officials. “Yesterday, David Walker, the comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the methods the Pentagon used to compile its data were too subjective and inconsistent to be meaningful.”

For instance, “the Pentagon’s own data show significant changes over time in their estimates of sectarian killings.” This week, Gen. David Petraues increased the December 2006 casualty figures and argued that sectarian killings plunged by 75 percent. Some national security experts have claimed that such an increase “is completely inconsistent with the Pentagon’s own numbers.”

Gordon also failed to note that many experts within and outside the government have accused the military of cherry-picking statistics to convince Washington that American forces are achieving progress in Iraq. The military’s statistics exclude Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, “attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen,” and car bombs.

Gordon’s use of Iraq Body Count statistics to argue that the surge has “produced progress” is perhaps most egregious. Gordon notes that statistics compiled by the group show that “the number of civilians who were killed by shootings, executions and bombs has declined from January through July.” While violence did drop in all of Iraq from 67.3 deaths per day in January to 61.9 deaths per day in July, violence outside outside of Baghdad increased by 42%, from 21.3 deaths per day in January to 30.3 deaths per day in July.

Gordon also ignores the group’s warnings that their numbers “under-represent reported violence for the more recent periods” and that “despite any efforts put into the surge, the first six months of 2007 was still the most deadly first six months for civilians of any year since the invasion.”

Finally, Gordon uncritically asserts that “the infusion of more American troops encouraged Sunni tribes, including former insurgents to align themselves with American forces, providing American troops with additional allies in their struggle to establish order in Iraq.” Yet, as the AP reports, in Anbar province, where some former Sunni insurgents have cooperated with American forces, “the Sunni tribes decided to fight and retake control from al-Qaida many months before Bush decided to send an extra 4,000 Marines to Anbar as part of his troop buildup.”

Ironically, in a July article, Gordon himself admitted that Sunnis’ perception of an impending American withdrawal, not the infusion of troops, changed their attitudes about cooperating with American forces. “Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias.”

Unfortunately, today’s article is yet another in Michael Gordon’s long history of parroting the Bush administration’s unsubstantiated claims.