KATTY CLAWS THE REPUBLICANS

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Back at work again today means some more late, late blogging! 20 hours after Newsnight's post-mortem on the Massachusetts defeat for the Democrats I've finally got round to watching it. Almost immediately my hackles were raised by Katty Kay, a particularly biased specimen of BBC reporter.
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Even Mark Mardell would baulk at this bit of characteristic anti-Republican spin, right at the beginning of her Newsnight piece: "This is not a good vote for Barack Obama, but it's not necessarily a good vote for Republicans either." Her reasoning for this remarkable statement? "Yes, Scott Brown ran on a Republican ticket but he didn't use the Republican name in any of his ads or in any of his leafleting." Some might call that clutching at straws! "And more than anything else this is a vote from the angry middle ground of America against the existing political heirarchy". So not mainly against the Democrats then? (It's the new BBC line in evidence again).
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It is interesting though that the BBC, even Katty Kay herself, is now acknowledging the Tea Party movement, that "fiercely conservative...band of self-declared patriots" (in Katty's words) that is leading the charge against big government in the United States, and even acknowledging its huge popularity. It took them an age to do so.
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