As Senate Democrats debate two proposals regarding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, news outlets have gone out of their way to frame the Democratic differences over how soon to redeploy forces as politically favorable for the Republicans.
For instance, ABCNews.com's The Note declared on June 21 that Democrats are purportedly "on the precipice of making Iraq a 2006 political winner for the Republican Party."
But if the media are right that Republicans stand to gain politically from this debate, it is only because the media have already pronounced them the winners, thereby helping to bring about the result that they are predicting.
If rather, the media discussed below were to simply report relevant information -- that the backers of the two Democratic proposals are united in their belief that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, that this position is shared by a majority of Americans, that the war supported by Republicans is deeply unpopular with the American public, and that the GOP's alternative plan appears to involve remaining in Iraq indefinitely, but no less than three years -- then their assessment of the political winners and losers in this debate would necessarily be very different.
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