Conservative spotlight: Real clear politics

Human Events, Mar 31, 2003 by D'Agostino, Joseph A

A large number of politically-oriented websites clutter the Internet, and the politically-minded have their favorites. Since its beginning in August 2000, RealClearPolitics.com has won admirers for its straightforward organization, comprehensive culling of English-language media around the world, and election information.

"Never miss it-that's the second biggest compliment I'd give to RealClearPolitics.com. The first is that it has become indispensable to anyone, in or outside of journalism, who's interested in politics, policy, or world affairs. I tap in every morning," says a tribute from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of the Weekly Standard. Says Tony Blankley, Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Times, "RealClearPolitics is a must read in the morning. It culls the smartest articles and editorials from every morning's crop. The politics and polling sidebar is a quick access to vital data." And says Bruce Bartlett, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, "Every day it goes through a huge number of online publications and picks out those most interesting that deal with politics. It is really a one-stop shopping source that includes the latest commentary, poll data and news. During the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, I found this site to be invaluable."

"What we do leading up to elections, we offer an election package," RealClearPolitics co-founder Tom Bevan told HUMAN EVENTS. "We provide a lot of election analysis, provide candidate profiles with biographies. We select races, collate all the individual information race-by-race."

Bevan and John McIntyre, co-founder of RealClearPolitics, "get up every morning and comb through major metro newspapers and some world newspapers," said Bevan. "The backbone of the site is commentary and opinion. By 7:00 am Eastern Time, it's there."

Said McIntyre, "We're developing something where people go every day. People get to know it and rely on it. The quality of the people on the site is very good." The site attracts 25,000 unique users each weekday, he said. And, said Bevan, "We're one of the few sites that updates on the weekends."

RealClearPolitics offers its own commentary as well. On March 24, it offered this assessment of the mainstream media's coverage of the tiny number of American casualties thus far in the Iraq war: "Did the media really expect no U.S. soldiers would die? That no one would be taken prisoner? That there wouldn't be any civilian casualties? That is exactly what you'd believe if you read the headlines today: 'U.S. Forces Take Heavy Casualties'-Susan Glasser, Washington Post, 'Doubts Raised on Strategy'-Thomas Ricks, Washington Post. . . .

"Even worse, on the index pages of the three largest online newspapers in the country there is no mention of the 100-acre chemical plant discovered by U.S. troops yesterday. To most people this would seem like a pretty significant development-after all, isn't discovering WMD facilities one of the main objectives of the invasion?"

McIntyre described the philosophy behind the website as based on "freedom" and "common-sense values." Said Bevan, "We think debate on the issues is a very important thing. We post a variety of opinions."

"We have a frustration that all conservatives have," said McIntyre, "which is the bias in the media against conservatives, religious conservatives, Christian conservatives."

RealClearPolitics also dissected the media's disingenuous coverage of Asan Akbar's attack on fellow members of the 101st Airborne. "When the story initially broke on Saturday night it was widely reported that the suspect was a 'Muslim-American' soldier," it said March 24. "By Sunday morning that descriptor had been scrubbed from virtually every report. This morning, only the LA Times gives the story any play on its main page. . . . The New York Times, by contrast, puts the story on its 'National' page and does the most blatant PC whitewash imaginable. . . . The Times serves up this quote from Akbar's stepfather: 'I remember last Christmas he was complaining about the double standards in the military,' Mr. Bilal said. 'Hasan told me it was difficult for a black man to get rank in the military, and he was having a hard time.' Only the New York Times could take the fact that a Muslim soldier in the U.S. Army attacked his own comrades in an unprecedented way and turn it into an indictment of the Army itself for being racist."

McIntyre said that he and Bevan plan to expand the site some day. They hope to "add depth to it," he said, but "that takes time and that takes resources."