Face It: Magnificent Obama Is Already Unbeatable
“How do you go after Barack Obama, though, right now? I mean, the stock market is up. It looks like the unemployment is going down. David Axelrod in his campaign said the other day Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. It’s going to be a tough job for you, is it not?”
— Host Bob Schieffer to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on CBS’s Face the Nation, February 26. Audio/video (0:33): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
“The President, as we said in the open here, is talking about manufacturing coming back, that the auto bailouts worked. And I see this bumper sticker, right, that we’ve heard everybody talk about, which is, ‘GM’s back on top, and Osama bin Laden is dead.’ I mean, that’s the record that this President wants to run on.”
— NBC’s David Gregory on Meet the Press, February 19.
Obama Causing Thrills With Both His Brain and His Heart
“[Mitt Romney] can’t turn people on. He can’t turn them on after he wins or after he loses.... I think he lacks this guy’s [Rick Santorum’s] passion, and I think that’s a real loss. Barack Obama can do both. He has a brain, and he has a heart, and he can cause a thrill in the American people because he has both.”
— Chris Matthews following Santorum’s concession speech during MSNBC’s live coverage of the Arizona and Michigan primaries, February 28. Audio/video (1:16): Windows Media [3] | MP3 audio [4]]
Mocking Rick Santorum’s Faith: A “Christian Version of Sharia Law”
“Remember earlier in the campaign when Newt Gingrich was worrying everyone about Sharia law: the Muslims were going to impose Sharia law in America? Sometimes Santorum sounds like he’s creeping up on a Christian version of Sharia law.”
— Ex-New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, now a columnist for the paper, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Feb. 28.
Seething Over “Offensive” Limbaugh’s “War on Women”
Anchor Brian Williams: “A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh and as the battle over birth control takes another turn....Now, some may find some of the comments in this next story offensive, but then, that’s really part of the point....”
Correspondent Anne Thompson: “What began as a debate over religious freedom has devolved into what some call a ‘war on women’....”
— NBC Nightly News, March 1. Audio/video (1:34): Windows Media [5] | MP3 audio [6]]
"These comments that were made by Rush Limbaugh about you, certainly derogatory....Are you surprised at what seems to be a deafening silence coming from the right in standing up for you?"
— NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer on March 2, interviewing Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student and “reproductive rights activist” who drew media attention by testifying before a Democrats-only panel on Capitol Hill on February 23.
GOP Candidates = “Four White Guys” Trying to “Control” Women’s Lives
“There’s been a gender gap now for some yearsas you well know.... And for a lot of women it [the GOP debate] sounds like four white guys who are up there telling them, ‘Here’s how we’re going to control your lives.’”
— CNN’s David Gergen during his network’s post-debate coverage, February 22. Audio/video (0:56): Windows Media [7] | MP3 audio [8]]
Fretting Over GOP Moving “Too Far to the Right”
“Do you think Rick Santorum and, well, the candidates in general, are pushing your party too far to the right to make the nomination worth anything when you get to November?”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer to Chris Christie on Face the Nation, February 26.
Co-host Charlie Rose: “Let me go to the question of what is being debated there. It seems more about social issues than economic issues. Is that troubling for you and the Republican Party?”
U.S. Representative Paul Ryan: “It’s not troubling for me, and, actually, I think that’s more about the media, and maybe the Democrats, who are trying to move it in that direction.”
— CBS This Morning, February 28.
The Senate’s “Voice of Reason” Left “Out in the Cold”
“The principled voice of reason in some of the most contentious debates in Washington, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine has announced she will not seek re-election. And she says, she’s just tired of the gridlock in Washington in her 33 years in Congress....”
— ABC anchor Diane Sawyer on World News, February 28.
“It leaves her [Snowe] as a Northeastern moderate Republican out in the cold and not really welcome in this Republican Party....”
— NBC’s David Gregory on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 29.
Scolding Brewer for Her “Disrespect” to the Presidency
“The frustration [over immigration] has obviously bubbled over in your interactions with President Obama, too. This picture, now well known, during his last visit to Arizona when you met him on the tarmac and appeared to have a confrontation with him over some things that were in your book that he didn’t quite like. You’ve been invited, as part of the National Governors Conference, to have a dinner at the White House, you’ve declined to go. Are you showing disrespect for the office of the presidency?”
— Moderator David Gregory to Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer on NBC’s Meet the Press, February 26.
