December 5, 2017 --

The Timothy Egan attack on Patricia Smith, cited above, seemed particularly nasty. LPR is not aware that Mr. Egan was criticized for his comment. The other day, LPR dug out a November 4, 2002 Wall Street Journal column by the late Robert L. Bartley that described Democrats as "little more than a collection of narrrow interest groups--unions, tort lawyers, minorities headed by an ossified leadership. They are clever, tenacious and increasingly nasty in defending their perks, as establishments typically are when they're being displaced by upstarts."

Bartley ended the column by advising Republicans that because they "have an advantage in the war of ideas," they can win elections "if only they stop apologizing and take their own ideas on the offensive." As LPR sees it, President Trump is doing precisely what Mr. Bartley advised Republicans to do, fifteen years ago.

There a Times columnist goes, playing to the paper's leftist base

LPR has realized that it is exhausting to try and keeping track of the media attacks against President Trump. The anti-Trump column published in The New York Times, alone could fill a trunk with two months to go until the first anniversary of the Trump inaugural. Here, for example is a current Timothy Egan snipe at the president, in The New York Times, November 25, 2017: "Because Trump is so singularly coarse and vulgar, so ill informed and small-minded, he has made people see the better side of those they had long written off." Egan then cited George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, Why? For standing with the establishment against the upstart. Wrote Egan, "Both of these men have stood up against the anti-constitutional, zero-sum, resentment presidency of Trump...."

Egan went on to laud anti-Trump senators including Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, and anti-Trump "conservative" columnists like Jennifer Rubin. Egan ended his column asserting that "a majority of Americans, an increasingly bipartisan pool, are appalled at the monstrosity of Trump's presidency." For the Trump-haters, diffuse and vague smears are sufficient.

Here is another voice from the establishment

Thomas L. Friedman, in his New York Times column, October 12, 2016 wrote: "[i]t is particularly important that Trump be crushed at the polls to send the message inside the G.O.P. and out that someone of his poisonous ilk can never win in America, and to stop him and his loyalists of any argument that the election was rigged." Friedman added: "[W]e have to hope not only that Hillary Clinton wins the national election but also that Democrats retake at least the Senate. What is the establishment presently doing, if not looking for ways and means to convince the American people that, in fact, the election was rigged -- by the Russians -- or whatever assortment special counsel Robert Mueller can fashion to put an end to the Trump presidency.