This is the kind of biased editorial comment that's dumped inside a purported news story that really gets under my skin. This should have been reported as a 'speech at the Pentagon'...period.
My daugher is a Jr in high school. she asked me if I could give her my weekly Washington Times so she can use an editorial to demonstrate the pursuasive techniques used by the writer.
I told her I had a better idea. Lets get the Hartford Courant (owned by LA times) and get the latest "news" article written by one of their staff. Sure enough, she was able to identify virtually every technique available to a pursuasive writer. In a nutshell, the writer was doing an analysis to indicate that the liberals should have no fear about the conservatives because they would surely over-reach and get booted out of office. Of course, it wasn't written like that but the same point was made.