2010 Congressional

On Monday's Parker-Spitzer, CNN's Kathleen Parker picked up where her co-host Eliot Spitzer left off on Friday, bashing conservatives as "fringe elements" inside the Republican Party. Parker continued the Tea Party movement was the result of the GOP "catering" to such elements and that "the kooks have come home to roost." The pseudo-conservative columnist returned to her old habit of…

  On Tuesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith interviewed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and questioned the ability of tea party candidates to be effective in office: "...when it's time to govern, can anger govern? Or better yet, how about this one, if a tug-of-war starts between the tea party folk and the mainstream Republicans, who's going to win that tug-of-war?"  [Audio…

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell and Mika Brzezinski believe the Republicans should be open and transparent about the interest group sources of their campaign money, even though Democrats play by the same rules and don't have to reveal their sources. Their reasoning was that the GOP has pulled in 40 to 50 million dollars more than the Democrats have from interest groups this campaign season. The…

George Stephanopoulos adopted the "guilty until proven innocent" style of questioning on Tuesday and pressed strategist Karl Rove to prove that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups aren't receiving foreign money– a charge there's no evidence for. Stephanopoulos teased, "And dirty money? President Obama and Joe Biden accuse Karl Rove of trying to buy this year's election. Is foreign…

Reporting that an elderly woman fainted at a West Virginia campaign appearance by former President Clinton, MSNBC ran the provocative headline "He's Still Got It," on its 10 a.m. EDT news hour. We'll leave it to the reader to guess what exactly MSNBC was getting at. President Clinton was giving a stump speech Monday for West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, the state's Democratic nominee for the…

The White House’s current effort to disparage the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an act of desperation in light of the low poll numbers of the Democratic Party going into the November midterm, as some have pointed out. But perhaps President Barack Obama should address some questions about his own fundraising before attacking other organizations. On the Oct. 11 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “…

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And so goes the White House with these attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce drummed up by the “professional left’s” blogosphere that it is using foreign donations to finance political advertising. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer however, had another take on…

When is it OK for a politician to slam a shot to show she's a regular gal? Easy: when she's a Dem.  If she's a Republican?  Well, that's a shot of entirely different sort. She's a wasted drunk. Just ask Ed Schultz.  On his show this evening, the MSNBCer took Carly Fiorina to task for taking a shot of tequila on the campaign trail.  Schultz slammed the California Republican senatorial candidate…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday took on CBS's Bob Schieffer for challenging unsubstantiated allegations that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling foreign dollars into Republican campaigns. As NewsBusters previously reported, the "Face the Nation" host mocked White House senior adviser David Axelrod Sunday for advancing this unfounded premise that even the New York Times has discredited…

Grilling Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on Monday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez questioned President Obama attacking Republicans over unproven claims of accepting foreign campaign donations: "Why did he spend so much time talking about the Republicans trying to steal the election? Offering no evidence of that. Isn't it a bit undignified for the President to resort to that?"  …

It seems like a phony issue for the a struggling Obama administration to be promoting – the allegations that the U.S. Chamber of  Commerce may or may not be using foreign contributions to fuel political ads against Democrats. However, President Barack Obama would be best advised to make sure his party wasn’t doing something similar before using the bully pulpit to push this meme. On CNBC’s…

It's the tale of two attempts at "digital astroturf" or "online grassroots activism" or whatever you want to call it. Regardless of the label, there's an apparent media double standard at work: attempts to rig prominent online information sources for political gain is only worth reporting if the perpetrators are conservatives. The blogosphere - though not the mainstream media - has been…

As Barack Obama's second year in office comes to a close, a dark reality is starting to set in on his once adoring fans in the media: he is in way over his head. The most recent press member to reach this conclusion is Time's Mark Halperin whose Monday column "Why Obama Is Losing the Political War" asserts that many of his colleagues now share this pessimistic view of the man currently…

Four years ago, frustrated with President Bush and the Republican Congress, voters handed over to Democrats the gavels to the House and Senate chambers. Weeks before the 2006 election, the Washington Post matter-of-factly noted that "Outside Groups [Were] Shoveling Cash Into Tight Races." In that 24-paragraph October 3 article, Post staffers noted massive independent expenditures being…