The ever-credulous Washington Post reports:

On Saturday, the Senate rejected two Democratic proposals for extending the Bush-era tax cuts, which the Republicans prefer to call “tax rates,” because they have been in effect for so long.

No, that probably isn't why Republicans prefer not to use the phrasing “Bush tax cuts.” It's far more likely that Republicans prefer to call them “tax rates” because they think that phrasing is likely to be more popular. There is simply no basis for the Washington Post to assign a noble motive to the Republicans. They should stick to reporting what Republicans say and do and leave the mind-reading to the professionals.

This is not a trivial matter: The Post has demonstrated a pattern of unjustified faith that Republicans believe what they claim to believe. And assigning noble or innocuous motives to Republicans who are suddenly trying to change the terminology used in the debate over controversial policy is reminiscent of the Post going along with the GOP's efforts to re-brand Social Security privatization as “personal accounts.”

One other thing about the Post's tax-cut article: You won't find the word “deficit” anywhere in it. That's because, as I've noted in the past, the phrase “deficit tax-cutting” doesn't appear in news reports the way “deficit spending” does. Just another subtle way the media puts its thumb on the scale in favor of conservative policies.