WHY DOES THE NY TIMES LIE ABOUT CONGRESSIONAL VOTING RECORDS? TAKE TENNESSEE WINGNUT LAMAR ALEXANDER, FOR EXAMPLE-- A MODERATE? NO WAY!

Four rubber stamp Tennessee Bush supporters who call themselves "moderate"

Earlier today we looked at a NY Times story on, Tim Mahoney, a Florida Republican who switched his registration to "D" so he could take advantage of what he was advised was about to befall his closeted and predatory congressman, Mark Foley (R-FL). A rookie Times writer, David Herszenhorn, forgot to mention that Mahoney was a Republican just a bit over a year ago. You know rookies... especially on a slow holiday news day...

Carl Hulse is anything but a rookie. He's a senior political correspondent for the newspaper of record. But maybe he wasn't paying attention today when he wrote a piece on Tennessee senior Senator Lamar Alexander, A GOP Senator Charts A Middle Path. Hulse comes off like a hack propagandist for the Republican Party's senatorial election committee.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican and career consensus seeker, finds himself in a familiar position when it comes to the war in Iraq: somewhere in the middle.

Charting a middle course? Middle? Between Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell? Were Hulse or the Times even remotely interested in an unbiased look at Alexander's political positions they would find an extreme right wing fanatic masquerading as a mainstream conservative. His voting record is anything but "middle" or "moderate." Lamar Alexander, despite the p.r. consultants and press releases swallowed whole by Carl Hulse and the NY Times, is a rubber stamp Republican who has backed George Bush and Dick Cheney almost more than anyone else in the entire Senate. His voting record can't be described any other way but extreme right-- across the board. And on Iraq he has one of the worst and most reactionary voting records even among Republicans. Since his election, there have been 32 Iraq-related votes. Alexander was absent for 4 of them and supported the Bush-Cheney agenda on every other vote (except for a minor vote where he joined Democrats to insist on more and better armor for Humvees). How Hulse and the Times equates that with a "consensus seeker" of the middle ground is something they never attempt to explain in their story. Instead, Hulse ingenuously helps with Alexander's desperate re-election ploy to paint himself as a thoughtful and balanced moderate.

Mr. Alexander, who is positioned to play a central role in the coming Iraq debate, is in neither camp, leaving both sides frustrated. He is opposed to the fixed withdrawal date sought by many Democrats but has bucked the administration by pushing for a change of mission in Iraq and the formal adoption of the recommendations put forward by the Iraq Study Group.

Is Hulse referring to Alexander's grumblings at a poker party? He certainly isn't talking about Alexander's voting record. Alexander is a rubber stamp for the Regime-- nothing more, nothing less. Or is Carl Hulse living in a parallel universe were we based what we write on something other than reality? The man had 32 opportunities to vote on Iraq since 2003. It doesn't matter what he claims he felt or wanted or wished for or will do to strengthen his chances for re-election. What should matter-- but what the Times never mentions even once-- is how he has actually voted.

As he toured the state recently, Mr. Alexander took the opportunity to explain his approach on Iraq, which essentially boils down to gradually shifting United States forces from direct combat operations to more training and equipping of Iraqi forces, with a concentration on stabilizing the country province by province. He said such a strategy could lead to a significant drawdown of troops within a year or slightly longer.

His approach? And how exactly is that "approach" expressed? Over a mint julep while watching the ducks march across the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis? That approach is certainly not expressed in his voting record. But the Times doesn't think its readers need to hear about how the senator actually voted for the past 4 years, something he is hysterically trying to prevent his constituents from dwelling on.