Amanpour Hails Obama as 'Reaganesque' But Contended Tea Party Too 'Extreme' for Reagan
ABC's Christiane Amanpour hailed President Obama's State of the Union address as "very Reaganesque,"
but in October, holding herself up as some kind of protector of
Reagan's legacy, she discovered "a long and venerable tradition of
conservatism in this country" exemplified by Ronald Reagan and William
F. Buckley and "all of that sort of intellectual conservatism," yet now,
she feigned distress, "people are looking at the Tea Party and saying
this is not conservatism as we knew it but it's extreme."
Asked for her "take" on Obama's address, Amanpour trumpeted his
"Sputnik moment" as "remarkable," heralding Tuesday night on ABC:
Well, full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque, on and on about American exceptionalism in many, many instances and full of Kennedyesque encouragement to break a new frontier. That Sputnik moment was remarkable, of course harking back to 1957 when the Soviet Union put the first un-manned satellite in space and started the space race and really launched a whole new era of technological, scientific and all sort of progress and the President calling for more of that here.
(Two MRC colleagues tweeted Amanpour's "Reaganesque" characterization here and here.)
Back on the October 17 This Week, she argued:
There's been a long and venerable tradition of conservatism in this country. You can go back at least to Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, all of that sort of intellectual conservatism that lasted about 30 years, and people are saying that right now, it's really gone to the extreme. People are looking at the Tea Party and saying this is not conservatism as we knew it but it's extreme.
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
