Santorum: “More Like Stalin than Pope Innocent III”
Host Martin Bashir: “When we last saw the Republican front-runner Rick Santorum speaking before a crowd yesterday, all we could think of was George Orwell’s novel 1984 about a society dominated by the most extreme form of totalitarianism....”
Clip from 1984: “The forces of darkness and the treasonable maggots who collaborate with them, must, can and will be wiped from the face of the Earth.”
Bashir: “In reviewing his book, It Takes a Family, one critic said, ‘Mr. Santorum has one of the finest minds of the 13th century.’ But I’m not so sure. If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like Stalin than Pope Innocent III.”
— MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, February 14. [Audio/video (2:05): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
“Terrifying” Santorum Sounds Like “a Crazy Man Talking”
“The fact that you say that you think he might win the nomination completely terrifies me. I mean, how many decades back, how many centuries back does he want to take us? I read a little bit of his book this week, which is terrifying — logical, but terrifying — and there was a review of it, I think it was the Philadelphia Inquirer when it first came out and it said that Santorum would be a fine mind for the 13th century. And it’s kind of right. It’s logical, it’s natural law, it’s the kind of Catholic absolutist view of the world of several centuries ago.”
— The Economist’s Zanny Minton Beddoes on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, February 10. [Audio/video (0:45): Windows Media [3] | MP3 audio [4]]
“There’s certain things that it’s hard to do realistically in a novel. For instance, if I were to create a character who, say, had been the Senator from Pennsylvania, as Rick Santorum was — Rick Santorum does not appear in the novel — and I had this character get up at a debate and say that global warming was a hoax and that we had to change the Constitution to limit the rights of gay people, no one would believe that. And if I said then, you know, that the entire Republican establishment sat quietly through this, no one stood up and said, ‘You know, that’s a crazy man talking,’ it would just seem like I was being biased.”
— Novelist Josh Bazell, son of NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell, on NBC’s Today, February 8.
Blasting Rush’s “Astounding Assault on Women’s Rights”
Clip of Rush Limbaugh on his radio show: “What do Democrats inherently fear about pregnancy? Well, they’ve made it into a disease — ‘pregnancy is a great health risk for women.’ Could it be that Democrats fear kids? I mean, they are aborting their own people. The vast majority of people having abortions are Democrat voters.”
Host Chris Matthews: “...That sounds like hatred of women....He is challenging the right of a woman today in the 21st century to decide if she wants to get pregnant. It is an astounding assault on women’s rights that he’s playing to there.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, February 15. [Audio/video (1:04): Windows Media [5] | MP3 audio [6]]
Media “Too Secular” to Find Obama’s War on Religion Worth Reporting
“It’s not been a big story in the media and I think it’s because we’re too secular, but it’s out in pulpits. In Catholic and Protestant pulpits across America it’s a huge issue, the idea, the perception that the President is assaulting religious freedom....”
— New York Times columnist David Brooks on Meet the Press, February 5, talking about the networks failing to mention for more than two weeks the uproar over Obama’s mandate that religious-affiliated institutions provide insurance coverage offering free birth control.
Giddy Over Planned Parenthood’s “People Power” Victory
“We turn next to this dramatic day for people power, all the women who rose up against the giant Komen breast cancer foundation and took the side of Planned Parenthood. Those protesters caused Komen to buckle and reverse course today, announcing they will continue funding Planned Parenthood. The protesters arguing that no one should play abortion politics with women’s health. And in a statement today, the Komen organization apologized...”
— Diane Sawyer, on ABC’s World News, February 3, championing the success of a liberal effort she and rest of media pushed.
Even Obama’s Mistakes Are Impressive
“I was struck looking at this, yes, the White House probably made a mistake in the initial policy. But the ability to do a do-over quickly — you can make a mistake, but you really get in trouble in politics when you’re tone deaf, you don’t listen to criticism and make changes, and they did make changes and this is now a policy that you can defend.”
— Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, a former foreign and business editor, on ABC’s This Week, February 12.
Maybe the Founders Were Wrong to Guarantee Freedom of Religion?
“I know in my own conversations with friends, I’m saying, ‘First Amendment, First Amendment, First Amendment.’ And what I hear back is, ‘Wow. I had no idea you, you didn’t believe in birth control.’ You know, this really is seen widely among Catholics and people of other faiths as an attack on religious liberty. Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment, but that is what they did...”
— The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger on MSNBC’s Hardball, February 8.
