Earlier today on Yahoo!, we saw another headline manifesting the mindset which made Michele Bachmann the media face of the GOP and Tea Party.

Now, although Mrs. Bachmann was an elected public official, she was neither a leader among her congressional colleagues nor successful in her attempt to break into double digits in political caucuses with real consequences in the GOP presidential contest.

And the left-wing writer linked on Yahoo!’s homepage decides to define the Tea Party’s supposed “mental midgetry” by referencing one obscure Tea Party representative and a crackpot state representative (representing a jurisdiction of approximately 38,000).  And then proceeds to engage in a string of insults:

The crap the Tea Party peddles is nothing new. The ideas behind the Tea Party are nothing new. The world has been plagued by mental degenerates since the dawn of time and we might as well accept that demanding cogent arguments from them is going to change anything.

This was little more than an angry rant dressed up as an opinion piece.

By this writer’s methodology, we should define contemporary liberalism by the mean-spirited signs hoisted at San Francisco rallies, imagery which Zombie routinely posts on pjmedia.

(Has Yahoo! ever linked Zombie on its home page?  And yes, this is a real, not a rhetorical question because I don’t know.  I don’t recall seeing such links, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.)

Take a gander at this screen capture from the Washington Post web=site (taken at 7:32 PM GayPatriot blog time on 05/30/13):

The editors of the left-of-center Washington Post and its readership are all abuzz about the retirement of a four-term Republican Congressman from Minnesota, a woman who withdrew from the only race for House leadership she entered and came in sixth place (with only 5% of the vote) in the one presidential caucus she contested. During her congressional tenure, Mrs. Bachmann neither moved a major piece of legislation nor  spearheaded efforts to promote conservative legislative initiatives.

Like other charismatic former legislator from the Midwest, she won her prominence not based on her work product, but on her public appearances. She is an effective speaker who can move a partisan crowd.

Her departure should not generate this much media attention.  Her charisma notwithstanding, she is not a leader of the GOP.  Yet, despite the failure of her congressional colleagues to support her bid for leadership and of Republican voters to embrace her, manyliberal activists (just check your Facebook feed) as well as their allies in the media have tried to portray her as the face of the GOP.

And in so doing, they have unfairly maligned and otherwise mocked her — and have failed to fault crazy left-wing activists from publicly insulting her. With her outlandish claims, Mrs. Bachmann has a great deal in common with such Democrats as California’s Barbara Boxer, Iowa’s Tom Harkin and Florida’s Alan Grayson, the primary difference being that the media downplay rather than highlight those Democrats’ odd statements and don’t pretend they are the leaders of their party. (more…)

On Tuesday, Jeff posted a video with clips of the current President of the United States Barack Obama using almost identical language to that of Richard Nixon to describe how each learned about scandals taking place under his watch, with both politicians claiming they had learned about them from news reports.

Today, while tidying my desk, I came across a note I had scribbled over four months ago:

Dem[ocrat]s want to define GOP by Nixon now/fear party being defined by Reagan — hence the silly line that Gipper couldn’t win in today’s GOP.

They’ve even got Bob Dole repeating that Democratic talking point (without providing any evidence to back it up).

If the Democrats continue to stonewall on the various scandals percolating around this administration, the media will have a tougher and tougher time making the age-old Nixon comparisons stick to the GOP.

NB:  I had scribbled the note on January 9, 2013, the one hundredth anniversary of Nixon’s birth.

UPDATE: Meant to include this screen capture from the Obama-friendly AOL: (more…)

Just caught this at Ace: “To Ask the Question Is To Answer It“:

Charles C. W. Cooke wonders why those who freaked out about the PATRIOT Act and how it might lead to people’s library records being seized aren’t so concerned about the IRS asking conservative groups to hand over their Facebook posts and a list of books they were reading. Or for records of conversations they had or their positions on issues. Shouldn’t the ACLU be as up in arms about the IRS’s intrusion into people’s privacy as they were about Homeland Security looking at suspected terrorist’s use of library computers?

Did the immediate past president — or his henchmen — ever demand that his political adversaries, in order to receive a benefit from the government, reveal the content of their prayers or the names of their members?

Most of you will get the likely reason in one guess:

Yes, it’s “Jon Corzine” (don’t say Democrat! don’t say Democrat!!! it won’t matter, if nobody ever points it out!!!1!), formerly of Goldman-Sachs and MF Global.

