CNN's Parker Mirrors Spitzer's Line About 'Fringe' in Republican Party
On Monday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Kathleen Parker picked up where her co-host Eliot Spitzer left off on Friday, bashing conservatives as "fringe elements"
inside the Republican Party. Parker continued the Tea Party movement
was the result of the GOP "catering" to such elements and that "the kooks have come home to roost."
The pseudo-conservative columnist returned to her old habit of
attacking conservatives during a panel discussion with Reason magazine's
Nick Gillespie and NPR contributor John Ridley minutes into the 8 pm
Eastern hour. Gillespie criticized how both Republicans and Democrats
handled the past decade: "It's really awful, and we had- you know, six
years of Republican rule, which was awful and disastrous on every level,
and everything since then has been equally bad." The writer continued
with a commentary on the phenomenon of Republican Senate candidate
Christine O'Donnell selection in Delaware:
GILLESPIE: Of course, you're going to start looking in the bushes and you find people like Christine O'Donnell, who did run. I mean, she beat a nonentity- Mike Castle- everybody's like- oh, he's the great man of Delaware. Who cares? I mean, he's a life-long politician. He's a hack. He had no personality. And what she came out with and the reason she won is she was saying, 'hey, you know what? I'm going to cut spending. We're spending too much.'
Parker responded to this with her "fringe" remark about the Republican Party:
KATHLEEN PARKER: Well, let me ask you what you think of this. I would make the argument that the Republican Party has been catering to a- sort of a fringe element for a long time, trying to build the base and build a base. And now, is this the devil demanding his due? Are we finally now seeing the payback? I mean, William F. Buckley spent a lot of his time trying to marginalize who he considered to be the kooks, and now the kooks have come home to roost.
On Friday's program, Spitzer used the same "fringe" label in a similar context: "Why are there so many folks like her [Christine O'Donnell] who
seem to be taking over the Republican Party? I mean, this is not Bob
Dole's Republican Party anymore- thoughtful, serious people. This (sic) is people who are kind of- I hate to say it, but kind of from the fringe."
It isn't surprising that the two CNN hosts would be using identical language. Just over a month ago, on the September 8 edition of Anderson Cooper 360,
both Parker and Spitzer agreed that Ground Zero mosque proponent Imam
Feisal Rauf changed few minds due to his interview on Larry King Live
earlier that evening. Then again, Parker is also consistent with her
attacks on conservatives, as just a week earlier, on October 5, she slammed Sarah Palin as a "tease" and is on the record for admitting that she got her Pulitzer Prize for being a "conservative basher."
- Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
