“Even the media’s had enough“, reports Politico’s Kevin Cirilli:
The race for the White House has grown so toxic that it’s become a top topic among reporters and analysts covering the contest — and some are even calling on President Barack Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney to call a truce.
The media have had enough? You mean, the media that have parroted Democratic talking points about Mitt Romney’s dog, asked his neighbors for dirt on him and sough information about his high school years from classmates on the opposite side of the political fence?
Geez, wasn’t Mr. Obama supposed to elevate the tone of American politics? And which candidate was it whose team first raised issues unrelated to his opponent’s ability to lead the country? “You have“, writes Commentary’s Alana Goodman
a Democratic campaign that’s painting its opponent as a felon, a tax-dodger, a dog-abuser, and a killer who will bring back slavery. On the other side, you have a Republican campaign that’s responding to these attacks as “hateful” and “inappropriate.” The media spin? Both sides need to tone down the “toxic rhetoric”
She reminds us that
Romney has basically stuck to attacks on Obama’s policy, it’s the Obama campaign that’s gone into the gutter. In fact, the only “negative” remarks from the Romney campaign cited in the Politico story were made in response to Democratic smears.
Emphasis added. Mark Halperin has been asking for the two candidates to call a truce, but Goodman asks, “How can anyone expect Obama to do this in good faith, after his campaign told Politico last year that it’s plan was to ‘destroy’ Romney?” Do wonder if folks like Mr. Halperin will report how hope and change quickly became attack and destroy.
Perhaps Halperin and his cohorts in the legacy media should ask if their own reporting contributed to this “toxic” campaign. Maybe if they didn’t parrot Democratic talking points and highlighted Democratic gaffes and attacks (instead of ignoring or downplaying them), Democrats might be more careful about what they say.
No, the problem is not that “both campaigns” are doing it, but that all too many legacy media outlets play along when Democrats attack. They might not now be having “enough” had they spent more time covered more substantial issues instead of rooting around in Mr. Romney’s personal life.
UPDATE: This morning in his Morning Jolt (available by subscription), Jim Geraghty wonders if “maybe the Obama campaign pushed its luck too far, and is behaving in ruthless ways that some big-name reporters can’t ignore”:
Now Dan Balz in the [http://wapo.st/Q2ACkp]Washington Post [http://wapo.st/Q2ACkp] is writing about “a most poisonous campaign” and he’s not taking the usual pox-on-both-their-houses tone.
. . . .
Neither side has had to look far to find an excuse to launch an attack or cry foul. Obama’s allies took the campaign over the edge last week and the Obama campaign did nothing to stop it. The most egregious example of a campaign out of bounds was the ad prepared by Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Obama. This is perhaps one of the biggest dividends of the Ryan pick. It is an article of faith among most Washington journalists that the seriousness of a national figure can be measured by their willingness to address hard issues like entitlement reform, and tell voters what they don’t want to hear. Paul Ryan passes that test with flying colors, perhaps better than any other figure in Washington. The Washington press corps quite credulously believed President Obama would do something on entitlements, too. Here we are, Obama’s term nearly done, with nothing proposed, much less any serious risk of Obama’s dwindling political capital.
I think they’re trying to do some damage control for the president. Even they know that he’s crossing a line and rather than call him out directly, they blame both candidates, allowing Obama to escape all blame and save face.
Calling on both sides to declare a truce reminds me of Obama’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008: “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war.” The default leftist position seems to be that the side defending itself from an attack is at least as responsible for the attack as the aggressor is.
The MSM has been ignoring the negatives on Obama and covering for him by not covering him openly and honestly since he arrived on the national stage.
Now he has a record about which he lies, spins, obfuscates, and hallucinates and the MSM looks the other way.
But Romney and Ryan and the RNC and the pacs are getting the word out and voters are listening and the MSM has no stomach for it.
Pity. Poor little MSM needs a truce. Their dolled-up hag of a President needs love. He has so much potential and he is the first black President and he inherited such a mess and he really is trying.
So, the MSM has weighed in with its pity strategy and Obama has weighed in which his scorched earth and destroy Romney and Ryan strategy and Romney and Ryan have weighed in with their take the bull by the horns strategy for the economy and the take the bull by the tail and address the bullish*t strategy for dealing with the MSM and Obama.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is trying to take the moonbeam title away from Jerry Brown. Hey, kids, the circus is in town. Look over there, I just say a squirrel. Did Barack eat a fried Twinkie? Moochelle, Moochelle, how does your arugula grow?
