BuzzFeed Spins Jeb’s Remarks to fit Media Narrative
Yesterday, BuzzFeed offered this headline, Jeb Bush: No Place For Father, Reagan In Today’s GOP. for a story about remarks Jeb Bush had made earlier the day. Problem is the former Florida governor said no such thing. Here’s the paragraph in question:
“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as “temporary.”
Emphasis added. BuzzFeed staff did not provide the comment where Bush said, as they paraphrased, “that both Ronald Reagan and his father George H. W. Bush would have had a difficult time getting nominated by today’s ultra-conservative Republican Party.” Jeb never called his party “ultra-conservative” (at least not in any text they provided).
But, golly gee whiz, the headline fits the narrative as does the line quoted above. Guess they missed that little word, “if.” Jeb never said the Republican Party had an orthodoxy, merely offered a hypothetical view of the party — which he singled by that word.
In the very article, the BuzzFeed staff did report that, “Bush also had praise for Rep. Paul Ryan for proposing a budget and disdain for Democrats for refusing to engage it.” Doesn’t seem that a man who praises a man like Ryan, widely admired in Republican circles, would also call the party “ultra-conservative.”
Bush, they do note, “also blamed President Obama for much of the conflict.” Wonder what that notion didn’t get more prominence.In this article, Fred Barnes details just how the Democrat “has shown little or no interest in taking GOP proposals, alternatives, or tweaks seriously, or even considering them at all.”
Wonder why folks like those at BuzzFeed (echoing an Obama talking point) don’t ask the question Matt Lewis asks whether “liberal icons such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John Fitzgerald Kennedy get through a Democratic primary today” (via HotAir). Could Bill Clinton?
Once again, we see a media outlet attempting to twist a Republican’s comment to fit a favored narrative, that of the GOP as an ultra-conservative party, out of step with its own icons.
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