One Week = Irreversible Lefty “Transformation”
“It was a fabulous week. But what Barack Obama has really achieved is that goal he enunciated in an interview with a Reno, Nevada newspaper seven and a half years ago, to be a transformative President, like Reagan, unlike Bill Clinton. And when you look at the Affordable Health Care Act, the stimulus, a potential deal with Iran, the Trans-Pacific Trade Pact, some immigration actions — history will determine whether he’s a great or near-great President, but he is clearly a transformative President.”
— Bloomberg’s Al Hunt on PBS’s Charlie Rose, June 29.
“You talk to White House aides and they believe this — they’re calling this the best week of the Obama presidency....I think what we saw this week is a massive progressive shift to the left. So, in that case, I think it does cement a President Obama legacy-wise as being transformational — at least it’s the Obama Era.”
— Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on NBC Nightly News, June 27.
Another Bruising Question for the Dear Leader
“I wanted to ask you about what some people are calling ‘your best week ever’ last week. You had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received. It seems that you’ve built up some political capital for the remaining months of your presidency. I’m curious, how you want to use it?”
— CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta to President Obama in a televised press conference, June 30.
Supporting Traditional Marriage Akin to 1950s Racism
“The Republican Party has a big problem now. They now seem to be a party that is so out of touch with the humanity, the basic humanity that was on full display in front of the Supreme Court, and they seem to be more concerned now with hiding behind the old states’ rights rhetoric, that was anti-civil rights rhetoric of the past, than embracing the future.”
— CNN political analyst and ex-Obama White House aide Van Jones on State of the Union, June 28.
Co-host Savannah Guthrie: “If a state clerk refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, would you agree with that, too?... You say it should be left to states. Would you have taken that same position on the case of interracial marriage? That that’s not a constitutional right and the states should have been free to ban interracial marriage, if they wanted to?”
Senator Ted Cruz: “Of course not....”
— Exchange on NBC’s Today, June 29.
Court’s Ruling an Excuse to Eliminate Dissent
“As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will very strictly limit op-eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage. These unions are now the law of the land. And we will not publish such letters and op-eds any more than we would publish those that are racist, sexist or anti-Semitic.”
— From a June 26 online editorial by The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Let’s Punish Churches If They Don’t Bow Down to Government
“Now that the U.S. government formally recognizes marriage equality as a fundamental right, it really shouldn’t skew the tax code so as to give millions of dollars in tax breaks to groups which remain steadfastly bigoted on the subject. I’m talking, of course, about churches....If your organization does not support the right of gay men and women to marry, then the government should be very clear that you’re in the wrong.”
— Fusion senior editor Felix Salmon in a June 29 online article.
Seething Over Scalia, the Supreme Court’s “Donald Trump”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell: “Coming up, is Justice Antonin Scalia now the Donald Trump of the Supreme Court?...Judicial scholarship aside, Scalia is proving himself to be a terrible writer. I mean, these are just terrible bits that he is sticking into these opinions and terrible thinker....”
Ex-New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse: “So my reaction, Lawrence, is that, you know, beyond the court jester’s stuff and the rhetoric stuff, here is a man who is approaching 80 years old. He has been on the Supreme Court for a long time, and he has failed.”
— MSNBC’s The Last Word, June 29.
“Unprecedented in its vitriol, but only on the part of Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia really established himself this term as the ‘get off my lawn justice.’ I mean, really, his level of hostility and ridicule of his colleagues was unlike anything I have seen in 20 years of covering the Court, and really a different level of magnitude in terms of his abuse and contempt for his colleagues I’d ever seen before.”
— CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on New Day, June 30.
Trump Means “Big Mess” for GOP, Xenophobia Sells
Host Krystal Ball: “So, the person on the Republican side who seems to be surging in the polls at the moment is Donald Trump....What does it say about the Republican Party that this guy seems to have some momentum?”
The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman: “Well, it says that the Republican Party’s an even bigger mess than the Democratic Party....Even though Trump is getting in tremendous trouble financially and politically for his comments about Hispanics, that kind of xenophobic language sells in New Hampshire and Iowa.”
— MSNBC’s The Cycle, July 7.
Katie Demands “Empathy” for Illegals
“I know you staunchly oppose President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. You’ve worked to block every legislative effort to allow undocumented immigrants to remain legally in this country. So, given the fact that your father immigrated here from Cuba, do you have any empathy for people who come here looking for a better way of life?”
— Yahoo! News anchor Katie Couric to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz in a June 29 interview.
“Moderate” Hillary? “More Conservative” Hillary??
Host Jake Tapper: “Van, when she was a senator, correct me if I’m wrong, she was a fairly moderate Democrat. I mean, she wasn’t this progressive firebrand?”
