The most average newspaper article of the year

Somewhere, anyway. It isn't that the article is amazing on its own merits, but it leaped out at me for being surprisingly fact-filled and objective. So it stands head and shoulders above most lazy campaign coverage we see, but in a more mature time and place, I'd like to think that this qualifies as simply a normal, run-of-the-mill, everyday, quotidian, perfectly average newspaper article.

The coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, anti-tax activists and social conservatives that rallied behind Reagan in 1980 and has defined the Republican Party ever since is coming apart at the seams heading into the 2008 election.

All the men running for the party's presidential nomination invoke Reagan's name repeatedly. But all of them offend at least one wing of the party enough that they'd find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to pull the disparate elements of the old coalition together.

The thing that gets me is why they feel obliged to employ euphemism when reporting on candidates' more questionable actions and ideas. There's no mention of McCain's fervent (or simply insane) support of the Iraq disaster, and Rudy Giuliani's tawdry-- and very public-- personal life "falls short of Christian conservative ideals." But I admit that a little unnecessary discretion is far preferable to countless hours of inane cable coverage of cigarette-smoking, expensive haircuts, or wardrobe choices.

And if anyone can explain the baffling bit about GOP support for Clinton at the end, I'd be grateful.