“The $716 billion was not actually cut from Medicare, it was borrowed and cloned and returned as $1.7 trillion in credits, vouchers and free car washes and plugs for various doughnut holes and nutrition programs for undocumented immigrant children and their friends and relatives.” You can look it up. Or you can hear it from Soledad O’Brien.
Jimmy I agree that this is the media trying to rehabilitate Obama.
It is really hard at this point for the media to continue to paint Obama in the “above it all, hope and change, rah rah” category. So they just say “hey look both dudes are covered in mud, maybe they should stop.
Obama IMO is the bully the left wants to paint Romney as but the left is happy to ignore that fact.
The left and the media would love it if Romney stopped attacking Obama on issues. It’s mean and it’s not fair.
I posted this on another thread, but it bears repeating here:
http://news.investors.com/article/622378/201208151858/biased-press-ignores-debased-obama-campaign.htm
Regards,
Peter H.
Exactly.
How can there be a truce? We all know that Barak Obama is the paragon of virtue and has urged civilty in conversation. It´s not his fault that a Super Pac that supports his reelection has smeared Mitt Romney. Just ask Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, she knows. It pertains to Mitt to control his Super Pac from smearing Obama. It´s always the right that must take the high road. The left requires it from us; while they can be as dirty as the want with immunity from criticism.
It is deceptive to call a truce. The reporters should ask Obama to tell the truth!!!
They have a lot of jargon for thus making the innocent guilty; for example, they will talk about a so-called “cycle of violence”, having a “social critique” to overthrow “privilege”, and much more.
Honestly, stop watching Fox News and actually pay attention to the viciousness your side of the aisle, and your chosen candidate is no exception, have brought to bear on politics for years. If you don’t believe me, as I know you won’t, why don’t you actually just watch the video tape:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/jon-stewart-blasts-republicans-divisive-hypocrisy_n_1788870.html?utm_hp_ref=comedy
You simply can’t ignore the evidence, except that you will. Your candidate for President has NO platform … he spent millions upon millions running entirely negative ads smearing his opponents to earn the nominatoin (something all the right-wingers bitched about constantly until, you know, they totally forgot about it the minute he was nominated), then runs a campaing with is 90 PERCENT composed of negative ads, then has the chutzpah to complain abou tthe tone? Listen, I wouldn’t even care if the ads were negative if the entire campaign wasn’t, you know, composed 100 percent of lies about Obama’s purported welfare plan (the same plan Romney endorsed as governmor, which every neutral fact check labels as completely and totally false) and the You Didn’t Build That bus tour, which blatantly misrepresentes and takes out of context what Obama said about infrastructure, etc. — which happened to be EXACLTY THE SAME THING ROMNEY SAID ON THE VERY SAME DAY
Meant to finish that comment. The day that Obama rides around in a campaign bus featuring a big photo of Mitt Romney screaming out “I don’t care about poor people and I like to fire people,” you can complain abou tthe tone of this campaign. Because that is PRECISELY Romeny’s strategy right now: outright lie about the President, or egregiously decontextualize and misrepresent the obvious meaning of his words, and then spend millions of Koch and Adelson money to plaster those egregiously false ads over the airwaves. And you know what? I thought th eSuper Pac ad against Romney was awful. But guess who loves SuperPacs and guess whose SuperPacs have been attacking Obama that x1000? You guys. That ad was not from Obama, and it barely (if at all) even aired. The ledger is CLEARLY on your side in terms of who has run the more overwhelming negative and deceptive campaign, and it’s not close. He is a desperate candidate with no ideas, no firm policies, and no conviction, who will reverse anything he believes at a whim out of political expedience. So since he has no record he can run on (since he has disavowed every single thing he did as Mass Governor, unlike Obama, who at least will run on his actual record of governance), he has no choice but to bitch and whiney like a little baby because a big bad SuperPac made a mean ad. Somebody call the whambulance, I might break out into tears.
Translation: The MSM have had enough of the Tea Party & Romney-Ryan 2012 fighting back. They want the Republicans & Romney to roll over like they did in 2008. It’s not going to happen.
unlike Obama, who at least will run on his actual record of governance
I love that you claim he will run on his actual record and not that he is running on his actual record. That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve written. Just curious – when do you expect his campaign to start highlighting his record? I look forward to his ads extolling the virtues of double-digit real unemployment, $5+ trillion in new debt, $1+ trillion deficits every year as far as the eye can see, no budget for over 3 years and a signature legislative accomplishment that a clear majority of voters still don’t want.
