The lead news article in Sunday's New York Times appeared under the headline, "G.O.P. Race Starts in Lavish Haunts of Rich Donors." It began:
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Instead of the corn dogs and pork chops on a stick ritually served up on the hustings of Iowa, the latest stop on the donor trail featured meals of diver scallops and chocolate mousse. The setting was the Breakers, a sprawling Italian Renaissance-inspired hotel here, where the cheapest available rooms fetched $800 a night. And for the half-dozen Republican presidential candidates invited to the annual winter meeting this weekend of the Club for Growth, an influential bloc of deep-pocketed conservatives, the prize was not votes. It was money.
There are at least two problems with this story.
The first is that one person I know who attended the meeting paid $532 for his room at the Breakers. There was a block rate for Club for Growth people that the Times doesn't mention.
The second is that the Times apparently only deems the room prices and cuisine at luxury hotels worthy of prominent mention when the hotels are hosting Republicans. Here's how the same Times reporter who wrote Sunday's story, Nicholas Confessore, handled a meeting in November 2014 of Democratic donors meeting at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, which is an expensive, fancy hotel. Headline: "Liberal Donors Looking Six Years Ahead." Beginning of article:
WASHINGTON — There was no ideological soul-searching, few recriminations aimed at political strategists, and little backbiting or assignment of blame.
Instead, the nation's leading club of liberal philanthropists and political donors, gathered in Washington for a four-day strategy session, appeared ready to shrug off the drubbing Democrats suffered in the midterm elections last week, instead laying plans for what they hoped would be a long-term resurgence of progressive ideas.
When it's the Democratic donors gathering, the hotel room prices and the fancy food aren't mentioned by the Times at all, let alone made the headline or the lead paragraph of a front-page Sunday story. It sure looks like a double standard.