As I wrote in my column this week, Fox News has filled the conservative leadership vaccum that emerged following Sen. John McCain's campaign defeat last November, and has obviously transformed itself into a purely political entity. That means the press needs to change the way it treats Fox News.

One of the points I stressed is how the RNC now often plays catch-up to Fox News; a fact nicely illustrated by a recent must-read piece in Salon.

From the column [emphasis added]:

Truth is, in recent years the RNC used to use Fox news to help amplify the partisan raids that national Republicans launched against Democrats. It was within the RNC that the partisan strategy was mapped out and initiated. (i.e. it was the RNC that first published the Al-Gore-invented-the-Internet smear). But it was on talk radio and Fox News where the partisan bombs got dropped. Today, that relationship has, for the most part, been inversed. Now it's within Fox News that the partisan witch hunts are plotted and launched, and it's the RNC that plays catch-up to Glenn Beck and company.

And here's Salon:

*March 17: Talking to guest Kevin Williamson of the National Review, Beck has his first discussion of the supposed proliferation of czars in the administration. But the only explicit complaint comes from Williamson, who says, “We have way too many people named czar in their job title.”

*May 29: Beck makes his own first comment. “And, I'm so excited. We're getting a new czar, everybody! Yes. Can we stop with the czars, please?” He continues to refer to the phenomenon almost daily over the summer. Obviously influenced by Jonah Goldberg's book “Liberal Fascism,” Beck links the czars to early American progressives like Woodrow Wilson, and through him, naturally, to Hitler, Mussolini and Lenin.

*July 15: Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., introduces the “Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009.” By September 16, the bill has 99 co-sponsors, including one Democrat.

*July 30: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor writes an op-ed in the Washington Post accusing the Obama administration of making an “end run around the legislative branch of historic proportions.” Notes Cantor, sagely, “At last count, there were at least 32 active czars that we knew of, meaning the current administration has more czars than Imperial Russia.”