BREITBARTICO WHINES ABOUT "VETTING"

Politico's lead story right now:

To GOP, blatant bias in vetting

On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding. The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.

Only days earlier, news surfaced that author David Maraniss had unearthed new details about Barack Obama's prolific, college-age dope-smoking for his new book, "Barack Obama: The Story" -- and the Times made it a brief on A15.

No wonder Republicans are livid with the early coverage of the 2012 general election campaign. To them, reporters are scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience -- and once again downplaying ones that could hurt the president....

Here's the difference, Politico: Maybe if Mitt Romney had written candidly about dressage in a book seventeen years ago, the Times wouldn't have considered it a big news story now. Maybe if the Romney had answered questions about the dressage issue in the last primary season -- perhaps even as early as 2006 -- the Times wouldn't be putting it on the front page now. Maybe if Romney, in the last primary season, had joked about dressage, including on national television, the Times wouldn't be making a big deal of it today. Maybe if Romney had weathered attacks on his dressage habits four years ago from a campaign surrogate of a primary opponent, there would be little press interest now.

Do we really have to explain these things to Romney and his enablers?


(X-posted at Balloon Juice.)