Here's a great example of a reporter buying into one side's framing of a debate. In yesterday's New York Times, Jim Rutenberg defines the battle over attaching a withdrawal timeline to the Iraq emergency funding bill as "a fight over support for the troops":
But as the president has vacationed here, his administration has been pressing against the Democrats on all fronts.
There was Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday, saying on Rush Limbaugh's radio program that the Democrats were "prepared to pack it in and come home in defeat" in Iraq; administration officials giving reporters a running count of days that have passed without the release of $100 billion in war financing the president has requested; and the president chiming in on his radio address, saying, "Sixty-one days have passed since I sent Congress an emergency war spending bill."
Mr. Bush has rarely lost a fight over support for the troops, but things are different now. Administration officials said they were confident they could paint the Democrats as causing the delay, arguing that they knowingly pushed war-financing bills that the president would not sign because they included timelines for withdrawal from Iraq.
This is, of course, the same phrase the White House uses. By adopting it, the Times implicitly suggests Democrats don't support the troops. In fact, everyone "supports the troops" -- the fight is over what's best for the country.
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