BBC and Guardian share the same hymn book

The Guardian's lead story on-line today is about the death of the Miers nomination. And, of course, The Guardian pushes the same angle spun by the BBC last night on Newsnight. In an article headlined Humiliated Bush forced to retreat as moral right turns its guns on him, Julian Borger claims:

However, it was outrage among Christian conservatives that did the most damage.

Borger gives us virtually no evidence that would lead to such a conclusion. The only thing he says in support of such a contention is that on Wednesday two "conservative pressure groups" which had previously been silent on the issue came out against Miers. However, the idea that the addition of two unnamed (so, possibly not even Christian) groups to the cacophony of opposition that has existed since the day of the announcement "did the most damage" to the nomination is laughable.

Once again, The Guardian shows that it is at one with the BBC in its agenda to misrepresent the influence of the religious right on the conservative movement in the US.

As surprising as it may seem, a much more sensible account of the demise of the nomination can be found in The New York Times.

But the conservative rebellion against the nomination did not diminish. It grew, fed by the "blogocracy," by a powerful set of conservative columnists, by a movement that felt it had "swallowed" enough compromises on Mr. Bush's agenda, as David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, put it.

Note also that the Times distinguishes between social conservatives and religious conservatives, a distinction that seems to be lost on (or at least hidden by) the BBC and The Guardian, each of which seems to erroneously interpret, for example, any opposition to the Supreme Court's abortion decision as being driven by religious, or even evangelist, motivations.

UPDATE: The Times here in London also does a good job and resists the caricatured religious spin.