At this time, the 767-word news article that I’ve linked to never gets around to mentioning that “Jon Corzine” is a top Democrat. It lists his political involvement simply as “former New Jersey governor”, omitting not only his party, but also his powerful roles as a Democrat Senator and as one of Obama’s very top fund-raisers and (formerly) advisors.

At this time, the article’s photo caption has even (wrongly) put an “(R)” after Corzine’s name. The caption reads:

Reuters/Reuters – Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine (R) receives help with his notes from his legal counsel as he testifies before a House Financial Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee…

Bias, anyone?

From The Comments: John points out that the (R) would of course be defended as the photographic “right”. But even allowing that, Corzine is not the guy on the right; he’s the guy in the center (of three people in a rapidly-receding perspective). The point is that somebody at Reuters is fine with allowing people to think that Corzine is something other than a top Democrat.

With the enactment yesterday in the Wolverine State of right-to-work legislation, freeing individual workers from the obligation to pay union dues, the unions have not reacted in a, well, dignified manner.

Take a gander at how union activists treated one conservative blogger outside the Michigan state capitol:

Via Hot Air.  The same folks knocked down a tent that Americans for Prosperity (with a permit) put up on the state capitol grounds, cheering as it collapsed with people in it.

Yet, neither AOL, Yahoo! nor the Washington Post cover this on their front pages this morning.  Here are some screen-captures of the Post’s front page:

(more…)

Among the many things to fault about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 then-celebrated* speech on race was his failure to cite the most important speech on race in American history, Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

That great American dreamt that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  With that line, King defined the ideal we should all strive for–to judge an individual not by his skin color, but but his character.

That notion seems to be lost to many Democrats attacking Republicans for raising questions about Ambassador Susan Rice’s public statements on Benghazi.  As Victor Davis Hanson put it two days ago:

Susan Rice misleads the country and suddenly her critics are racists and sexists — does not mean that it does not work in deterring critics. A white liberal can all but destroy Condoleezza Rice or Alberto Gonzalez and feel very liberal, but a peep about Barack Obama or Susan Rice from a white male is akin to a KKK slur.

We will have truly realized Dr. King’s dream when defenders of an African-American figure subject to criticism don’t assume that his (or her) critics were motivated by her race.  They may well have been calling her character into question — or her actions.

And they will defend her character — or her actions — rather than make assumptions about her critics’ motives.

* (more…)

Last week, I think it was — or maybe it was the week before,  I caught on Anderson Cooper that helps explains the GOP’s image problem.

That CNN anchor was talking about Todd Akin (does seem our friends in the legacy media devote more time to that failed Senate candidate’s crazy statement on rape than they do to the failure of elected Democratic Senators to pass a budget) and wondering what his defeat meant for the Tea Party, given the support, Cooper claimed, of that dynamic, grassroots movement for the Missouri social conservative.

Fortunately, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was on Cooper’s panel and quickly corrected him; Akin was not the Tea Party candidate, in fact, he won the GOP primary earlier this year because he was competing against two candidates who hailed from that wing of the party.

Three points/questions about this exchange stand out:

1. Anderson Cooper’s prejudices; he should have known better; had he bothered to researcht the 2012 Missouri GOP Senate primary, he would have quickly learned that Akin was definitely not a Tea Party candidate.  The supposedly even-handd “news” anchor just assumed that because Akin had some extreme views, he must be Tea Party, that is, he appears to see the Tea Party as an extremist outfit.  And Cooper seems unaware that the Tea Party lacks a social issue focus (as Mr. Akin has).
2. Cooper’s ignorance about the Tea Party seems to help foster popular misrepresentation of the movement.
3. If Fleischer had not been there to correct Cooper, his misrepresentation would have gone unchallenged.  How many other similar media misrepresentations go unchallenged?

Just something to consider.

A conservative Facebook friends reports that today the president spoke the following disingenuous words:

If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let employers deny contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.

Um, Mr, President, which candidate supports legislation that would deny contraceptive care? I do believe there’s a bill out there that would prevent the state from mandating that a private employer pay for his employees’ contraception.

And how exactly could an employer deny contraceptive care?  Does the president really believe they have control over their employees’ private lives?

UPDATE:  Later, responding to my comment, she added:

Our President rhetorically leaps over the chasm between forcing a third party to buy someone else contraception because of a preexisting economic relationship (presumably unrelated to pregnancy causation) versus that person somehow blocking the second person’s access to contraception. It is a dishonest effort to make people think Romney wants their employers to be able to block contraceptives.

