Madison’s Liberal Capital Times Turns Conservative After Online Move

What a difference a year makes. If you ever wanted to know just how destructive it is having only one local newspaper company, the Capital Times should be a warning, and a shot over the bough in a winner take all conservative assault on the news. Lurking in the shadows, behind the papers long historical reputation as advocate and voice of the Democratic Party, are conservative manipulators gently softening the editorial content. It’s sad to see the few remaining writers, like John Nichols and Dave Zweifel, used as pawns while the online paper reshapes its now fading liberal image.

Am I imagining the conservative swing to the right? Hardly. No liberal in their right mind would write the following editorial about a zealot partisan ideologue, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who wanted to turn down his counties stimulus money, privatize valuable publicly owned property and advocate a sales tax holiday at a time when people are afraid to spend money. The following thought process is simply insane:

Walker's run should focus on his strengthsMilwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is expected to announce his candidacy Tuesday for the Republican nomination for governor. We're glad Walker is running. In fact, we wish he had run in 2006.In 2005, we were impressed with his reform-oriented take on state government. While we may have had ideological differences with him on a number of social and economic issues, the former state legislator struck us as having thought harder and better about how to improve state government than other potential contenders.

With glowing admiration, the writer was “impressed with his reform-oriented take” and “struck us as having thought harder and better” than what, an ideology that devastated the global economy.