Republicans on Women
"Ever since the
Clarence Thomas hearings last fall, the Republican Party has been struggling
to overcome the perception that its regard for women is only a notch or two
higher than that of the Navy Tailhook Association."
- Time reporter Michael Duffy, August 24 issue.
Intimidated by Hillary?
"Let us not for a
moment be confused into believing that this is only a conservative Republican
thing, this business of some people feeling threatened by smart, assertive,
professional women....Women who speak their minds in public are still swimming
upstream in this country."
- Ted Koppel opening Nightline, August 18.
"Do you think the
American people are not ready for someone who is as accomplished and
career-oriented as Hillary Clinton?"
- Today co-host Katie Couric interviewing Hillary Clinton, August
24.
Intimidated by Marilyn?
"Mrs. Quayle
differs from the President's wife in many ways. While the First Lady's image
is cuddly and grandmotherly, Marilyn Quayle can seem hard, intolerant, and
combative....Ever since a Washington Post series on her husband last
winter depicted her as a power-mad spouse who once kicked to shreds a framed
picture of her husband playing golf, Mrs. Quayle has been trying to soften her
Cruella de Vil [sic] nature."
- Time reporter Michael Duffy, August 24.
Kuralt Kicks Conservatives
"The only excited,
demonstrative delegates any of us could find were the ones from the religious
right, Pat Robertson's God and country rally. They remind me of those
Goldwater delegates of 28 years ago, far more interested in imposing
ideological purity on this party than they are on winning the election. They
were happy today. They got the platform they want. No room for a pregnant
woman to make any decision at all, even if she was raped. It's a platform
tough on welfare, tough on taxes and guns and gays and pornography, tough even
on public radio and public television. They cheered Dan Quayle this afternoon
and they will cheer Pat Buchanan and Ronald Reagan tonight, but will they help
elect George Bush? It's almost as if they haven't thought of that, Dan."
- Charles Kuralt during August 17 CBS Republican convention coverage.
"I thought that the
Buchanan speech had ugly elements in it, especially there at the end, take
back our culture, take back our country. I think that was an appeal to
racism."
- Charles Kuralt, later the same night.
Pile on Pat
"A lot of people
said [there was] just too much red meat there [in the speech]. You gave the
impression that if you're not a white, heterosexual, Christian, anti-abortion,
anti-environment, you're somehow not welcome in the Republican Party."
- Tom Brokaw to Pat Buchanan, August 18.
"Patrick Buchanan's
darkly apocalyptic speech Monday night all but raised the specter of race
war."
- Unbylined story in Time, August 31.
"Buchanan eerily
reproduced the punitive, menacing quality of his boyhood hero, Senator Joseph
R. McCarthy of Wisconsin."
- Time Senior Writer Lance Morrow, August 31.
Who Created Gang Violence? You Guessed It: Reagan
"[Reagan's]
good-natured pre- and post-surgical quips so endeared him to the nation that
practically nothing, including the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines in a Beirut
barracks, stuck to the Reagan presidency. As a result, the nation smiled
benignly when....He burdened the working poor and middle class by raising
Social Security taxes while calling for cuts in the capital gains tax. Such
policies widened the gap between rich and poor and contributed to the
psychological chasm between haves and have-nots. In this atmosphere, Wall
Street stock manipulator Michael Milken earned $550 million in 1987, and
ghetto teens unable to find jobs joined gangs instead."
- Houston Chronicle reporter Steven Reed, August 16 news story.
Republicans Only Want Real Americans
"This is the first
time at least in some time where it is perceived that the Democrats are
actually fighting for middle America, the family. I'm wondering if you think,
that with the various permutations that families have nowadays, if the
Republicans are actually shoving away those who don't have mother, father,
kids and don't do it `the right way?'"
- CNN reporter Candy Crowley to Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, August 19.
"Very frankly, I am
very puzzled by one paragraph, one sentence in the Vice President's speech on
page six. In a very petulant voice, and listen to the words: he said, `To
Governor Clinton I say this: America is the greatest nation in the world and
that's one thing you're not going to change.' Implying that Clinton is some
kind of guerrilla, saboteur, or what have you. That's my reaction to that line
Ken Bode, I don't know about you. It implies something that, it seems that
he's saying you're not as American as I am, your blood is not as red as
mine."
- CNN's Bernard Shaw after Vice President Quayle's speech, August 20.
"Some have said
they find the tone of this convention, some Republicans, a bit troubling.
Abortion rights have been totally ignored in the platform; gay rights not
acknowledged in the platform. Recently, Rich Bond said `We are America, these
other people in America are not America.' The `other people,' presumably, are
Democrats. Do you think the Republican Party has grown, or become too
exclusionary, too intolerant, and that this kind of rhetoric is divisive and
counterproductive?"
- Katie Couric to Dan Quayle, August 19 Today.
Family Values: Another Willie Horton
"[The Democrats]
are trying to make the point they support programs such as universal health
care and family medical leave, that help families. Programs that George Bush
either opposes or has vetoed. They also are trying to say that the Republicans
are using this as a wedge issue. That this going to be the Willie Horton issue
of this campaign."
- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, August 19 convention coverage.
"Some of these
[family values] issues have racial overtones, such as Bush's support for
welfare reforms which penalize single mothers who continue having
children."
- NBC reporter John Cochran, same night.
Ellerbee's Elucidations
"As you probably
already know by now, the Republican platform was written by Miss Grundy, and
if you're white enough, wealthy enough, and selfish enough, you, too can be a
Republican this year."
- TV news veteran Linda Ellerbee in her syndicated column, August 23 Houston
Chronicle.
Campaign Reality Check
"What strikes me
about this campaign so far is that we in the media have developed this
extraordinary ability to almost a Victorian level of shock at some of the
rough and ready stuff that's being said on one side. Nobody was similarly
shocked when Maxine Waters, for example, called George Bush a racist...It
seems that when the Democrats play rough and tumble politics like the
Republicans have in the past, we all say `see, they really want to win,' and
how smart it is. And the Republicans do and we all say `well, it's dirty
politics, it's negative campaigning, and we should disapprove of it.' I think
it's kind of silly."
- ABC White House reporter Brit Hume on This Week with David Brinkley,
August 23.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
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