WaPo should register as a 527.

Consider this lead from a “news” article titled Group Runs Anti-Kerry Ads on Black Radio Stations:

A group financed by a major Republican contributor has begun running radio ads in about a dozen cities, many in battleground states, attacking Sen. John F. Kerry as “rich, white and wishy-washy” and mocking his wife for boasting of her African roots.

The D.C.-based group, People of Color United, has substantial financial backing from J. Patrick Rooney, the former chairman of Golden Rule Insurance Co. and the founder of a new firm, Medical Savings Insurance Co. Both firms specialize in medical savings accounts, created by Republican-backed 1996 legislation, and health savings accounts, which were created by President Bush’s 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation.

They could have focused on the novelty of a conservative African American group — instead they focus on the fact that the major contributor is white. They could have focused on the the substance behind the ads — instead the paper defends Kerry. They could have focused on the effectiveness of the ads — instead they focus on how the major contributor made his money.

Now consider this column by David Broder called Turncoat Politics. Broder says Democrats have good reason to be mad at Rodney Alexander, a freshman congressman who recently switched from Democrat to Republican in the run-up to election. Broder quite rightly brings up Jim Jeffords, who gave the Senate back to the Democrats in 2001, and scold both men for not having the honesty to resign their posts and run again, ala Phil Gramm of Texas all those years ago. But where was Broder when Jeffords did the switchero? What was he talking about back then?

The defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords … is the most glaring example of the difficulties facing the Republican Party in its struggle to hold together a fragile coalition under a party leadership dominated by conservative white southern males.

Otherwise, he was remarkably mute on the subject.

I say again, WaPo should register as a 527.