On Bob Bennett: Conservatives Win, MSM Looks Foolish

RedState's Erickson has an essay on Bennett's defeat. He's not impressed with the political "reporting" of the press.

A few juicy morsels...

...the Reagan Revolution was so profound that the media developed a mental shortcut — Republican equals Conservative. ...Once the rule was in place it did not matter how conservative a Republican was or was not — and this is important — nor did it matter that one could start on the right and move to the left over time. A Republican was always a conservative.

Here comes slap #1:

That made it easy for Newt Gingrich to lead the Republican Revolution of 1994 and still be considered a paragon of conservatism in 1998 when all the conservatives in the House of Representatives were trying to oust him and moderates like Nancy Johnson were the ones defending him.

Here comes slap #2:

Ousting Bob Bennett had nothing to do with TARP per se. It had everything to do with Bob Bennett being one of those Republicans who hid behind the safety of an 80% American Conservative Union rating without realizing he was still the 8th most liberal Republican in the United States Senate

And #3:

Long thought of as conservative just because of his state of origin and his votes on judicial nominees, Bennett had in fact bent over backward time and again in favor of big government and pork, all at the expense of Utah’s values. As one of Mitch McConnell’s “wise old men,” Bennett is one of the people largely responsible for the bastardization of conservatism.

Watch California. The only actual Conservative in the (R) Senatorial primary is Dick DeVore. Carpenter is a leftist, and Fiorina is a gadfly-with-few-principles, no matter what Palin said. DeVore is a long shot, but a Carpenter loss will be meaningful.