Of all the things from the second debate my liberal friends have focused on in their (post-debate) Facebook posts, Mitt Romney’s supposed binder blunder gets the most amount of commentary. As I write this (about 10:53 PST on Wednesday night), one of Yahoo!’s top “News” headlines links to an opinion piece on that very topic:

Democrats, it seems, were looking for a gaffe and came up with this, most likely to blunt Mitt Romney’s momentum with women. Michael Barone observes, that since the first debate, “it appears” that Romney has “made greater gains among women than men.” He cites Democratic pollster Celinda Lake who said that after October 3, women “came out thinking he might understand their lives and might be able to get something done for them.”

And yet the response they cited shows how Romney went out of his way to hire more women to his administration.

Jennifer Rubin thought Romney’s answer to the question about hiring women (where he made the binder reference)

was one of the strongest of the night, and judging from the Obama team’s reaction, his record in hiring women may have gone over quite well.   In the Obama team’s telling, however, the awkward phrasing of “binders full of women” is somehow insulting.

. . . .

As Mark Halperin tweeted, “Dem attempts to make this binder thing into a deal is . . . freakshow (and Ds know it). And/but they will find willing accomplices in much of MSM.”

Indeed, blogs another woman, Leslie Loftis, “the binder meme says the opposite” of what Obama supporters claim: (more…)

in response to an Advocate piece contending that “Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton uses homophobic term to describe President Obama’s foreign policy“, Richard Grenell wrote a letter to the Advocate, taking issue with their assessment.  As the magazine has yet to publish his letter, we are posting it here:

The Advocate’s Michelle Garcia’s latest piece fails to mention that John Bolton has been a consistent defender of gay rights, gay marriage and a critic of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell before it was overturned, Garcia also fails to show how Bolton’s comment describing President Obama as a weak leader is in anyway homophobic.

I also find it ironic that while The Advocate has consistently refused to report on John Bolton’s early support for Log Cabin Republicans and gay rights, they jump to write a phony and purposefully deceptive piece about him – all because he is a Republican. Calling a conservative friend of our community homophobic is a self-inflicted wound. Are Advocate writers so in the tank for the Democrats that they attack a supporter of gay rights just because he’s not a Democrat? Garcia’s story is the perfect example of how the old gay guard and its magazine of choice is out of touch with gay Americans today. Yesterday’s warriors of acceptance have morphed into today’s liberal intolerants. This is the exact faux outrage that makes The Advocate the magazine of your old gay uncle. It isn’t a serious place for news or information.

Please note that I merely cut and pasted the letter without adding — or altering a word.

Barack Obama, wrote David Corn earlier this week, repeating a Democratic talking point, should, in his speech tonight, “Castigate GOP Obstructionism“.

The real story, however, is not one of Republican obstructionism, but of Democratic obstinance.  The Obama team decided early, reports ABC News’s Rich Klein, in his piece about Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, The Price of Politics,  decided to “to forego bipartisanship for the sake of speed around the stimulus bill was encapsulated by his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel: ‘We have the votes. F— ‘em,’ he’s quoted in the book as saying.”

The day after Democrats celebrate Bill Clinton, Klein reminds us how the current Democratic president differs from his partisan predecessor:

“Obama doesn’t really have the joy of the game. Clinton basically loved negotiating with a bunch of pols, about anything,” [former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama economic advisor Larry] Summers said. “Whereas, Obama, he really didn’t like these guys.”

Obama simply put didn’t make the effort to hammer out deals with Republicans as had Clinton.  He even, according to Woodward, had problems working with fellow Democrats.

No wonder he was, as Jennifer Rubin reports in her commentary on the Woodward excerpts, the real obstacle to progress:

The retelling of the debt-ceiling negotiations, and of Obama’s decision to up the ante by $400 billion on taxes, reminds us that Obama, in essence, spiked the deal. He simply did not get the job done. From Woodward’s book: “It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition. . . . But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on important matters of national business. . . . Obama has not.” Or, as Republicans say, he has not lead. (more…)

One wonders if our friends in the legacy media will devote as much time to “fact-checking” the error-prone Vice President’s speech Wednesday night as they did to that of his opponent in the fall campaign.  Perhaps, they will decide to build a narrative on a Romney campaign aide’s tweet.

And that aide will likely have a greater respect for facts that will the author of the tweet which inspired last week’s legacy media frenzy.

“Immediately after Ryan finished delivering the passage on the GM plant in his speech,” reports the Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes,

. . . top Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter sent this tweet: “Ryan blaming the President for a GM auto plant that closed under Pres Bush—thought he was smarter than that.” With one click after another, Cutter’s false claim became accepted wisdom.

