How dense are our news reporters that they are stunned by Republican lies and obstructionism? Truly we are victims of journalistic malpractice. That’s the well-reasoned conclusion of Jamison Foser of Media Matters:

Have these people been asleep, Rip Van Winkle-style, for the past few decades? Conservatives buried the last serious effort at universal health care under an avalanche of (media-abetted) lies. And they won the 2000 election on the strength of (media-abetted … and sometimes media-invented) lies. And they took us to war in Iraq based on (media-abetted) lies. And … well, you get the point. When was the last time conservatives approached a big fight without relying heavily, if not exclusively, on misinformation and deception? Why would anyone have thought this time would be different?

Likewise, the increasingly obvious fact that conservatives aren’t actually interested in working toward bipartisan reform — this seems to have taken reporters by surprise. But when was the last time conservatives made significant concessions in order to win bipartisan support for anything?

What makes all this shock really amazing is that so much of political journalism consists of pontification by people who have supposedly been around and understand how things work — and yet they’re constantly stunned when history repeats itself in the most predictable of ways.