Bozell Column: The Media's Favorite Fake Republicans

The Republican Party is desperately in need of some good advice. It needs to return to Ronald  Reagan conservatism and give America a two-party system, not a tinny echo of Obama. But our liberal media keep desperately inviting fake Republicans to offer advice to the GOP. They want to create a new Republican Party, one that rejects the principles of the man who championed freedom.

Exhibit A: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The January 14 Washington Post insisted on the front page: “Bloomberg wants change in the GOP.” Post reporter Jason Horowitz noted “America’s most prominent and deep-pocketed advocate for gun control would rather rehabilitate Republicans than oust them.”

What? Republicans are criminals in need of rehabilitation? The analogies get worse. Supporting the Bill of Rights is like supporting.... segregation and slavery. Democrats don’t like Bloomberg trying to reform Republicans instead of defeat them, reported Horowitz. But “Bloomberg counters that just as Democrats were once the party of slavery and segregation, the pro-gun GOP is now ripe for moderation.”

The new Republican Party is always “ripe for moderation” – overripe to the point of turning moldy and smelly, like a forgotten fruit in the back of your refrigerator.

In the same story, Horowitz quotes Bloomberg as saying “You have to change the people in the House,” and reports Bloomberg wants to use his new super PAC to run ads against Second Amendment defenders: “This guy or woman is in favor of leaving guns in the hands of crazy people who can kill your kids.”

Please remember this is the same “moderate” Bloomberg who journalists hailed for a “No Labels” campaign for civility in government.

Exhibit B: Colin Powell, who voted for Obama twice, but still insists he’s a Reagan Republican. Indeed, since becoming a Republican, all he’s done is criticize the GOP. NBC brought him on “Meet the Press” to declare “If it’s just going to represent the far right-wing of the political spectrum, I think the Party is in difficulty. I’m a moderate but I’m still a Republican.”

Powell thinks he’s a Republican, and the GOP has an “identity problem.” But the “identity problem” is Powell’s – voting for Obama is neither Republican nor “moderate.” Today’s Republican establishment isn’t to the right of Reagan. It is to the left of the man who won one of the largest landslides in history with an unequivocal conservative agenda.

NBC host David Gregory at least suggested to Powell he wasn’t very Republican before cuing up his endless 600-plus-word answer. But he offered no challenge as Powell attacked the “dark vein of intolerance” coming from Sarah Palin and other conservatives. Powell lashed into Palin for saying Obama was “shucking and jiving” on Benghazi, but said nothing about Biden insisting Republicans want blacks “back in chains.” Powell voted for Biden, twice, too.

In the next segment, Gregory turned Powell’s indictment on former RNC chairman Haley Barbour: “He talks about a deep vein of intolerance within the Party. How did that sit with you?” Barbour not only failed to defend today’s GOP on racism, he repeated that Powell the Obama Voter fits in the Republican “mainstream.” Worse yet, Gregory asked Republican consultant Mike Murphy “You've had a lot of these similar critiques. Your thoughts about Colin Powell this morning?”

Murphy said he was happy to hear Powell’s “still a Republican,” and “I’d invite him to come back home and help us modernize and strengthen the party. We could use him.”

Mike Murphy and his friends in the media are on the very same page: To “modernize” the Republican Party is to put conservatism through a shredder. On NBC back in November, Murphy warned if “we don't modernize conservatism, we can go extinct....we’ve got to get kind of a party view of America that's not right out of Rush Limbaugh’s dream journal."

By the by, how does one “modernize” principles? Limbaugh’s dream is Reagan’s dream. You can’t be against Rush and for Reagan.

In 2004, these same TV “news” people denounced Sen. Zell Miller for ripping his former party at the GOP convention. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell denounced him for “a red meat speech, in fact a raw meat speech, which in fact misstates a lot of Kerry's record.” On ABC, George Stephanopoulos whined “Zell Miller was on a tirade. I mean, he was red faced, red meat for the red states." On MSNBC, both Chris Matthews and David Gergen compared Miller to “axe-wielding segregationist” Democrat Lester Maddox.

Our transparently partisan media elite believes only one party should be embarrassed for its alleged extremism. Only one party must moderate or die. The Republicans must always move left. The liberal media is always holding up a plastic cup of “compromise” Kool-Aid and demanding the GOP drink up. Republicans should listen to this advice, knowing the correct response is always to do the opposite.