The staff "conservatives" at The Washington Post are throwing the kitchen sink at the Ted Cruz wing of the Republican Party again on the Post editoral page on Tuesday. In his columm, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson dismisses conservatives (like Cruz) who favor so-called “apocalyptic showdowns” with Obama on his executive-power trips.

Gerson concluded by talking 2016: "Those who judge a Bush-Clinton race to be a tired retread or disturbingly dynastic should consider the more novel and dynamic alternatives. A Warren-Cruz race would be less of an electoral choice than a national trauma. It’s been said that too much clarity darkens."

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told ABC's Diane Sawyer on June 9 that when she and her family left the White House in 2001, they were “dead broke.” The reaction to that remark took an interesting turn on Tuesday, when her husband and former president Bill Clinton leaped into the fray by asserting that his wife's comment “is factually true” and the potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate is “not out of touch.”

The former Democratic occupant of the White House made his remarks during an interview with David Gregory, host of NBC's Meet the Press Sunday morning program, as part of an event for the Clinton Global Initiative in Denver.

According to a Washington Post blogger, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is a "hard-edged and confrontational" conservative with a "highly divisive" agenda. What's more, he's a pouty wimp who "plays the victim" for having called gubernatorial campaign opponent Terry McAuliffe a "bully." [h/t Ben Domenech]

Another left-wing scribe on the Post payroll? Actually, no, that's all from the pen of Jennifer Rubin, who's supposed to be the paper's conservative opinion blogger, but who often takes to her blog to slam other conservatives. Rubin's second charge, that Cuccinelli is absurdly playing the victim, illustrates that she may not really read that much of the newspaper which employs her. As I noted yesterday, Terry McAuliffe did NOT come off smelling likes roses in the Post's page B1 story about McAuliffe-supporting Democrats pushing TechPAC to reverse their endorsement of Cuccinelli for Virginia governor.

Politico reported today that net income at The Washington Post Co. dropped an astonishing 85 percent from the first quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year. The newspaper division posted an operating loss of $34.5 million over that period.

It looks as if the Post, like many other newspapers around the country, may have entered an age of decline. Newspapers just aren’t as profitable as they once were. The proliferation of online news outlets has given consumers a plethora of free news sources to choose from. But another factor may be the Post's persistent liberal bias, which is a turnoff to potential conservative subscribers.

You have to hand it to Washington Post editors. They're pretty slick. In hiring Jennifer Rubin as their token conservative blogger, they have a rightie who criticizes the Right enough to ensure they seldom have to actually put in the print edition excerpts of her posts critical of President Obama. In early March I noted how Post opinion editors excerpted a Rubin blog which bashed the conservative CPAC conference rather than say publish a blog post which attacked Obama and the media over sequester hype.

In the Monday, April 1 paper the Post was at it again, choosing to run a Rubin piece that sought to explain how socially conservative opponents of same-sex marriage "lost the fight" on the policy issue. But a review of Rubin's Right Turn blog archive shows a piece she wrote on Friday morning that would have been excellent to put in print and which attacked President Obama over his "gun histrionics." Here's an excerpt which includes many of her key points (emphasis mine):