Hey, Tea Party: "It's Not Your Country Anymore;" Blaming Egregiously "Extreme" Conservatives

Vol. 26, No. 1

Hey, Tea Party: “It’s Not Your Country Anymore”


“It’s the Tea Party and the thinking of the Tea Party and people like that that are driving the Republicans out of contention as a national party. You cannot win nationally if you don’t know something about the way the country’s changed, and the Tea Party seems to think the country can go back 25 or 30 years. The greatest slogan that I hated during this last campaign was ‘We want to take back our country.’ Guys, it’s not your country anymore. It’s our country, and you’re part of it, but that thinking is going to defeat Republicans nationally if they don’t get rid of it.”
— ABC’s Sam Donaldson on The Chris Matthews Show, December 23.

 

Blaming Egregiously “Extreme” Conservatives for Fiscal Cliff Fiasco

 

“When Ronald Reagan was President, Grover Norquist was in diapers and Rush Limbaugh was a disc jockey, I think, in St. Louis. You have had a hermetically-sealed culture grow up on the right in this country that, as we saw during the last election, is removed from reality and is extreme in the most egregious way.”
Time magazine’s Joe Klein on CBS’s Face the Nation, December 30.

 

Exploiting Tragedy to Push Liberal Gun-Control Agenda

 

“Mental health is a secondary issue. We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets. They should only be available to police officers and to hunt al Qaeda and the Taliban and not hunt elementary school children.”
— CNN anchor Don Lemon on CNN Newsroom, December 17. [MP3 audio (1:09)]

 

“This change of heart, how sustainable is it? Will it lead to meaningful action, and is meaningful action a ban on assault weapons and more?...Is it now time to stand up to the NRA and to say to them — as Mayor Bloomberg has said — ‘you are full of’ — we have the courage to take them on now?”
CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, December 18.

 

CNN Savages “Unbelievably Stupid” Gun Rights Advocates


Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt: “I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible.”
CNN host Piers Morgan:
“You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?...You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever....You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America?...I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It’s down to idiots like you. Mr. Pratt.... You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. And you shame your country.
— From the imported British host’s anti-gun tirade on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 18.

 

“You said it’s time to get rid of gun laws, like the takeaway for you from this massacre at an elementary school is it’s time to get rid of gun laws. How does that possibly make sense to you?...How you can say that people should have fewer laws, and not more, I think is — it just boggles the mind, honestly, and if you were to come here and talk to the people in this town [of Newtown], they’d be stunned by you....I appreciate you talking with me this morning, but I just — I have to say, your position — your position completely boggles me, honestly. I just do not understand it.”
— Anchor Soledad O’Brien to economist and author John Lott on CNN’s Starting Point, December 17.
[MP3 audio (0:46)]

 

Doesn’t the NRA Really Want More Mass Shootings?

 

“NRA membership booms in these moments. Gun sales boom in these moments. Bushmaster [rifle] sales are booming. In the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, Glocks boomed. So in a perverse way — they would never admit this publicly — but in a perverse way, these moments are actually good for them. So then, how do we expect them to really not want these moments?”
— Co-host Touré on MSNBC’s The Cycle, December 20.
[MP3 audio (0:58)]

 

Piers Morgan vs. The NRA’s “Murderous Crap”


   “The one guaranteed outcome of Wayne Lapierre’s press conference: U.S. gun sales will soar even higher in next few days. #NRA #DeadlySpiral”
   “This is your moment, America: The #NRA has 4 million members, your population is 311 million. Don’t stand for this murderous crap any more.
   “Coming to a town near you, courtesy of the #NRA - Gunfights At The U.S. School Corral.”
— Succession of Twitter messages posted by CNN’s Piers Morgan during a press conference by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, December 21. (Spelling and grammar as in the original.)

 

End Violence by Dragging GOP Leaders Around a Parking Lot?


“I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.”
Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul, December 29.

