Express-News conservative onslaught continues

The onlslaught of conservative/Republican commentary on the San Antonio Express-News editorial pages continues.
Below is a rundown of the opinion pieces that have been published in the E-N so far this week.

Monday
George Will - R
A big picture of John McCain adorns Will’s column declaring that it is time for McCain to “get ornery.”
I searched in vain for the “Paid for by the John McCain for President Campaign” disclaimer.

Victor Landa - I
Landa pens a typically apolitical column about the travails of new immigrants assimilating into American society.

Austin Bay (online) - R

Tuesday
Froma Harrop - R
Harrop dives into the John Edwards sex scandal with relish and uses it as an excuse to take a couple of cheap shots at Obama.

Mona Charen - R
With a headline that begins “Obama fails miserably...” what more can I say?

Rich Lowry - R
Lauds McCain for his faux-saber rattling over the Russia-Georgian conflict and takes more cheap shots at Obama.

Wednesday
Jonathan Gurwitz - R
Apparently frustrated by the Bush administration’s toothless and inept response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, Gurwitz writes a truly bizarre column in which he viciously attacks not the people who are actually in charge of the government (i.e. the Bush administration), but Noam Chomsky (about something he wrote 30-plus years ago) and the political left (including Obama, I assume) that opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq five years ago. Unbelievable.

Maureen Dowd - D
Dowd gets a D this week as she finally turns her rapier wit on the hapless and extremely unpopular President Bush, but she carefully avoids making any critical references to McCain.

Ruben Navarrette - R
I have to hand it to Navarrette this week. His column looks at first glance like a sympathetic piece about Obama and the challenges still facing him before the Democratic Convention. But on closer inspection, it turns out to have been an excuse to air out old smears and rehash doubts about Obama left over from the primary race. We get to hear yet again about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy and the nativist suspicions that Obama is too “foreign.” Navarrette also determines in the course of the column that the real guilty party in bringing race into the campaign was “a Democratic operative” (i.e. Mark Penn) and urges minorities to remember this in future elections. He proceeds to set a high bar for Obama to clear in order to accomplish the “herculean tasks awaiting him in Denver.” No doubt, Navarrette has already written his post-convention column in which he will bash Obama for failing to accomplish those tasks.

David Broder - I (Online)

Thursday

Cal Thomas - R
Ken Allard - R
Connie Schultz (Online) - Fluff
Meghan Daum - I

And don’t forget that each day on the Op-Ed page we are treated to another one of Bruce Tinsley’s grotesque and hate-filled parodies of Obama in his nauseating “Mallard Fillmore” comic strip.

I keep harping on this issue because we are in the midst of a very important campaign season and for most people their sole source of in-depth news and analysis comes from their local newspaper. It is therefore grossly unfair to have a local paper which fills its Op-Ed pages with reams of rightwing agit-prop and Republican hit pieces while limiting liberal commentary to maybe one or two articles a week.