Each successive special election has been like watching a kid get socks under the Christmas tree. Democrats get all excited at the prospect of something happening, but it is always dashed by the reality crashing down around them. The special election in Montana was no different, and it has been fun to watch.
The media was starting to believe it had gotten the Republican candidate, Greg Gianforte, when he allegedly “body-slammed” a journalist for the UK Guardian. All presses were stopped, every other story swept aside for continuous coverage of the story in the hopes that it would bring about the Democratic victory they all so desperately wanted.
Thanks, in small part, to Democrats’ insistence on early, by mail voting and the fact that 70 percent of votes had already been cast by the time of the incident, it didn’t happen. Good.
I spent a lot of time in Montana in 2006 when I worked for Sen. Conrad Burns, and I have a pretty good feel for the state. Early voting or not, I never really thought the charge would make a difference, at least not with people inclined to vote in a special election on a Thursday. You mess with a man’s cattle and you’ll have a problem; you mess with a journalist from Washington, DC, and you’re more likely to win votes than lose them.
That’s not to condone violence, and Congressman-elect Gianforte has since apologized. But it’s reality. One thing the liberal media doesn’t understand, or refuses to accept, is just how disliked and distrusted it really is.
In Washington, these hallway-dwellers of Capital Hill are a like-minded gang of arrogant brats. Their world consists of tweeting each other’s stories and inside jokes. They all come from somewhere else, but they all hate where they come from and the people who live there. They don’t realize the feeling is mutual because they can’t be bothered to speak to people outside their credentialed bubble.
But the feeling is mutual, at least to people motivated to vote. So entering a private office, uninvited, and demanding a candidate answer questions about a Congressional Budget Office score of a complex health care bill he hadn’t read because it was released only minutes ago might make sense to fellow hallway-dwellers. But not to normal people.
That’s what happened in the case of Ben Jacobs of the UK Guardian, according to reports. He entered Gianforte’s campaign office, crashing what was supposed to be an interview with Fox News, and asked about the just-released CBO report. Gianforte wasn’t going to answer questions based on some liberal journalists’ impression of a report. Then, things got physical.
After that, things got weird, at least to people who regularly breathe air outside the Beltway.
Jacobs tweeted, “Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses.” Most people wouldn’t take the time to tweet about something so traumatic they sought medical care for it, but to journalists in 2017 nothing truly happens unless you tweet about it.
Ten minutes later Jacobs tweeted, “There was a local TV crew there when Gianforte body slammed me. Audio is posting soon at @GuardianUS.”
Again, to most people it seems odd that someone would tweet twice about a traumatic event, then write a news story about it while telling police he’d like medical attention. Some would chalk this up to professionalism; others to opportunism.
Jacobs became a media darling, immediately receiving support from fellow hallway-dwellers and every mainstream media outlet. They smelled blood in the water.
See, the reason a reporter from the US Guardian was in Montana in the first place, along with reporters from damn near every liberal media outlet, was not to cover the story, but to possibly cover THE story.
Since November, the left has been dreaming of a Republican defeat somewhere they can attribute to their work to turn the American people who voted for President Donald Trump against him. They didn’t get it in Kansas, they didn’t get it in Georgia (at least not yet), and now they didn’t get it in Montana. They’ll now migrate to South Carolina at the end of June for their next bite at the apple.
There’s no other reason so much time and money is being spent covering special elections that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter at all. One House seat here or there does not matter unless you’re trying to advance a narrative about President Trump’s unpopularity harming the GOP.
The SS Democrat is sailing the country hunting its white whale, and these little Ahabs could almost taste it this time – so much so they wiped coverage of a terrorist attack that killed 22, mostly children, right off the television.
It’s something that would shame a normal person into some self-reflection and maybe let some air out of their bubble. But the only walls liberal journalists believe in is the one they’ve build around their psyches, and it’s impenetrable.
Each special election has been more special than the last, and the one in Montana was no different. Not so much for the results, but for the circus and inevitable media meltdown that follows. Is this cruel of me? Perhaps. But I’ll worry about that when they start worrying about journalism.