"Do you think the Tea Party is losing some of its appeal?" So Harry Smith cued up a hardly independent guest on Sunday's Face the Nation: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congresswoman and Chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Earlier, the fill-in host was astonished House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor would want to find cuts to afford extra spending for tornado
recovery efforts: "One of the things you said earlier this week is that
emergency funding should be offset by cuts to the budget deficit. Do you
stand by that?"
Meanwhile, another round of Sunday panels meant more pleas to raise taxes. On Fox News Sunday,
a frustrated Juan Williams fretted: "Republicans - for all this talk
about oh, the deficit, the debt, we have to be serious, entitlement
reform - refuse to consider raising taxes."
Former Washington Post reporter and current columnist Ruth Marcus asserted on NBC's Meet the Press:
One piece of the movement that we have not seen, and I understand that it cannot be shown in public, but until Republicans acknowledge that in order to get our fiscal house in order, we're going to need more revenue than we're currently planning to raise, you cannot get a deal.
Last Sunday: "NBC's Andrea Mitchell Regrets Republicans Lack 'Courage' to Raise Taxes [1]"
From the Sunday, May 29 Face the Nation:
HARRY SMITH: One of your colleagues has suggested that Medicare puts the House back in play in 2012. Would you go as far as to agree with that?
CONGRESSWOMAN DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, I think American voters are making it clear that they have seen a preview of what the Republicans would do to Medicare, do to the direction that this country is would go. And they're rejecting it. They're saying they don't like it. And so if Republican candidates cling, as my Republican colleagues in the House have, to the Ryan plan to end Medicare, to focusing on tax cuts for the wealthiest and insisting on that and balancing all the pain that they're imposing on middle class and working families, then I think that Democratic candidates for Congress and President Obama and other Democrats up and down the ballot are going to find some success. What we need to do is sit down together and work on our nation's problems.
SMITH: Do you think the Tea Party is losing some of its appeal?
SCHULTZ: I think Tea Party activists and Republican candidates elected to Congress by the Tea Party are finding that governing is hard. And that, you know, it's easy to, you know, to throw bombs and to be incendiary. Not so easy to sit down and actually govern...
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [2] to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.