House Republicans push to get McCain editorial in NY Times

A House Republican will circulate a letter among his colleagues on Wednesday asking the New York Times whether a third-party group can take out a full-page advertisement in the paper to run a previously rejected editorial by their presidential candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, according to people familiar with the decision.

The letter, drafted by California Rep. Kevin O. McCarthy with the blessing of his leadership, is an attempt to paint the venerable newspaper as a Democratically-aligned media company.

The move echoes previous  GOP flaps about liberal media bias  like the one that resulted from an ad taken out in the paper by MoveOn.org criticizing Army Gen. David Petraeus on the eve of his first congressional testimony in 2007 and the 2004 controversy in which then-CBS News anchor Dan Rather aired a story about President Bush's National Guard service based on fabricated documents. Republicans are hoping to foster similar distrust for the national media among their base voters again this year.

House GOP sources suggest a Republican leadership PAC may pay for the ad if no outside group steps forward to do so, although the cost would run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

The Times rejected a McCain op-ed earlier this week about his rival's trip to the Middle East on the grounds that it was a partisan attack. Barack Obama, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee, wrote a piece that ran before he left for his tour of the region.

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