Monday, January 2, 2012

Could Someone Please Tell the New York Times...

...to read FHQ?

Yesterday's otherwise fine front-pager from A.G. Sulzberger and Michael Barbaro was interrupted for this sour note:
This campaign season, the already stiff competition for these hardy few participants has intensified because the Republican Party abandoned its winner-take-all system, meaning that even losing candidates can win delegates.
Pretty much everything in that paragraph is wrong. Tthe Republican Party never had a winner-take-all system, either nationally or in Iowa; it had a local choice system, which is still basically in effect, with only very minor, and probably inconsequential, changes in delegate selection. Also, Iowa caucus results are only loosely related to delegates, anyway. And that hasn't changed at all since 2008.

I pick on this one, but it's actually the second week in a row that NYT reporters have mentioned this almost entirely bogus rules change (I'm afraid I've lost my reference to last Sunday's, but it was more of the same). Hey, NYT! Cut it out! It's bad enough that ill-informed pundits are repeating this myth, but it really shouldn't be in NYT news articles and feature stories.  

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