Advising GOP to Ditch Conservatives; 'Republicans Have a Problem with Science'
Helpful Journalists Advise GOP to Ditch Conservatives
“Republicans should stay out of Iowa altogether. What happens to them is that they get pushed so far to the right in those venues that it gives them a terrible time in the general election.”
— Cokie Roberts on ABC’s This Week, January 25.
“The Republicans keep — in many, many ways, are their own worst enemies. They go so far to the right in order to out-conservative everybody else.”
— New York Times correspondent Helene Cooper on NBC’s Meet the Press, January 25.
“We cover it because not only is it the first time they all get together and that’s exciting, it’s the first time they say something incredibly crazy and attempt to pander to the base out in Iowa....The reason you don’t go, you actually think being responsible might get you the nomination. That’s a tough bet in the Republican Party.”
— The Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon on CNN’s New Day, January 26.
“Republicans Have a Problem with Science”
“The vaccination controversy is a twist on an old problem for the Republican Party: how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives. It is a dance Republican candidates often do when they hedge their answers about whether evolution should be taught in schools. It is what makes the fight over global warming such a liability for their party, and what led last year to a widely criticized response to the Ebola scare.”
— New York Times correspondents Jeremy Peters and Richard Perez-Pena in a front-page article, February 3.
“It seems as though the Republican Party has a problem with science, that they’re always pushing back against science.”
— Co-anchor Chris Cuomo to Dr. Ben Carson on CNN’s New Day, February 4.
“This is this, again, Neanderthal thinking on the right that is really, it’s scary and dangerous. Climate change deniers, vaccination deniers — I mean, they are going to kill us!”
— Joy Behar, a former co-host of ABC’s The View, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 3.
The New York Times vs. the “Hillary Hating” Industry
“First, she was called the bra-burning feminist with a degree from Wellesley. Then, she was the aggressively political spouse from Arkansas who plotted behind closed doors. Today, she is the millionaire elitist who socializes in New York City and the Hamptons. Few modern political figures inspire the animus that Hillary Rodham Clinton generates, and the cottage industry that opposes her never really goes out of business. But as Mrs. Clinton prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the sprawling network is evolving to attack her on new grounds.”
— New York Times reporter Amy Chozick, January 24.
“The cottage industry of Hillary hating has never gone out of business, but it has evolved with the times.”
— Chozick in a January 23 Twitter posting promoting the online version of her article.
Scolding Bobby Jindal for Speaking at a Prayer Rally
“[Yesterday], Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal headlined a massive prayer rally called ‘The Response’ in Baton Rouge....[to Jindal] Is it the job of a President to lead a spiritual revival? And I was struck by the final line, ‘Our God wins.’ How do you think that lands in a country of 320 million people of many different kinds of spirituality, many different kinds of faith, many who believe in no god at all?”
— Host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, January 25.
Pelley Picks a Peck of Obnoxious Liberal Questions
“Mr. Speaker, I think your reaction to the State of the Union was written all over your face. It must be a hell of a thing to sit behind the President knowing that 30 million Americans are watching you for an hour. Do you practice that scowl?”
“Unemployment has fallen to 5.6 percent, gasoline prices are down, the stock markets are up. The economy grew by five percent in the third quarter. That’s the fastest rate in more than a decade. You don’t congratulate the President for that?”
“The President has temporarily protected about five million illegal immigrants in this country from deportation. The House just passed a bill to block that....Is that governing, just sending bills up to the White House that are gonna get vetoed?”
— Questions posed by CBS anchor Scott Pelley during his 60 Minutes interview with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, January 25.
Boehner a “Traitor” for Asking Israeli Leader to Speak
Mother Jones magazine writer David Corn: “Bibi Netanyahu, he is, by accepting John Boehner’s nearly traitorous invitation to speak-”
Host Chris Matthews: “You mean, there was a Logan Act violation?”
Corn: “I think there was. Listen, you don’t go after the king unless you can kill the king. Barack Obama is still President of the United States. He has a lot of discretion in matters that will be very important to Netanyahu that will play out behind the scenes. There is no reason for him to tick the President off and be so much in his face and side with the crazy Republicans.”
— Choosing the “loser of the week” on MSNBC’s Hardball, January 23.
