The New York Times greeted delegates with a front-page scoop on the first day of last week's Republican convention in Philadelphia. After conducting an exhaustive, expensive opinion survey, conforming to the very highest standards of scientific rigor, the newspaper of record discovered that the delegates to the convention of America's conservative political party were -- hold on to your hats -- conservative!
"The poll," said the Times, "found that delegates stand significantly to the right of much of the nation," not to mention to the right of the newsroom of the New York Times, which, in an eerie coincidence, stands significantly to the left of just about all of the nation. Perhaps this explains why the Times found its poll of delegates not only newsworthy but even front-page worthy. The story's thesis, of course, is that George W. Bush is trying to pull off a shell game -- distract the population with his moderate image while hiding the horrifying right-wing reality beneath. Or as the Times put it, the delegates are conservative "even at a time when Mr. Bush has sought to portray the Republican Party as increasingly moderate."
It's not so, America! "The delegates who began arriving here this weekend are, the poll found, overwhelmingly white and mostly male and middle age," the Times went on. "They are relatively wealthy: one in five put their net worth as $ 1 million."
Times readers have heard all this before. The they-say-they're-moderate-but-they're-really-a-bunch-of-loons story has become a fixture of the Times's coverage of Republican conventions. Here, for example, is the Times from the first day of the 1996 convention in San Diego: "The Republican party is taking great pains to present an image of diversity at its convention here. . . . But away from the stage and the video screens, the nearly 2,000 delegates are overwhelmingly white, mostly male and middle-aged, and impressively wealthy. Almost one-in-five is a millionaire, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll."
Hear the echo? The Times story last week is essentially a rewrite of the story four years ago. "The delegates . . . are more conservative than Republicans generally -- indeed, more conservative than their own candidate."
No doubt the Times will say in defense of its self-plagiarism that the composition of the delegates hasn't changed much in four years. But the real lesson here is that the Times hasn't changed either -- it still has difficulty with the rudiments of American politics. So let THE SCRAPBOOK explain: Conventions attract activists. Activists are more ideological than other people. There are two parties in America, one liberal, the other conservative. The conservative party will draw conservative activists.
And the liberal party, of course, will draw liberal activists. We can hardly wait to read the Times front-page block-buster from Los Angeles next week, explaining how all those ultra-liberal Democratic delegates are so far to the left of the mainstream of American politics.