Miss Cutter, as you may recall, “maintained that she was not familiar with the details of Mr. Soptic’s[*] wife’s death even though she was on a conference call that featured Soptic in May.”

Her tweet about Paul Ryan was similarly inaccurate.  The Wisconsin Republican never blamed Obama for closing the GM plant.   Below are Ryan’s remarks about the plant:

[1] My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it—especially in Janesville, [2] where we were about to lose a major factory. [3] A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. [4-a] Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.”

[4-b] That’s what he said in 2008. [5] Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. [6] And that’s how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Please note I added in the numbers in brackets, each representing a fact which can be checked.  If you wish to dispute the accuracy of Mr. Ryan’s facts, please identify by number the particular fact, then provide evidence demonstrating its inaccuracy.  Ed Morrissey provides video evidence showing that Obama did indeed say what Ryan says he said in 2008 [4].

To truly “fact-check” the speech, you would first need identify the facts, then check each one.

Our “fact-checkers” in the legacy media, however, have a different standard for determining the accuracy of a Republicans remarks.   (more…)

Democrats loves to call Ronald Reagan’s successful economic policies as “trickle-down” economics.  President “Obama [has] criticized the GOP for promoting what he called a ‘top down’ economic system and said those policies were ‘central to Gov. Romney and … central to his running mate.’”

That notion of “top down” economics better describes the policies the Democrats advocate than the ones the Republicans promote.  Democrats’s policies always involve a greater role for government, “stimulating” the economy by directing taxpayer (or borrowed) dollars to favored industries.

In his column on Friday, George Will dubbed these policies “trickle-down government“:

With Americans, on average, worth less and earning less than when he was inaugurated, Barack Obama is requesting a second term by promising, or perhaps threatening, that prosperity is just around the corner if he can practice four more years of trickle-down government.

We need give this notion greater currency.

Ryan’s Speech Must have been a success else AOL/HuffPo wouldn’t have slammed it:

As is to be expected, the mistakes they discerned weren’t mistakes. Fact-checking the “factcheckers,” Ed Morrissey reminds us what Paul Ryan actually said and what Barack Obama actually promised.

First, what Ryan said:

When [Obama] talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

“Ryan”, the 2010 CPAC blogger of the year writes

. . .acknowledged that the plant had already been slated for shutdown in 2008.  That was his point.  People voted for him because they thought Obama represented hope to get the plant back in operation.   In fact, that had been known since at least February 2008, when Obama came to Janesville to speak, and specifically addressed the plant closure in his remarks, delivered at the plant itself — and promised to keep it and other plants like it open “for the next hundred years” (emphasis [Ed's]) (more…)

Just as I was starting work on a post on the jaundiced media narrative of the GOP, I catch sight of Bruce’s latest on the Franklin Center Symposium.  Seems that new media are doing so well largely because people are rapidly losing faith in more traditional sources of news.  According to Gallup, only 25% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, with only 21% having that kind of confidence in TV news.

That number is unlikely to budge much in the next few days.  Over the past week, we’ve seen our media spending more time obsessing over a Republican Senate candidate repudiated by his party for making a stupid statement (while ignoring a Democratic Senator ignored by her own party after insulting her partisan adversaries and accusing them of a “sickness“) than considering the actual policy statements of the Republican candidates for president and vice president.

Consistent with this coverage, the media, Jennifer Rubin predicts, as the Republican National Convention begins, “will talk about abortion much more than will any speaker.”  These folks aren’t there, she observes “to observe or to report, but to shape, massage and even distort what is said and done.”  (Read the whole thing.)

“The mainstream media comes in to Tampa with one mission,” quips Micey Kaus, “and that’s to subtly give the impression that Romney is floundering” (Via Instapundit).

It seems that for the legacy media crafting a narrative consistent with Democratic talking points is more important the reporting the facts of a dynamic, resurgent and inclusive Republican Party.  No wonder public confidence in our news media continues to decline.

Earlier today, when I clicked on the Charles Krauthammer link atop Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post blog, instead of getting that sage conservative pundit’s original insight into the events of the day, I got Dana Milbank’s stale repetition of conventional wisdom. (Maybe the Post editors set it up that way because otherwise no conservatives would read Milbank.)

Contending that when “Todd Akin sneezes, Paul Ryan catches a cold“, Milbank offers

The Republicans’ soon-to-be nominee for vice president is supposed to be delivering a message about jobs and the economy, but he’s finding he cannot escape his longtime House colleague, now a national pariah for his exotic views on rape.

