I don't think either the Washington Times or liberal newspapers get direct marching orders from the respective parties they support. Of course, one doesn't have to be taking direct orders to be a buttmonkey, does one? It can be all self-initiated. "Volunteer buttmonkeys" as it were. I'm sure this is true for many newspapers, media outlets, and political action groups.

That being said, we are now being inundated in heavily-funded political action groups that, theoretically, are independent of party structure, and thus immune from certain campaign finance restrictions. I am finding it hard to believe that there is not some back-and-forth communication with political party officials at a discreet level in some of these. The coordination of certain campaigns between multiple groups is a bit too effective. Of course, maybe they only communicate with each other. Don't know how legal that is.

"Campaign finance reform" is a failure as it presently stands.

But if there's shaving of the rules going on, I guarantee you it's across the board.

It's silly to assume that all groups that support Bush are somehow being directly controlled by Rowe, while at the same time believing that no such influence could possibly be feeding out from the Democratic Party to groups like Moveon.org.