Please do yourselves a favor and turn off the TV.
Based on what I've seen so far, the American press is basically viewing this as the Catholic equivalent to the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries with liturgy and fancy vestments. Hence the entire process gets hopelessly placed within the context of the dynamics of domestic American politics, with everything from the liberal/conservative split (both of which I think horribly over-simplify the actual issues in Catholics), polling public opinion (including that of non-Catholics, which would probably be pretty offensive if it wasn't so amusing), identity politics, ranking the "likely successors" according to media prominence, etc. God only knows what they're going to do when the voting process drags on for longer than 48 hours ...
In any case, if you're truly interested in the ins and outs of the process, I recommend Papabile that has thus far done a pretty good job with its coverage so far.
You're undoubtably right that the election of the new Pope has nothing to do with American politics and it's certainly much more complex than liberal versus conservative.
On the other hand, any process that involves selecting a new leader for one of the most powerful organizations on Earth is BOUND to be frought with politics. None of us out here will probably ever know what the issues were or who took which sides, but there certainly will be politics. These are human beings, after all.
Politics is certainly a natural part of the human experience, whether we're talking about the election of a new pope or a neighborhood dog catcher.
My point is that the media seems to be attempting to frame the papal election within the political context they're most familiar with, i.e. US (or more broadly, Western) domestic politics and all of the baggage that accompanies that category, which is how we get some of the things that we're seeing now in the press that I noted above.