Mitt Romney

This is quickly becoming Obama's summer of discontent.

On Friday, the perilously liberal Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift offered readers a shockingly dour piece about the state of the current White House resident's reelection campaign titled "In Focus Group, Independent Voters Souring on Obama":

While CNN's Soledad O'Brien tossed softballs at Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, she was not so kind to her Republican guest during the next hour, on Thursday's Starting Point. O'Brien reported poor poll numbers for both the Romney and Obama campaigns, but went after only the Romney campaign's economic message in detail.

O'Brien teed up the Democratic mayor to respond to Romney hitting Obama for wanting more public sector workers. But she posed the same question of Romney advisor Jim Talent, putting him on the defensive, rather than bringing up, say, President Obama's remark that the private sector is "doing just fine," a statement he later retracted.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday mocked Ann Romney for having a horse that might be heading to London to represent America in the Olympics.

I guess aside from his obvious lack of national pride, the Hardball host didn't know that the wife of the Republican presidential candidate credits horseback riding with helping to reduce her multiple sclerosis symptoms (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

"Christians On Right Urge Reform On Migrants," ran the headline over Trip Gabriel's Wednesday piece. If it sounds familiar, it's because the New York Times runs these wishful-thinking "conservative Christians break with movement on immigration enforcement" on a regular basis.

From a July 2010 article by Laurie Goodstein: "At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders."

Continuing to beat the drum of Mitt Romney's campaign not being transparent on Wednesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, fill-in host Luke Russert melodramatically asked: "Is this one of the most secretive presidential campaigns in history?" On Tuesday, regular host Chuck Todd predicted that Romney could be "the least transparent president in a generation." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

In response to Russert, NBC News political editor Mark Murray lamented the inability of the media to throw Romney off message: "I would actually say that they've demonstrated incredible message discipline. They have talked about the things that they want to talk about. When you bring up other matters, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Syria, whether it's this transparency in campaign...[the campaign says] those issues aren't – don't matter. What voters really care about is the economy."

CRITICAL UPDATE AT END OF POST.

Joy Behar, Al Gore's new employee at Current TV, said Tuesday in response to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comments on the need for more police, teachers, and firefighters, "I’d like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down."

During an interview with the liberal website Mediaite, Behar added, "Who's he going to call, the Mormon fire patrol?" (video follows with transcript and commentary, relevant section begins at minute 6:30):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir asked a deliciously ironic question of one of his guests Tuesday that I'd like to take the liberty of answering for Americans across the fruited plain.

"Does Mitt Romney believe we are all imbeciles who can’t be bothered to check the facts?" (video follows with commentary):

At the top of his Tuesday MSNBC morning show The Daily Rundown, NBC chief White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd cited the Romney campaign's refusal to release a list of top fundraising bundlers as evidence that "if he wins in November, Romney could very well be the least transparent president in a generation." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Todd continued to rant: "Less transparent than the two previous Republican presidential nominees, George W. Bush and John McCain, who did release their bundlers. But the Romney camp – campaign believes there is no penalty with voters and they don't care if the media criticizes them, because the conservative media outlets won't criticize them for this."

Donald Trump on Monday had some harsh words for Bill Maher's incessant attacks on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormonism.

Appearing on Fox News's On the Record, the real estate mogul said, "If a conservative Republican made a like statement about somebody else's religion, there’d be hell to pay. It’ll be all over the place. It would be the end of that person's career as you know it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Barack Obama’s name barely came up as The New York Times summarized the hard-left Netroots Nation conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Sarah Wheaton reported “Last year’s conference was marked by the left’s frustration with the president. But this year, his name simply did not come up much — and when it did, it was invariably paired with a favorable comparison to Mr. Romney.”

But Obama did not appear, nor did any Obama surrogate. The president did send a video message vowing to “double down on green energy” (as if that’s been a winning gamble) and fight “gutting” education, blah blah blah. Strangely, he touted killing Osama bin Laden, which the Netroots surely saw as a massive human rights violation.

Rachel Maddow to Mitt Romney: Do as I say, not as I've done too.

On her MSNBC show June 7, Maddow criticized the presumptive GOP nominee as unusually dishonest even by the low standards of national politics. (video, audio clips after page break).

A regular media meme, especially since Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comments regarding public sector employees last week, has been that there just aren't enough school teachers in America.

Such statements ignore that according to the Census Bureau, since 1960, the average class size in our public schools has declined by 40 percent as the number of teachers rose almost four times faster than the student population.

Howard Kurtz spoke an inconvenient truth on Sunday that should be extremely embarrassing to the entire Obama-loving media.

