It was curious that Tuesday brought breaking, bad news stories for one Republican politician and one Democratic politician. It was also telling how the increasingly GOP-friendly Wall Street Journal newsroom played the stories, suggesting the Democratic story had larger implications for the party, while the Republicans story was an isolated one.

In other words, it was interesting to see how the Journal newsroom dutifully amplified the RNC talking points.

For the GOP, of course, it was news that Rep. Mark Souder, a social conservative from Indiana, was resigning in the wake of his announcement that the married man had had an affair with one of his staffers. For Democrats yesterday, it was Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, who is running for the senate seat in the Nutmeg state and who held a press conference to rebut charges published in the New York Times that over the years he had exaggerated and misstated facts about his military record.

Now, look at the language for the Journal's article about the Blumenthal controversy, from the very first sentence [emphasis added]:

Democrats held ranks Tuesday behind embattled Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, after he admitted to wrongly saying he had served in Vietnam during the war.

And then later:

With Democrats already facing significant challenges in an anti-incumbent year, the controversy threated to scramble a Senate race in which the party felt confident of victory.

The Journal's Blumenthal coverage is clearly couched in terms of how it will impact Democrats; how it's very bad news for Democrats.

But for the Souder article, the Journal draws no similar conclusions and readers are left with the clear implication that that sex scandal carried with it no wider implications for the party. That it was an isolated incident with no electoral ramifications.