And yes, you’re right, shockingly enough I’m uninterested in watching a Jon Stewart clip on HuffPo to learn the truth about Romney.
For the record, what a lot of us said about Romney’s scorched Earth campaign against Perry/Newt/Santorum was that he would never go after Obama with the same ferocity. And we have been proven right about that.
Which, in no way, excuses Obama’s people for openly calling Romney a felonious tax cheat who wants to give women cancer and put black people in chains. (The worst thing Romney said about Newt was that he took money from Fannie Mae… which was true, at least.)
LOL.
Notice how, in Jeff’s entire rant, he presented absolutely no reason why anyone should ever vote for Obama.
Instead, he threw screaming tantrum after tantrum about how awful Romney was.
Which shows quite nicely that Romney IS better than Obama, that both Jeff and Obama know it, and that both have nothing to offer other than to try to destroy Romney.
You’re supporting trash, Jeff. Which is no surprise, because you and yours are trash. Republicans and conservatives and more and more Americans realize that your Obama and his supporters like you are nothing more than filthy, amoral trash.
Sebastian put it beautifully. Tantrum Boy Jeffy and the media want Republicans and conservatives to hamstring themselves. That’s why Tantrum Boy Jeffy is doing just like he did to his weak and worthless liberal parents, screaming and thrashing and calling them names to shut them up and force them to do what he wants.
Too bad. Those days are over.
How Orwellian the rhetoric from the left has become. The truth is a lie; a lie is the truth. Why they can´t see it is due to a defect. I scan of the liberal´s brain will reveal what the obstruction is. It will show that there is nothing there but excrement. (If this post twice the earlier version instead of posting went off into the ether.)
Late in commenting here, as usual, but I’ve noticed it’s not just the media. Various folks I know who supported Obama last time (most of whom probably will support him again this time, unfortunately) have made comments in the past few days about how they are sick of hearing about the campaign and wish they could ignore the whole thing; two even said that if there were a button they press on Facebook to avoid any mention of the candidates’ names, they would even pay for the privilege of using it. I take that to mean that they hate being reminded of the unfortunate reality of the debased Obama campaign. Now that Romney and Ryan are conveying a strong, upbeat message and hitting back by going on the offense, suddenly all of the Obama voters are “sick of hearing it.”
Why do you assume conservatives here watch Fox News? I only watch CNN, and I came to the same conclusions.
I find is fascinating that the ‘defenders’ of the president don’t even TRY to argue or disprove the point, they just jump straight to ‘ad hominim’ arguments. They try to argue where the information is coming from. And then jump straight to ‘tu quoque’ arguments “But Billy is doing it too!!!!” …. and NEVER get around to actually trying to address the points.
In line with the point I made above and the point refuted by Rattlesnake above, I always find it fascinating when Democrats and Obama sympathizers talk about how horrible it is that people watch Fox News. Personally, I can’t stand TV news. I usually only watch the local news here because it’s only half an hour and I usually watch it during dinner or breakfast just to see what the weather is going to be like and what’s going on with various local stories.
But the sort of people who complain about Fox News remind me of the types who put their hands up to their ears and say, “na na na na na na na na, I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” If I were to quiz them on matters like Fast and Furious or the fact that the Democrat-controlled Senate under Harry Reid hasn’t passed a budget in more than three years, they’d have no idea what I was talking about. For them the main virtue is not getting information from Fox News, even if it leaves them completely in the dark about what’s going on.
A serious person ataches CNN? According to the industry they have a viewership of about 300,000. I´ll bet the majority are in airport bars and passenger areas. Fox is the highest rated cable channel, Go with a winner!
correcting typo: watches
This must just be another example of liberals attaching a completely inaccurate connotation to a term in order to incite some sort of visceral response to that term (such as the assumption that viewing Fox News must necessarily result in the adoption of poorly thought out conservative positions). It is not surprising, then, that liberals are so frequently shocked when conservatives are able to defend their positions with facts and logic.
I don’t get Fox News. If I want to watch an American news channel, my only option as far as I know is CNN.
Where *are* you, rattlesnake? Just curious.
Somewhere in Western Canada (Alberta at the moment). For the record, Canadian politics are very boring, which is why I spend most of my time reading and writing about American politics.