Is AOL Playing 2012 Politics Already?

11/06/2010 -- Anyone who has any AOL account, is fully aware of the strong left-leaning character of the political coverage on their linked news stories . . . that is when they are not covering some insipid opinion or other, blurted out by some stupid hollywood celebrity! AOL "news" coverage can really be quite pathetic.

But is is possible that AOL is actively playing Democrat politics already -- just post mid-term elections? Just check the following photo montage AOL posted this morning on their face page, one that is intended to greet the millions of Americans having AOL as their e-mail service!

Bear in mind that CNN has just released a poll (ht: Ed Morrissey at HotAir) indicating that, as of today, two of the three most well known 2012 Republican hopefuls, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, would defeat Barack Obama. Only Sarah Palin would lose to Mr. Obama, according to the CNN poll. So, for the left and their acolytes in the media, perhaps it's become time to back off all the Sarah Palin bashing, and to begin unloading on both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney! By the way, AOL was well aware of the poll.

According to the CNN poll:

"Looking ahead to 2012, it may be too early to count Barack Obama out, particularly if Sarah Palin is his opponent," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The former Alaska governor gets a lot of attention, but she is in third place when Republicans are asked to pick a presidential nominee, and in a hypothetical matchup with Obama she is arguably the weakest candidate of the top-tier GOP hopefuls."

The poll itself addressed several others as well, including Newt Gingrich. According to CNN, Gingrich too would fare better than Sarah Palin against the President. But the photo montage just cited those "top three" Republican hopefuls. Here is the AP/Getty photo posted by AOL today.

Get the sense that the AOL photo editor would like to negatively affect any chance of either Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee growing in popularity and thereby being more likely to garner the nomination?

And, do you have any doubt something like that was a factor in the photos chosen to be posted together? I don't.

The Huckabee photo is terrible. It looks like he just had been told he failed an IQ test, for crying out loud! It takes real work to dig out a photo from the files that is that negative. Normally, this sort of selection represents the work of a partisan campaign consultant putting together a negative mailer meant to utterly ridicule the person or persons.

And Mitt Romney looks like he'd been holding his breath for several minutes, and just that second let the air out! Again, it took some real search time for the editor to come up with a photo that bad looking. Romney is normally a very photogenic person. It again looks like a selection made by a negative campaign consultant, not an ostensibly neutral media organization.

So, it sure looks to me like whoever did this editorial work, at this point wants Palin to get the nomination.

But it doesn't look to me like it was a Palin fan who made the choice. It is not the work of someone who wants her to actually be elected, mind you . . . just someone who wants her to win the Republican nomination.

The motive seems to have been trashing the two with, as of today, (according to the CNN poll) the best chance of beating Obama in 2012.

After all, Barack Obama's photo looks just fine. Presidential, even.