Andrea Still Sees Clinton as Victim of “Great Right-Wing Conspiracy”
“I hate to revert to the great right-wing conspiracy, but there was really a group out there who were not going to let him succeed, and he, of course, played into that with his own mistakes. But there really was an enemy group out there who just wanted to take him down.”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell talking about Bill Clinton on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 21.
Framing the Race Exactly as Obama’s Spinners
“I want to start with...a big theme in this race so far. And Politico, I thought, captured the headline here with this theme, ‘2012: The year of birth control moms?’ I thought we were talking about the economy. And Paul Ryan wants to talk more about the economy, but the reality is, in the Republican race, social issues seem to be energizing the base and fueling Rick Santorum.”
— David Gregory on Meet the Press, February 19.
Let’s Blame Wall Street for Obama’s Problems
“Tonight, under pressure. Soaring gas prices force the President to speak out today. And an alarming warning. Are Wall Street traders pocketing $10 every time you fill up your tank?.... Tonight, our reporters tackle the issue on two fronts, with a warning from a top government watchdog who tells us that a big chunk of the pain at the pump is Wall Street’s fault.”
— Fill-in anchor George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s World News, February 23.
Horrified by Our “Incomprehensible” Right to Bear Arms
“You know, coming from Britain as I do, I find a lot of the gun laws in this country incomprehensible....What is it about this ideological dream of the right to bear arms that overrides any other rights, I mean the rights to not have your children killed at school? Yeah, I mean, it seems to me it’s all a little warped here, you know. Ever since I’ve been in America doing this show, from Gabby Giffords onwards, there have been regular incidents involving guns where you can’t really work out how the perpetrators have got hold of these weapons in any sensible legal manner.”
— CNN host Piers Morgan talking about the Ohio school shooting, Piers Morgan Tonight, February 27.
The Catholic Church: New Home of America’s Anti-Gay Bigots
“If you’re really anti-gay, you become a Catholic now....I think there are people who have chosen to convert to the Catholic faith because they don’t like the liberal positions taken by their sectarian groups....Some people who are bigoted against gay people have changed religions. Yes. You got it right.”
— MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews during a panel discussion at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., February 20.
CNN Uncovers “Deceit” of GOP Candidates’ “Buzzwords”
Anchor Kyra Phillips: “Alright, America, be honest with me. When you listen to all these debates and you hear these GOP candidates throw out all kinds of facts and figures, phrases and promises, do you really understand what they’re truly saying? L.Z. Granderson says you probably don’t. Behind the buzzwords and the euphemisms, deceit lurks....”
CNN contributor L. Z. Granderson: “You know, ‘religious freedom,’ for instance, right? You know they aren’t fighting for Muslims and mosques. They’re fighting for Christianity and Judeo-Christianity. So, so, let’s just be honest with that, right? When you talk about ‘family values,’ they’re saying that because the assumption is gay people don’t have families, and so it’s a way for them to talk about gay issues or gay people without saying ‘gay,’ so they don’t get, you know, pinned for being homophobic.”
— CNN Newsroom, February 21. Audio/video (1:12): Windows Media [9] | MP3 audio [10]]
Anticipating a “Wonderful Second Term” for “Raging Moderate” Obama
Ex-Newsweek editor Jon Meacham: “You have a man who, I think, is safely described as a raging moderate in many ways, who still — bizarrely given his self-evident skills as a writer, probably one of the best writers we’ve ever had in the presidency, and as a speaker — he has, I think oddly not connected on an emotional level with the country in any kind of ongoing way....”
Historian Robert Caro: “With Obama you feel when he comes into the room — and at this table he’s like one of the guys. He’s read history. He’s talking about history with historians. There’s a wonderful sense — and it’s why I think he’s going to have — win and have a wonderful second term.”
— Discussion on PBS’s Charlie Rose, February 20.
CBS Drama Carves Out Time for Pro-Occupy Endorsement
“Before we begin, I want to take a few minutes to talk about something that is happening a mere one hundred yards from this courthouse: Occupy Wall Street! Yes, these amazing young men and women are braving 36-degree weather, with the grit in their eyes of a shared cause, and all to challenge the system. And I, for one, I salute them.”
— Actor Denis O’Hare, portraying “Judge Charles Abernathy” in the February 19 episode of CBS’s The Good Wife, which is set in Chicago. [Audio/video (0:54): Windows Media [11] | MP3 audio [12]]
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