NBC Reporter Smears War Hero as “Racist” on “Killing Sprees”
NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin: “When you juxtapose it [the movie American Sniper] with the real Chris Kyle and what has emerged about what kind of personality he was.... a lot of his own personal opinions about what he was doing in Iraq, how he viewed Iraqis. Some of what people have described as his racist tendencies towards Iraqis and Muslims when he was going on some of these, you know, killing sprees in Iraq on assignment. So I think there are issues-”
Host Joe Scarborough: “Wait, wait. Killing sprees? Chris Kyle was going on killing sprees?”
Mohyeldin: “When he was involved in his — on assignments in terms of what he was doing. A lot of the description that has come out from his book and some of the terminology that he has used, people have described as racist.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, January 29.
MSNBC Host Instructs Blacks to Vote Democratic
“I don’t see how anybody who is African-American would think about voting Republican as long as Reince Priebus is running the show.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, January 28.
NBC Touts Obama’s Budget as “Helping the Poor”
“Closer to home, President Obama unveiling a record $4 trillion budget on Monday aimed at helping the poor and middle class.”
— News reader Natalie Morales on NBC’s Today, February 3.
Ruing the Lack of Thrills for the Ultra-Liberal Sherrod Brown
“By almost any standard, Sen. Sherrod Brown, 62, a former Eagle Scout with a voice like Tom Waits, is the kind of pol who should at this very moment be making the rounds of the Sunday shows, growling to packed audiences in Iowa and all the while insisting to major media outlets that he is not considering running for president at this time. Or at least you’d expect a bunch of liberal activists to be mounting a Draft Sherrod campaign....The timing could not be better for a candidate with a populist economic agenda to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton and her close ties to Wall Street.”
— Washington Post political writer Ben Terris in a January 29 profile of the Ohio Senator.
Using Big Blizzard as Excuse to Champion Global Warming
“We, of course, don’t know what the winter storm Juno is going to do, but just with the flight delays, the economic impact of travel and travel cancellations, it seems like framing this, sort of, changing climate in an economic context is a pretty powerful way to get people to start caring a little bit more about the changes that are happening to the Earth.”
— Host Alex Wagner on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, January 26.
Bill Nye, “the Science Guy”: “I just want to introduce the idea that this storm is connected to climate change. I want to introduce that idea. I know there will be certain viewers who will become unglued. They are throwing things at their television sets and so on. But the economic effect of storms like this is huge....”
Co-host Touré: “Bill, I love you for bringing that in. Thank you so much.”
— MSNBC’s The Cycle, January 26.
The “Automatic” Reaction to Hearing the Name “Jeb Bush”
“If we hear ‘Bush,’ we’re automatically going to go to people bringing up the Kouachi brothers and their photos of Abu Ghraib that radicalized them about Iraq.”
— MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts on the January 30 edition of Morning Joe, talking about the radical Islamists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
Michael Moore Doubles Down on His Hate for Chris Kyle
“I get all these emails from people going, Chris Kyle, he protected our troops and he saved lives....This past week or so of hysterical attacks on me only proves that the American lovers of violence and the issuers of fatwas in OUR society haven’t gone away. They are our American ISIS — ‘Criticize or mock those whom we deify, like our sainted sniper, and we will harm you most assuredly.’”
— Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore defending his criticism of American Sniper in an interview with Vice magazine’s Eddy Moretti, February 2.
Obama’s Book the “Finest Literary Work” Ever by a President
“Long before he was running for President, he had written the answer [to questions about past drug use] in a book called Dreams From My Father. It stands today as the finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States. The book doesn’t contain the whole truth of Barack Obama’s life. Books can’t do that, but it is, by far, the most honest and open book and artful book ever written by a president.”
— Host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, February 3.
YouTube Spirals Down to Level of ABC News
“If you had any superpower, what would it be?”
— Question from YouTube celebrity Bethany Mota to President Obama during a January 22 White House Q&A.
“If you were a super hero and you could have one super power, what would it be?”
— ABC’s Barbara Walters interviewing Obama in a clip shown on ABC’s The View, December 19, 2011.
Get Ready for the Most “Overqualified” President Since George Washington
“I mean, obviously, I love Hillary Rodham Clinton....Are there other qualified candidates? Absolutely. I think she might be the most overqualified candidate we’ve had since, you know, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.”
— Actress/activist Ashley Judd on Larry King Now, an Ora.TV show also carried on Hulu and broadcast on RT, the Russian TV channel, January 30.
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