CNN political analyst Van Jones: “And neither was the Democratic Party, a party of firebrands.”
— Exchange on CNN’s State of the Union, July 5.
“Bernie Sanders is making a lot of noise, he reminds me — and maybe you as well — of the ’60s. He’s got a ’60s message, anti-war, questioning the power and elites in this country. Very much a ’60s message. Hillary Clinton more of a conservative in a sense of more of a traditional politician from the center, center. How do you think it’s gonna go?”
— Host Chris Matthews to former Democratic Senator Gary Hart on MSNBC’s Hardball, July 1.
vs.
“Clinton’s [voting] record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate....Clinton rates as a ‘hard core liberal’ per the OnTheIssues.org scale. She is as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than Bernie Sanders.”
— The FiveThirtyEight blog’s senior political writer Harry Enten in a May 19 analysis.
“Bernie-Mentum!” ABC Cheers Surge for Socialist Sanders
“She may be the Democratic front-runner, but this morning [Hillary] Clinton is ‘feeling the Bern.’ Challenger Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders seeing a massive turnout at a campaign rally overnight in Maine, that at times felt more like a rock concert. In recent days, ‘Bernie-mentum’ drawing larger crowds than every candidate running in the 2016 race for the White House.”
— Correspondent Cecilia Vega on ABC’s Good Morning America, July 7.
Left’s Dream Ticket Would Bury “Corpse of Reaganism”
“A Clinton-Sanders ticket would, of course, put the American right on suicide watch....You’d certainly see right-wing media entities do everything within their power to try to stop a Clinton-Sanders ticket from winning on November 8, 2016. Yet they’d likely fail — and their failure would finally put the corpse of Reaganism into the ground once and for all. Sanders is the living refutation of Reaganism, and the vice presidency would provide an effective bully pulpit to push back against the false arguments made by those who still worship the false idol who was the 40th President of the United States.”
— Washington Monthly blogger D.R. Tucker, June 27.
Hillary Finally Submits to a Tough Interview
CNN’s Brianna Keilar: “I know you’ve seen your new doppelganger on Saturday Night Live, Kate McKinnon?...Who’s the better Hillary Clinton? Kate McKinnon or Amy Poehler?”
Hillary Clinton: “Oh, Amy’s a friend of mine, and Kate’s doing a great job. You’re not going to get me to pick one or the other. I think I’m the best Hillary Clinton, to be honest.”
— Part of an interview shown on CNN’s The Situation Room, July 7.
All the Communist Vitriol That’s Fit to Print
“In the lush countryside and teeming city neighborhoods where Senator Marco Rubio’s family cut sugar cane, toiled in tobacco mills and scraped by to make a better life for their children, the first Cuban-American to have a plausible chance to become President of the United States is the island’s least favorite son. ‘If Marco Rubio becomes president, we’re done for,’ said Héctor Montiel, 66....‘He’s against Cuba in every possible way. Hillary Clinton understands much more the case of Cuba. Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.’”
— New York Times correspondent Jason Horowitz in a July 6 front-page article.
Either Enable Greece’s Massive Debt, or You’re a “Sadistic” Monster
“What is being done to Greece isn’t about morality or fairness. It is, at this point, a sadistic exercise in sheer will to power by banking interests who want to make an example of Greece and its people the same way a loan shark does with a tire iron to the knees. It is morally monstrous, and they should be ashamed.”
— MSNBC host Chris Hayes on All In, June 30.
Really Wants Jenner to Transition from an (R) to (D)
“This may be a long shot, but ... are you still a Republican? Statistically, single white women are vastly more likely to be Democrats than are single white men, and I am hoping your change of part has been accompanied by a change of heart! I credit single women and their sane and compassionate politics for having saved the Republic over the last few years. If rabid, grumpy single white men had been the overriding constituency in the last two national elections, I suspect that by now most middle-school science textbooks would have been replaced by the Ten Commandments, and the minimum wage would have been reduced to $2 an hour on the theory that Wal-Mart and McDonald’s already provide their employees a nice warm place to be for eight hours a day.”
— Washington Post Magazine columnist Gene Weingarten in a June 28 open letter to Caitlyn Jenner.
Another Fine Example of Liberal Tolerance
“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there....This man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.”
— Actor George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek, talking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a June 30 interview with Fox 10 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Bonus Quote: Mourning the Fourth of July
“American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake....I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government....Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher, after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that’s very good news indeed.”
— Dylan Matthews in a July 2 post on Vox.com: “3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake.”
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
RESEARCH ANALYST: Mike Ciandella
NEWS ANALYSTS: Scott Whitlock, Kyle Drennen, Matthew Balan, Jeffrey Meyer and Curtis Houck
INTERNS: Connor Williams, Spencer Raley