 

Susan Rice: “Victim” of Conservative Media

 

“It [criticism of Susan Rice] was all driven, in many cases, by some conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story....She sort of became a victim of this....You can become collateral damage in a hurry in just the way you can get piled on, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s advocacy journalism, whatever you want to describe it, talk radio. And that’s what she was. She became political collateral damage.”
— NBC News political director Chuck Todd during live MSNBC coverage on December 13, after Rice withdrew her name as a potential Secretary of State.
[MP3 audio (0:51)]

 

The “Unbearable” Thought of Losing Hillary


“The idea of losing Hillary has seemed especially unbearable at this political moment. It’s as if she has become, literally, the ship of state. She stands for maturity, tenacity, and self-discipline at a time when everyone else in Washington seems to be, in more senses than one, going off a cliff—a parade of bickering, blustering, small-balled hacks bollixing up the nation’s business. She’s a caring executive too, and that takes its own emotional toll. What a disgrace that John Bolton and his goaty Republican ilk accused Her Magnificence of inventing a concussion to get out of testifying at the Benghazi hearings. Bolton is not fit to wipe her floor with his mustache.”
Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown in a January 2 Web article.

 

Seeing Urgent Need to Get Abortion “Back on Track”


“This month will mark the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in this country. But this week’s Time magazine cover story argues that activists have been losing that fight over abortion rights ever since that historic ruling....Kate, what do you think it’s going to take to get abortion rights back on track and not deny it from those who need it?”
— MSNBC fill-in anchor Alex Witt to Time staff writer Kate Pickert on NewsNation, January 3.

 

Stressed Out by the “Religion Part” of Christmas


“I don’t like the religion part. I think religion is what mucks the whole thing up....I don’t like the religion part. I think that’s what makes the holidays so stressful and — I don’t.”
— NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman talking about Christmas during a “Today’s Professionals” panel segment on Today, December 11.

 

Media Were Too Pro-Republican in 2012?

 

“Did you get the impression during the presidential campaign that the press was trying too hard to be even-handed? Did you think the people delivering the news were pushing what we call ‘balance’ at the expense of the obvious facts, that the day-to-day stories never got across the obvious big fact, that the Democrats in this election were like Democrats going back to Jack Kennedy, but the Republicans were far to the right of anything we’ve seen from that party ever?...It was the truth that dared not be reported in the mainstream media.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, December 12.
[MP3 audio (1:09)]

 

Nasty GOP Taking Food from Poor to Pay for Tax Cuts


“Good evening. We begin tonight with our big story, the reality of an estimated 46 million Americans. Simply put, they can’t afford to eat. They live off food stamps. These are men, women and children in America. Hunger is not just a third world problem. It’s a massive problem right here in the United States right now.... (to GOP consultant Kristen Soltis) Do you feel comfortable that the Republicans are prepared to slash investment into something like food stamps in an effort to try and protect — as it seems to many people — the wealthiest two percent from paying more tax?”
— Host Piers Morgan on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 7.

 

Democrats Delivered “Payback” to “Arch Conservative” Bork


“Remember Robert Bork? He first came to fame in 1973 when he was the U.S. Solicitor General. Bork carried out President Nixon’s so-called ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ firing the Watergate special prosecutor. Payback came when President Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court. The Democratically-controlled Senate rejected the arch conservative after one of the most contentious confirmation hearings ever.”
— Anchor Scott Pelley noting Bork’s passing on the December 19 CBS Evening News.

 

Wondering How the Obamas Get It On

 

“Mr. President, Mrs. Obama. There is a photograph of you [hugging] that went viral, became the most shared photograph in the history of Twitter. How do you keep the fire going?”
— Barbara Walters to the Obamas in an interview excerpt shown on ABC’s World News and Nightline, December 26.
[MP3 audio (1:53)]

 

Chris Matthews, a “Statesman...At the Peak of His Game”


“He’s as good as he’s ever been. He’s at a place in his life where he’s really comfortable in his own skin. He’s a statesman. He has so much knowledge and I think he understands it better. He’s always been great, but I really think he’s been at the peak of his game.”
— MSNBC President Phil Griffin as quoted by Associated Press media writer Dave Bauder in a December 27 item about Matthews, “the broadcaster that conservatives love to hate.”

 

Next Year, No More Pretending to “Support the Troops”


“Stop saying, ‘I support the troops.’ I don’t. I used to....But at some point all individuals must answer for their actions, and now that we know our military leaders do things that have nothing to do with defending our lives, why would anyone sign up for this rogue organization?”
— Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore announcing his New Year’s resolutions in a December 31 article published by the Huffington Post.

 

PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS:
Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
TIMES
WATCH:
Clay Waters
NEWS ANALYSTS:
Scott Whitlock, Brad Wilmouth, Matthew Balan, Kyle Drennen and Matt Hadro
INTERNS:
Jeffrey Meyer and Matt Vespa