Mitt Romney

In the quadrennially important swing state of Ohio, one of the Toledo Blade's featured front page stories on Sunday wondered if Mormonism would shape Romney's policy. Following an endorsement of Obama last week in which there was no mention of the president's beliefs, religion editor Timothy Knox Barger's penned a 2,500 word piece that resorted to scare tactics and conjecture.

Among them was a seemingly legitimate concern that Romney might try to impose a ban on certain things that he's known to abstain from himself -- like coffee for instance.

The New York Times leaned "Forward!" for Barack Obama's reelection in its campaign coverage over the weekend. The front of the paper's Saturday Election 2012 section featured a large photo from an Obama rally of a volunteer handing out flags at a fairground rally in Hilliard, Ohio on Friday. The caption noted "A crowd of 2,800 showed up to see Mr. Obama."

Meanwhile, campaign reporter Ashley Parker estimated on Twitter Friday night that 25,000 people attended a Romney rally in West Chester Township in Ohio. But those strong turnout figures for Romney, which suggested high levels of enthusiasm in a crucial state, were buried in the very back of Parker and Michael Barbaro's Sunday story from the campaign trail.

Fox proved once again that it has anything but a conservative bias.

As NewsBusters warned in September, the hit series The Simpsons on Sunday totally trashed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his supporters two days before Election Day (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Remember when liberals scoffed at the fact that Romney could win more than 60% of the white vote? Not only has Romney successfully tackled that hurdle, and liberals are apparently mad about it. Tom Scocca of Slate Magazine wrote on November 2 about the “tribal appeal” that Mitt Romney has with whites and why “white people think” he’ll be a better president. I’ll give you a hint: It’s R _ C I S M.

After proudly declaring his support for President Obama (and how Slate will traditionally list all its staffers' votes for the Democrats), Scocca insists they are not in a liberal bubble. He channels the insufferable and dismissive tone American liberalism has successfully monopolized over the past years.  He claims “White men are supporting Mitt Romney to the exclusion of logic or common sense, in defiance of normal Americans.”

Today Show host Savannah Guthrie made a statement about Hurricane Sandy on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that is sure to raise a lot of eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

"Here was a moment handed to [Obama] seemingly from above where he could look like that strong, independent, steady in a storm, very appealing to the middle of the road voters, and I might add to unmarried women voters who are going to be very key in this election" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Candy Crowley got a tremendous amount of criticism last month when she defended Barack Obama during the second presidential debate.

On Sunday's State of the Union, she appeared to compensate by saying "President Romney" in a question to Ohio's Rob Portman (video follows with transcript and commentary):

I have remembered how to seem. ---King George III in "The Madness of King George."

This is a tale of two stories. The first story was an article your humble correspondent read in today's Miami Herald. The news couldn't be better for Mitt Romney because it reported that the Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald poll of likely voters showed the former Massachusetts governor leading Barack Obama in Florida by a comfortable 51 to 45 margin. However in the same edition of the Miami Herald there is also an Associated Press story stating that Obama "seems" to be leading in early polls in key states. Based on what? Apparently based on pixie dust since virtually no real proof is offered.

First the Miami Herald report chock full of facts which shows Romney with a solid lead:

CBS Late Show host David Letterman took a humorous swipe at MSNBC's Chris Matthews Friday.

In a recurring segment riffing on Zogby polls, Letterman said that 51 percent of people supporting Mitt Romney are doing so because they "Want to see Chris Matthews cry like a baby" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Cher and Kathy Griffin on Friday released a campaign video accusing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of wanting to turn back time on women’s rights.

I guess these two brainiacs haven’t gotten the message that the White House’s phony Republican war on women has failed and failed badly (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time Friday might have said one of the most disgraceful things uttered during the 2012 campaign season.

"If you're thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you" (video follows with commentary):

Imagine the media outrage if a conservative commentator listed states where Barack Obama would be hunted down with dogs.

On CNN's OutFront Friday, liberal contributor Paul Begala said, "When Bush Sr. carried Pennsylvania, he also carried California and Illinois and New Jersey, places where they would hunt Romney down with dogs" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As the 2012 campaign nears its close, the left seems increasingly to be shooting from the hip – and aiming at the crotch.

Many conservatives have been appalled by the coarseness of some of the Obama campaign’s missives: things like “vote like your lady parts depend on it,” the Lena Dunham ad associating women voting for Obama with losing their virginity, or every third word out of Joe Biden’s mouth.

And that’s just the official messaging. It gets far worse in the swamps of liberal opinion. How about a visit to The Huffington Post, the online newsletter of the Hollywood left?

In what seems to have been a humor piece in HuffPo’s “Gay Voices” blog, someone named Nico Lang exhorted readers, “If They’re Voting for Mitt Romney, Don’t Have Sex With Them.” That’s right. Think Lysistrata with a lobotomy.

Clint Eastwood made quite a splash when he spoke at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this summer.

Continuing his ringing endorsement of Mitt Romney on Fox News's Hannity Thursday, the actor/director said, "He is just a perfect guy for the job" (video follows with transcript):

Glee star Jane Lynch dressed as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for Halloween.

In a pre-recorded Chelsea Lately aired Thursday, Lynch also said her wife was going as Paul Ryan (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, file photo):

On Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, host Morgan treated New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's endorsement of President Barack Obama as a significant threat to Mitt Romney, and ended up bolstering Bloomberg's concerns about Hurricane Sandy being the result of manmade global warming.

