Yes, it's true.
The Salt Lake Tribune ran
this editorial on Friday. It's hard to believe this comes from a paper that actually endorsed Bush before the '04 election, unless of course you realize that it was a sham endorsement solely to please the conservative publisher of the paper. As if it even mattered. I'm sure if the Trib had come down on Kerry's side, the whole state would have followed suit. I mean, Bush is holding steady at about a 70% approval rating in Utah, how hard could it be to convince these people? One newspaper's measly little endorsement surely could have made the difference.
The editorial board has slowly but surely been living down that pseudo-endorsement, and now I think the task is complete. (I'd link to the endorsement and a bevy of LTEs they received in response, but they're behind an archive firewall. Current articles are free for, I think, 14 days.)
They start off with a little deference, saying the president "correctly warns us of 'the false comfort of isolationism.'" But it doesn't take long for the fun to begin. By the second paragraph, the Trib is taking Bush to task . . .
But in his annual State of the Union speech Tuesday, Bush again offered Americans a dangerously false choice between unquestionably following his ineffective and undemocratic policies on the one hand or surrendering to brutal global terrorism on the other.
"A dangerously false choice." Now that's a nice frame! It continues . . .
And Bush's deceptive assertion that his unwarranted National Security Agency wiretapping program is either constitutional or effective - or, more incredibly, that such unfocused snooping could have prevented the attacks of 9/11 - also pushes a false choice between liberty and security, a dichotomy that people of various political persuasions are increasingly and wisely coming to reject.
The defeatist argument?
But no one is suggesting that the United States should surrender to radical Islam or any other form of terrorism or totalitarianism, and Bush does us all a disservice by insinuating that the only alternative to such capitulation is a sheep-like loyalty to his policies.
Gone!
The concluding paragraph provides the final prick to complete the skewer!
But this administration's acceptance of torture, warrantless searches, secret prisons and indefinite detentions - and its insistence that we accept them, too - is not the kind of American leadership that will light the world. It is just the kind of behavior that actually emboldens our enemies and dashes the dreams of our friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess they didn't really
skewer him with the shrillness of, say a Paul Krugman? But this is Utah! I think this is pretty damn good stuff.