“Old” and “Out of Step” Constitution Doesn’t Even Guarantee Health Care
“The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights....The Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care. It has its idiosyncrasies. Only two percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)”
— New York Times Supreme Court reporter Andrew Liptak in a front-page February 7 “Sidebar” news analysis, “We the People Loses Appeal with People Around the World.”
Valentine’s Day Kisses for Obama’s Spendaholic Budget
“Did you see what I got for Valentine’s Day?...I’m holding it up. It’s even better than a dozen roses. It’s the budget!”
— MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, February 14.
Matt Asks Millionaire Obama to Play Class Warfare Card
“Mitt Romney is the guy who’s running for your job. He may eventually become the nominee. He’s a guy who’s been incredibly successful in his life and career. He’s made a lot of money. It’s not a crime. It’s part of the American Dream. Do you think, though, that Mitt Romney can identify with the middle class and the underclass in this country?”
— Matt Lauer to President Obama during an interview that aired prior to the Super Bowl on NBC, February 5.
“Hyperbole and Demagoguery” to Worry About Obama’s Second Term Radicalism
Host David Gregory to Rick Santorum: “You’ve talked about this in terms of why you believe the President is dangerous, that re-electing the President would unmask some sort of hidden plan that he has for a second term. This is what you said recently on Fox News.”
Clip of Santorum: “I suspect that they will be back down here rather shortly, but it’s a lesson learned of what this President would do if he’s got another term and he doesn’t have to worry about re-election.”
Gregory: “What is that secret plan that you’re so worried about? Is that not just hyperbole and demagoguery?”
— Meet the Press, February 12.
Three Cheers for Obama’s Bailout: It Saved America
ABC’s David Muir to a group of auto workers: “You’re all from Michigan?”
Group: “Yes.”
Muir: “All of you had your jobs saved?”
Group: “Yes.”
Muir: “...Raising a family, Jeff Klayo says it wasn’t just his job saved, it was the police officer, the teacher, the ripple effect connected to every worker on the assembly line.”
Jeff Klayo, Chrysler electrician: “For me, three other people would have been effected by it. It would have been devastating.”
— ABC’s World News, February 15, talking about the 2009 auto bailout, anticipated to cost taxpayers [7] $23.77 billion.
CBS’s Dean Reynolds: “Did President Obama save General Motors?”
General Motors CEO Daniel Akerson: “Without the money, without the funding, it would have been very problematic. So at the risk of alienating a whole lot of potential customers, I would say the Obama administration did a good job....[Without the bailout,] I think you could have written off this company, this industry, and this country.”
— CBS Evening News, February 16.
CPAC: Like Swimming in a Big Vat of Ebola
Correspondent Peter Hamby at CPAC: “So it will be interesting to see in this kind of conservative petri dish how Mitt Romney is received and how his challengers are received too, Suzanne.”
Anchor Suzanne Malveaux: “I love that, conservative petri dish. That’s a great way to describe it.”
— Talking about the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on CNN’s Newsroom, February 9. [Audio/video (0:55): Windows Media [8] | MP3 audio [9]]
She Should Have Kept Her Mouth Shut
“So what do you say to people who say, ‘Look, you’re profiting off a story. You’re making money off of this.’ What do you say to that?...What about Caroline [Kennedy], who is still alive? She’s going to have to deal, at some point, with the fact of this. Did you think about, as you talk about unburdening yourself, the idea that you’ve burdened other people now with this?”
— Co-host Ann Curry on the February 9 Today show, to Mimi Alford, who disclosed an 18-month affair with then-President John Kennedy that began when she was a 19-year-old White House intern. [Audio/video (0:30): Windows Media [10] | MP3 audio [11]]
Kennedy Still a “Hero” Who “Arouses” America
“Unbelievably, he [JFK] had a good marriage even as he was doing all this terrible stuff....If it’s possible to be a serial philanderer and have a good marriage — I guess it’s not, but somehow he did.”
— Longtime Newsweek editor Evan Thomas on MSNBC’s Hardball, February 8.
Host Brian Williams: “So, what do we make of all of this? How do we square it with JFK’s vaunted role in our history and our society?...”
Chris Matthews: “The greatest heroes are often the most flawed....Every guy that’s come up through high school has said, ‘I want to be Jack Kennedy.’ And so with it all, the total picture still arouses the country. The whole picture.”
— Discussion on NBC’s Rock Center, February 8. [Audio/video (1:15): Windows Media [12] | MP3 audio [13]]
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