Well, perhaps for Beltway denizens like yourself, Dana — and for Democratic partisans, but most Americans will evaluate Mr. Ryan not by words he has deemed “outrageous”, but by the way he carries himself next week at the Republican convention and in the coming months on the campaign trail.

The only reason anyone is connecting Ryan to Akin is because left-leaning pundits and Democratic partisans are dwelling on the issue.  I mean, come on, Dana, who’s asking these questions?  Who’s making this a story?

It ain’t undecided voters in Ohio, Florida and Virginia; it’s self-satisfied pundits in Washington, D.C.

Oh, and by the notion, about the notion circulating among such pundits about Ryan trying to “restrict the definition of rape,” well, that’s based on false New York Times report.  The Times reporters failed “to to provide very basic context about the bill Ryan cosponsored”: (more…)

If she were a Republican and even suggested that Democrats don’t love their mothers, it would make national news and she would be butt of jokes on late-night TV, but Mrs. Boxer is a Democrats and so you won’t hear much of this in the media.  Erika Johnson reports that while “speaking at a Planned Parenthood event in California yesterday”, the failed junior Senator from California accused Republicans of waging a war on women:

“There is a war against women, and Romney and Ryan — if they are elected — would become its top generals,” Boxer said calling Akin’s comments a “direct outgrowth” of the extreme positions on abortion held by Republicans.

“Where’s the outrage by Mitt Romney?” Boxer asked, “There is a sickness out there in the Republican Party, and I’m not kidding. Maybe they don’t like their moms or their first wives; I don’t know what it is.”

Outrage, ma’am?  Do you read the news?  Mitt Romney has condemned Akin’s comments and expressed his desire that the Missouri Republican exit the Senate contest.  Sure sounds like outrage to me.

How mean-spirited to suggest that the crazy commentary of one candidate (since repudiated by said candidate–and criticized by all prominent Republicans who have weighed in on the matter) is an outgrowth of the party’s pro-life policies.  Democrats do want to milk this for all its worth.

Ma’am, I know it’s not customary for Democrats to do such things, but an apology is in order.

NB:  Tweaked the title (thrice).

UPDATE:  Twichy has a great roundup of Twitter reaction to Ma’am’s mean mutterings.

Yesterday, at Legal Insurrection, Anne Sorock reported that Elizabeth Warren was playing the “rape card against Scott Brown” even though the Massachusetts Senator was one of the first Republicans to criticize Todd Akin and ask the Missourian to withdraw from the Senate contest:

To Miss Warren as to Congressman Jan Schakowsky, it doesn’t matter that Republicans have overwhelmingly denounced Akin, with every prominent Republican who has spoken out on the matter as well as a sizable number of conservatives in the media asking the Congressman to exit the Senate contest.  (Interestingly, it seems that most of the people who want Akin to stay in the race are Democrats and allied special interests.) These folks are determined to smear the GOP at all costs.

The good news is that a poll by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic shows Brown has “opened a significant lead on Warren, 49-44.”

Help keep this good man from Massachusetts in “the people’s seat” by donating to his campaign.

UPDATE:  PPP isn’t the only poll showing Brown ahead.  Another survey provides almost identical results:

According to a Kimball Political Consulting survey of registered voters in Massachusetts, Senator Scott Brown has a 6 point lead over Democrat Elizabeth Warren (49 percent to 43 percent) with 9 percent undecided. The figure is just within the survey’s 4 percent margin of error.

Via Powerline picks.  No wonder Miss Warren is scraping the bottom of the peril.  The Democratic candidate can’t seem to get much traction in this overwhelmingly Democratic state.

Doing cardio yesterday, caught Jan Schakowsky on Piers Morgan’s show and was struck by her prejudiced view of the GOP. (Side note: would anyone watch CNN if gyms/airports did not broadcast it as their default “news” station?)

Scrolling through the Corner, I found that Eliana Johnson had embedded video (of part of) the 7-term Illinois Democrat’s appearance on the show where she contended Akin’s remark, as Johnson summarizes, “unmasks the ‘real positions’ of the Republican party“:

The real position of the Republican Party?!?!?  The only prominent Republicans who have spoken out have criticized Akin’s remarks about rape, with many urging him to withdraw from the Senate race.  The chairman of the Republican National Committee publicly called the remarks “dumb” and “bizarre.”

To partisans like Miss Schakowsky, it doesn’t really matter what Republicans say.  When one Republican says something crazy and offensive, well, then the crazy, stupid statement defines the party.  Interestingly, when a prominent supporter of her party engages in name-calling, she won’t even respond to a question (at 0:30 below): (more…)