Ed Morrissey, with an assist from Newt Gingrich, has a great name for the 2012 version of the JournoList. Ed quotes from a lengthy stemwinder from Newt to Piers Morgan; click over to read the whole thing, but here’s the relevant portion:
Even those of us who couldn’t quite bring ourselves to back Newt Gingrich in the primaries hoped that he would play a big role in the general election as a surrogate. This video demonstrates why. Gingrich reacts to Piers Morgan’s suggestion that the “big flaw” in Ryan’s budget was that the rich would do well, and in two minutes teaches Economics 101, accuses Morgan of media bias, and rips the Obama economy as the “worst recovery in 75 years.” And that’s just Newt getting warmed up, as Newsbusters highlights:
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: I suppose the fundamental debate that’s going to be had, though, will come down to whether the Republicans can sell to the American people that they are really concerned about jobs, about people’s livelihoods, and all the rest of it. If they’re also scratching the backs of their rich and wealthy members, which is clearly I think the flaw in the Ryan plan is that it just does. I mean, if you’re very wealthy, you’re going to be doing a lot better out of Paul Ryan than you would out of Barack Obama who believes fundamentally the rich should pay more tax.
NEWT GINGRICH: You know, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I do wonder sometimes if you guys all get off in a little club and learn a brand new mantra and then all repeat it mindlessly. The fact is, these kinds of things were said about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan’s tax cut – which was developed by Jack Kemp who Paul Ryan worked for – Ronald Reagan’s tax cut raised more people to middle class status, took more people out of poverty, created more jobs.
As Ed writes, Newt really was getting warmed up at that point; click over to Hot Air or Newsbusters to read the whole thing. And speaking of the Mantra Club, yesterday, Rush Limbaugh caught the weekend’s talking points on his show; his production team assembled The Mother of All Audio Juxtapositions in response:
RUSH: Now we have an inane media mantra. We have a montage here from Saturday and Sunday, a bunch of mainstream media people describing the race. And they’re all saying the same thing, by the way. It’s now a “choice.” You see, it’s not a referendum. It was gonna be a referendum on Obama. Romney had said that. But now he’s put Paul Ryan on the ticket, and it’s no longer a referendum on Obama, ’cause now that Ryan’s on the ticket. It’s now a “choice.”
Here. Listen and see if this makes any sense to you…
MARK MURRAY: They wanted to make this a referendum on Obama; now it’s a choice.
JOHN KING: Romney has tried to make it a referendum; now you have a choice.
CANDY CROWLEY: What Barack Obama wants to do is make this a the choice. Mitt Romney wanted to make this a referendum.
PERRY BACON: Is was going to be a referendum. (gasp) Now it becomes much more of a choice.
F. CHUCK TODD: This is not a referendum election; this is a choice election.
RICHARD LUI: No longer a referendum on the president. They now had to move into a choice election.
ROGER SIMON: (whispering) It makes the election not a referendum on Barack Obama. [That’s the Politico’s Roger Simon, not our own beloved Maxmimum Pajahadeen –Ed]
DAVID KERLEY: This changes the storyline from a “referendum” on the president to a “choice” election.
GAVIN NEWSOM: We have a choice, and it’s no longer referendum.
RON BROWNSTEIN: … shift the election more toward the choice and away from the referendum.
RUSH: Isn’t this amazing how they all get the same fax? They get the same talking points, every one of these people. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten people in our montage. Remember when Bush put Cheney on the ticket, “It brings gravitas.” Now it’s a choice election, not a referendum election. What changed? Somebody smarter than I am is gonna have to explain this to me. Would somebody explain to me how in the world this all of a sudden did not become a referendum on Obama? Are they thinking that the previous Romney campaign was just to run out there, be a decent guy, nice guy, and talk about what a reprobate and a louse Obama is, how bad the economy is. But now that we got Ryan on the ticket, well, we’ve put an arch-conservative up there, and now that there’s a conservative on the ticket, oh, no, oh, no, the American people hate conservatives as much as we hate conservatives. And so now this is a choice between Obama and a mainstream racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe conservative who, by the way, wants to cut your Medicare.
That’s how they look at it. A conservative on the ticket, they hate conservatives, and they think everybody else does as well, that’s the world they live in. And so since there’s a conservative, I mean he may as well have added Satan, and when you put Satan on the ticket, well, that takes everything about Obama off the ticket. It now becomes a choice between a Messiah and Satan, not a referendum on Messiah. That’s how they think. This is inane. They’re deluding themselves.
As Rush quips, “Isn’t this amazing how they all get the same fax?” Or perhaps they’re simply cribbing from the leftwing Talking Points Memo Website, as CNN’s resident. Rev. Wright acolyte Soledad O’Brien was caught reading on air by conservative blogger Ali Akbar from yesterday on-air. Click over to Ali’s Website for an even bigger screencap:
As Akbar writes:
During her interview with Virginia House of Delegates Republican member Barbara Comstock, O’Brien became visibly flustered and was actually caught doing finger stress exercises as she attempt [sic] to insert editorial commentary while her guest, a former skilled Republican operative, defended the House GOP budget, designed by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan.
Accidentally, a cameraman captured O’Brien furiously flipping through notes, only to cut out seconds later.
Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters adds:
What she’s reading from is a TPM article titled “The Myth Of Paul Ryan The Bipartisan Leader” published Monday at 6:08 PM only a few hours before this program started.
It began:
Mitt Romney has been talking up Rep. Paul Ryan’s bipartisan credentials since he unveiled the congressman as his running mate early Saturday. But the mild-mannered Wisconsinite’s record reveals a near-total absence of Democratic support for his many ambitious proposals, very few of which have won enough support to become law.
Inside the piece was the very quote from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Or.) that O’Brien read to her guest:
“I did not ‘co-lead a piece of legislation.’ I wrote a policy paper on options for Medicare. Several months after the paper came out I spoke and voted against the Medicare provisions in the Ryan budget. Governor Romney needs to learn you don’t protect seniors by makings things up, and his comments sure won’t help promote real bipartisanship.”
So, a CNN anchor with her own daily program used a far-left website for her show prep before talking to a Republican guest.
Do you need any more evidence of just how far to the left the self-described “most trusted name in news” is or why its ratings continue to tank?
Bravo, Ali! Bravo!
Say, if only Soledad was associated with an organization that holds itself out as a “non-biased” “objective” worldwide news gathering team with layers and layers or producers, editors and fact-checkers all their own, instead of having to crib from outside leftie Websites for her talking points. Or as Romney surrogate John Sununu replied to Soledad when she tried to use the talking points — or was it Talking Points? — against him this morning, “Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this.”
And why not? In 2008, the members of the JournoList declared themselves to be the “Non-Official Campaign” to elect then-Senator Barack Obama to the White House. Now they have to keep him there, and defend his failed economic policies — no matter how robotic they sound, or how much they’re caught reading the canned mantras on air.
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