It is all too easy to become cynical about the mainstream media.<\/p>\n
Last week Vice President Joe Biden uttered the now famous, “I’m going to get into trouble for saying this.\u00a0 This ain’t your father’s Republican Party.\u00a0 This is the Republican Tea Party.”<\/p>\n
As it happened, this kindhearted warning to voters of the insidious transformation of the GOP was all but identical to a line of attack he took in 2008.\u00a0 At that time he said, \u201cI don\u2019t get it, really, all kidding aside. \u2026 This is not your father\u2019s Republican party.\u00a0 These are people who talk about middle class tax cuts and the definition of what\u2019s middle class \u2013 well, I guess below $4 million. Give me a break!\u201d\u00a0 (http:\/\/tiny.cc\/n2v41<\/a> )<\/p>\n The vice president didn\u2019t like cuts to spending and taxes in 2008.\u00a0 He hasn\u2019t liked them at anytime in his career.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t like them now.\u00a0 He is a centerpiece of the \u201cpolitical class\u201d that pollster Scott Rasmussen talked about with the Wall Street Journal\u2019s <\/em>John Fund this past weekend (http:\/\/tiny.cc\/0tbs1<\/a>).<\/p>\n As Fund reported, \u201cTo figure out where people are [between what Rasmussen calls the Mainstream Public and the Political Class], [Rasmussen] asks three questions: Whose judgment do you trust more: that of the American people or America’s political leaders? Has the federal government become its own special interest group? Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors? Those who identify with the government on two or more questions are defined as the political class.\u201d<\/p>\n As to the size of these two groups, Rasmussen adds: \u201cBefore the financial crisis of late 2008, about a tenth of Americans fell into the political class, while some 53% were classified as in the mainstream public. The rest fell somewhere in the middle. Now the percentage of people identifying with the political class has clearly declined into single digits, while those in the mainstream public have grown slightly.\u201d<\/p>\n Where does the Mainstream Public come down on Mr. Biden\u2019s resistance to reductions in spending and taxing?\u00a0 As Fund reports:<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Rasmussen argues that Mr. Obama misread the data from early on in his administration. \u2018People remember from his 2008 campaign that he promised to cut taxes for 95% of all Americans,\u2019 he says. But Mr. Obama’s stimulus package only grudgingly included modest tax cuts as part of an effort to secure Republican votes in Congress. \u2018The week it passed, our poll found 62% of voters wanted more tax cuts and less government spending in the stimulus,\u2019 he says. \u2018We shouldn’t be surprised people now think the stimulus has failed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, despite being so out of touch with the general public, this week, for once, the vice president was rescuing the president, not the other way around.<\/p>\n