At the end of a lengthy segment about the coverage of the presidential campaign, the host of CNN's Reliable Sources said, "The reason that Romney is getting so much scrutiny right now is because the press belatedly, in my view, has finally come around to the view that he may win this election" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Candy Crowley said something Sunday guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the political aisle.

Near the end of her program State of the Union, and well after a somewhat contentious interview with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) that dealt with amongst other things the recent national security leaks controversy, Crowley stated, "Usually you kind of give the President a pass on leaking confidential stuff” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Exactly one month ago, the Washington Post published a 5,400 word front page hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's high school years which included a now infamous hair-cutting incident.

On Sunday, the Post devoted 5,500 words, beginning on the front page of the sports section, to an excerpt of David Maraniss's new book with the headline "President Obama’s Love for Basketball Can be Traced Back to His High School Team":

Michelle Obama said at a campaign stop in Philadelphia Wednesday, "When we need a leader to make the hard decisions to keep this country moving forward, you know you can count on my husband, your president."

On PBS's Inside Washington Friday, Politico's Evan Thomas surprisingly said, "That’s precisely wrong. You can’t count on him to make the tough decisions, and I think that most voters sense that" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Today at a press conference, President Barack Obama said that "we’ve created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government ..."

Later, in a cleanup attempt, in what the press is claiming is a walkback, Obama really didn't walk it back: "Listen, it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That's the reason I had the press conference. ... what I've been saying consistently over the last year, we've actually seen some good momentum in the private sector. We've seen 4.3 million jobs created -- 800,000 this year alone -- record corporate profits. And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy." He never pulled back from saying that "the private sector is doing fine." The abject panic at the Associated Press is evident in tonight's report by Ken Thomas and Philip Elliott (HT to a NewsBusters tipster; bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Bob Schieffer didn't think much of the accusation that President Obama is the "campaigner-in-chief" on Friday's CBS This Morning. When anchor Erica Hill wondered if that charge could be "harmful" to the President, Schieffer laughed aloud and replied, "If he raises enough money, it won't hurt him at all."

Just a day earlier on the morning show, correspondent Bill Plante actually pointed out that as of early June, Obama "will have done 153 fundraisers since formally declaring his candidacy for reelection a little over a year ago. That's nearly double the number President Bush had done at the same point in 2004."

Time's Mark Halperin published a piece yesterday with a rather shocking opening sentence.

"With five months until Election Day, Barack Obama faces a grim new reality: Republicans now believe Mitt Romney can win, and Democrats believe Obama can lose."

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose went out of his way to spotlight how guest Jeb Bush once complimented President Obama, and played up his disagreements with fellow Republicans. Rose touted how supposedly only Bush had the "courage" to differ with "every Republican candidate in the primary" in being open to eliminating tax deductions to increase revenue.

The anchor also highlighted how Obama claimed that he emulated the father of the former Florida governor: "The President of the United States says that his foreign policy, in sense, in part, is modeled after the foreign policy of your father, President Bush 41."

The front of Thursday's New York Times Home section (!) features a large story targeting Mitt Romney that makes the paper's notorious front-page investigation into Ann Romney's troubling horse habit look as significant as Watergate by comparison.

Political reporter Michael Barbaro invaded the Home section and devoted a staggering 1,800-word investigation to the fact that Romney's liberal neighbors in La Jolla, California don't approve of his presence or his politics: "The Candidate Next Door." The text box: "On a cul-de-sac in La Jolla, residents are not happy about their new neighbor's renovation plans – or his entourage."

With campaign 2012 in full swing, CNN deemed it appropriate to talk about elevators in the Massachusetts Statehouse on Wednesday's The Situation Room.

To catch a glimpse of what current state legislators thought of then-Governor Mitt Romney, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta talked to only one Republican and three Democrats. Out of all the complaints they could have aired, the Democrats whined about Romney and his staff reserving one of the elevators entirely to themselves. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After being pilloried for months for the half-billion dollar Solyndra debacle, Obama Democrats are desperately trying to push a the idea that Mitt Romney has a Solyndra like failure of his own to answer for.

Upon further inspection, this claim has been shown to be false but that hasn't stopped DC newspaper Politico from repeating the false notion and crafting headlines implying the charge is true.

On Tuesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC host O'Donnell teased his show by asserting that President Obama is "the really big winner" in Wisconsin because of exit polls showing that, in spite of Republican Governor Scott Walker's win, a majority of those who voted preferred President Obama over GOP candidate Mitt Romney in the presidential race. O'Donnell:

In response to the news that Republican Governor Scott Walker won his recall battle in Wisconsin Tuesday, MSNBC's Ed Schultz spoke a truth that should be a total embarrassment for the entire journalism industry.

"This is not going to be an easy night for many broadcasters who are liberal" (video follows with transcript and commentary):