You asked for it

If you're still a bit bewildered at the mixed ideological signals that came from the Republican convention in San Diego a couple of weeks ago, here's a novel theory to explain what was really going on. The theory is that convention organizers certainly didn't have you in mind, and probably not even most American voters, when they planned and scripted the convention as carefully as they did. The whole focus instead was on neutralizing the effects of the incredibly biased major media.

After all, it was those same media voices that went to such extremes four years ago to tell the public how radical the Republicans were, especially by comparison with the centrist Bill Clinton. President Bush probably earned his own defeat with a lackluster campaign and his famous vision vacuum--but to say that the media helped propel him toward retirement is an understatement.

Coming into this year's Republican convention, those same media voices sounded in full chorus with the same song: "Watch out for these conservative extremists!" So the big themes and standards for the convention--tolerance, choice, and inclusivism--were set first not by the convention managers but by the mega-media people, and especially by the TV and radio networks.

Now, never mind that these themes and standards hadn't been ratified as necessary or desirable by Republicans at large, or even by the American electorate. As a party, the GOP had for nearly two decades regularly offered to American voters candidates who were overwhelmingly pro-life and who tended to be conservative on other "social" issues. And during that same stretch of time, those candidates had regularly been elected by the voters.

In the 1994 congressional elections, for example, seven explicitly pro-abortion incumbents lost their seats while seven explicitly pro-life candidates won.

That remarkable record, however, was systematically blacked out prior to and through the San Diego convention as the media metronome sounded the beat: Only our kind of tolerance, choice, and inclusivism can win at the polls. Get Pete Wilson, Christine Todd Whitman, and William Weld up on the platform. Make it clear that pro-lifers are narrow-minded losers.

That's why J.C. Watts--a black pro-life conservative who has regularly backed almost every detail of the Gingrich revolution--didn't appear during the telecasts of ABC, CBS, or NBC. To their way of thinking, black conservatives don't exist, and if such a person happens to give one of the more inspiring speeches of the whole convention, the only thing you can do is to pretend it didn't happen.

The big media also missed (deliberately or otherwise) one of the most fascinating stories on the convention floor. While keynoter Susan Molinari was being featured, to the admitted distress of pro-lifers, as a "pro-choice" leader and one of the founders of "Republicans for Choice," the cameras could not resist zeroing in repeatedly on her three-month-old baby. Yet no one dared comment on the obvious irony. Neither did anyone note that the baby's grandfather, who fed her with a bottle while her mother was speaking, was a consistent pro-lifer during his time in Congress--and that the baby's father, also a congressman, still votes regularly with his pro-life colleagues. If the networks missed this story, they should be ashamed. If they knew it and spiked it, they are doubly accountable.

(One notable exception to all this was Mark Shields of The Washington Post, flag-carrier for the liberal point of view on PBS's evening newscast with Jim Lehrer. While most of his colleagues were oohing and aahing that three women noted for their permissive views on abortion had all been featured from the podium on the Tuesday evening program, Mr. Shields asked pointedly: "I wonder whether the Democrats will feature three pro-lifers at their convention?")

But overwhelmingly, the much ballyhooed "scripting" that went on came first from the media gurus. The convention itself was in fact a much broader affair than Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw ever seemed to recognize. Their agenda simply kept them from reporting the true breadth of what was before them.

So the big surprise was on the Rather-Jennings-Brokaw trio and the rest of their media cohorts, who got outsmarted big-time by the convention managers. The media stars were sure the convention would be a repeat of their portrayal of the 1992 convention--a nasty stand-off between the ugly conservatives and the beautiful moderates. What happened instead was that conservatives walked away quietly with almost everything they wanted and almost everything that counted, including both the platform and an outspokenly pro-life vice-presidential candidate. Left behind were the media manipulators who got everything they kept saying they wanted--but who must have discovered on their way home that they'd been handed little more than a fluttering and fleeting image. And even if the GOP does lose in November, there's precious little basis now for blaming it on all those mean-spirited pro-lifers and the religious right.