Try this one on for size:

More voters trust the Democratic Party than the Republican Party on budgetary issues, according to the results of a new poll for The Hill — even though a strong majority actually prefer Republican fiscal policies.

What could explain this strange phenomenon?

The discrepancy would appear to be rooted in the GOP’s image problem, as the party attempts to recover from a bruising general election and recalibrate for a new generation of voters.

While the GOP is certainly partly to blame for its “image problem,” I would attach more blame to the media that has gleefully joined in with cheerleading the Obama position that there is absolutely nothing to cut in the federal budget—except White House tours.

The recent sequester fight is a case in point:

Joe Vornehm of Simpsonville, S.C., pulled out his ruler to count the number of column inches his local newspaper, the Gannett-owned Greenville News, had written about the budget impasse in Washington.

He found 42.5 inches on the Obama administration’s position, 6.5 inches he described as neutral and 7.5 inches on the Republican position.

…

The press has taken up the administration’s strategy, generally known as “firemen first” in political terms. When a city or state government faces a budget shortfall, the politicians immediately wring their hands and say cops and firefighters will be the first to go if taxes aren’t raised or a bond issue isn’t passed. It’s the same kind of scare tactic the media are propagating about the sequester clash. In a recent Gallup poll, more than half of those questioned didn’t really know what to think. The poll represents an honest view; the media have pushed an agenda.

And they’ve been doing it for years on every conceivable subject. The sequester was a less than 3 percent across-the-board cut. For the average American, that might be the equivalent of one less night out a month—unfortunate—but hardly the tragedy the Obama administration was peddling beforehand.

And the mainstream media wring their hands when polls show that only 6 percent of Americans are complete fools.

Journalism. Wound. Self-inflicted.