Without noting Bloomberg's liberal record, Morgan highlighted the mayor's complaints about Romney's "endless flip-flopping." Morgan:

Forget about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, Solyndra, etc. -- it's Mitt Romney who has serious problems with transparency if you're to believe the talking heads at MSNBC. He hasn't taken questions from reporters for three whole weeks, groused Ed Schultz on the Halloween edition of his program.

Of course, President Obama hasn't exactly been willing to talk to the press corps either. As we've documented, his recent sit-downs with NBC's Brian Williams and a chat with comedian Jay Leno were gauzy interviews. Add to the ridiculousness of Schultz's gripe was that his guest contributor on the topic was none other than DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), who is obviously a fierce partisan paid to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party . [ video & transcript below ]

On Thursday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd depicted the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as a boost for President Obama and a struggle for Governor Romney. Todd touted Obama receiving praise from "the GOP's convention keynote speaker" New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and how a trip to the storm-ravaged state was "a chance to show his empathetic side."

At the same time, Todd proclaimed that "Mitt Romney spent his Wednesday full-time on the trail in Florida, trying to balance campaigning and showing sensitivity for the storm victims." The headline on screen summed up the framing of the report: "President Tours Destruction & Gov. Romney Resumes Campaign."

The mainstream media are attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that Hurricane Sandy has saved Barack Obama's re-election chances.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday, Politico's Mike Allen said, "You're already hearing Republicans hint that if Mitt Romney loses, that he'll blame the storm" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As hard as it might be to believe, the Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan has become a bigger cheerleader for President Obama than virtually anyone else in the media including the shills on MSNBC.

On Wednesday, he actually penned a drooling, gushing, sycophantic love letter to the current White House resident saying - and I'm not making this up! - "If you voted for Obama in 2008 and don't in 2012, you never really voted for him in 2008":

NewsBusters reported Monday that schlockumentarian Michael Moore created a tremendously vile anti-Romney campaign video for MoveOn.org that included seniors uttering vulgar threats at the Republican presidential nominee.

On Wednesday, CNN's Piers Morgan did a 48 minute interview with Moore without asking him one single question about this disgraceful video.

Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner has noted the harsh racism recently expressed by the same pastor who delivered the benediction at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009. Readers should read Gehrke's post as well as the underlying article in the Monroe County Reporter in Forsyth, Georgia to get the full flavor of what the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery said at St. James Baptist Church this past Saturday, because you can virtually guarantee the establishment press won't touch it, and this post won't be able to capture every offensive word and phrase.

Selected paragraphs from the Reporter's coverage, including its impact-minimizing subheadline, follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

A video of a mother trying to console her crying four year-old daughter about the fact that the election campaign season will soon be over has allegedly gone viral. I say "allegedly" because the original of the video involved shows ove 700,000 hits at its YouTube results listing, but only about 19,000 at the original video itself.

Anyway, the four-year old is Abigael Evans, and her reaction was to hearing yet another NPR report on the election in the car while riding with her mother Elizabeth. ABC's Jilian Fama has covered the story. A revealing statement from Abigael's mother appears to demonstrate how blatantly biased NPR's coverage of the presidential election campaign has been:

I heard Rush Limbaugh comment on this report from the Associated Press's Thomas Beaumont and Brian Bakst ("Romney, GOP suddenly plunging onto Democratic turf") this afternoon on his program. This evening, having read the whole, I agree with him (which of course often happens) that the AP writer are very upset that GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney and his campaign are going after Pennsylvania and Minnesota -- so upset that they're throwing any kind of speculative nonsense they can conjure up to explain away its obvious significance, namely that Team Romney believes they can pick up even more electoral than they believe they have within their control by venturing into these two states -- oh, and Michigan too.

How upset are they? One theory the AP pair has: "Or perhaps the Republican simply has money to burn. Use it now or never." Lord have mercy, guys. The question with the answer you don't like is: Why is he "burning" it in those two states? Gee, because he apparently thinks he can win them. Several paragraphs from Beaumont's and Bakst's blubbering, which will only admit to the apparently unlikely (in their view) possibility the Romney "could" win the race for the White House, follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Late-night comedians have a dramatic bias in favor of Barack Obama. Los Angeles Times media reporter James Rainey passed along that The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University catalogued jokes about public figures told from August 27 to October 3 by Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, and Craig Ferguson. (No Kimmel? No Conan?)

The monologues of the top nighttime talk shows have targeted Romney with 148 jokes since the political party conventions this summer, compared with 62 jokes aimed at Obama. Guess whose act tilted the most against Romney?

The controversial New York Times pollster Nate Silver, who has been roundly criticized for his overly-optimistic Barack Obama polling, told Charlie Rose, on his PBS show on Tuesday: "I don't intend to vote this year."

Silver, responding to a Rose question that he had a political bias in favor of the President, added: "I'd say I am somewhere in-between being a libertarian and a liberal. So if I were to vote it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision, I suppose."

Before Silver made that claim he attacked MSNBC's Joe Scarborough's recent criticism of his numbers, as he huffed: "He's not using math...He's not using history...He's not using civics." (video after the jump)

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford hyped the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy as a "huge opportunity" for President Obama to display his leadership skills, as opponent Mitt Romney currently hold the advantage in that area in the latest CBS News poll of key battleground states, particularly in Florida.

Crawford also touted that Obama could "build his lead on the question of which candidate better understands people's needs and problems. Voters here [in Florida] give him the edge on empathy."