With conservative friends like this in the press, why would Republicans need enemies?

Attempting to take aim at the “liberal media,” Rupert Murdoch's New York Post uncorked some friendly fire over the weekend, with an article headlined:

Liberal media goes on attack against GOP's Boehner

The lede [emphasis added]:

Liberal media outlets are trying to smear the highest-ranking Republican in the House just weeks before the midterm elections with a deal-breaking scandal before he has a chance to take the speaker's chair from Nancy Pelosi.

A blogger from liberal Web site The Daily Kos pierced through Boehner's security detail at yesterday's unveiling of his leadership policy “Pledge to America” to ask if he was sleeping with a lobbyist from the Printing Industries of America.

The congressman ignored the pesky blogger with a flip camera and kept moving to his fleet of black Suburbans.

That's right, the conservative newspaper plucked a Daily Kos blog post out of Internet obscurity and pushed the embarrassing John Boehner story front and center in a botched attempt to attack the liberal media. In other words, the Post did a huge favor to Daily Kos (and a huge disservice to the Republican Congressman) by shining a spotlight on a story that would have otherwise been ignored.

And here was the Post's second futile gotcha attempt:

Insiders on Capitol Hill are buzzing about an upcoming New York Times exposé that will detail an alleged Boehner affair. Sources say the Times is looking for the right time to drop the story in October to sway the election, similar to how the Times reported during the 2008 presidential campaign on an alleged John McCain affair that supposedly had taken place many years before and that was flatly denied by the woman in question.

Note the complete lack of sourcing for the claim about the Times' supposed nasty hit piece. (Anonymous “insiders”? Gimme a break.) This is just awful stuff. Or, it's the Post being the Post – hyper-partisan and painfully unprofessional.

The punch line here is that the only one who comes out looking bad is the Republican congressman. Should Daily Kos send Murdoch's Post a thank-you note?

UPDATED: Now the conservative Washington Examiner has gotten in on the act, with columnist Byron York also pushing the Boehner sex rumors in a bungled attempt to dissect the liberal media.

Of note for the Post newsroom, via York:

[T]here are no indications that the Times, despite its recent interest in Boehner, is working on a story about any alleged affair.