Debates

On Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander noted how the Republican primary "has increasingly become laced with references to religion" and predicted that in the upcoming GOP debate on CNN, "[Rick] Santorum is likely to be peppered with questions about his remarks on what he called the President's 'phony theology.'"

Later in the report, Alexander touted Mitt Romney being drawn into the issue: "Romney has tried to narrow his focus to the economy. But at a town hall meeting on Tuesday he was asked how he would protect religious freedom and answered by attacking the President." After a sound bite of Romney describing how President Obama "hangs around" with people who have a "secular agenda," Alexander dutifully forwarded the White House defense: "The Obama campaign quickly fired back, calling Romney's comments 'disgraceful.'"

Republicans are deceitfully playing with words to avoid being slammed as homophobes, racists, and bigots, claimed CNN contributor L.Z. Granderson on Tuesday morning's Newsroom. Anchor Kyra Phillips simply let Granderson air his liberal diatribe without any challenge, and no conservative guest was brought on to respond.

Republicans "aren't fighting for Muslims and mosques," said Granderson of their claims of "religious freedom," but simply "fighting for Christianity." [Video below. Click here for audio.]

One thing I’ve learned in the year I have spent tracking General Motors cum Government Motors (GM) - and all its Crony Socialist, green non-energy “energy”, flammable absurdities - is the fact that the car media are every bit the Leftist open-channel steno pool as are the political media.  

And with President Barack Obama running for reelection in large part on the utterly failed “success” of the $85 billion auto bailout, the car and political media have by now achieved fully melded fusion.

The examples are myriad.

Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris on Monday accused ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of being a “paid Democratic hitman.”

Appearing on Fox News’s Hannity, Morris also said Stephanopoulos was “under orders” to ask Mitt Romney all those contraception questions during ABC’s January 7 Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire (video follows with transcript and commentary):

So a guy whose contract was terminated by NPR on a phony pretext for not toeing the liberal line enough, including writing a book ("Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It") which indicted the modern civil-rights movement for, well, undermining Black America, now appears to want eliminate "Constitution" and "Founding Fathers" from the lexicon of Republican candidates -- and possibly, it would appear, from political discussion in general -- because, well, they're racial code words. How ironic.

That is what Juan Williams outrageously claims in his latest column at the Hill today (bold is mine):

Bloomberg's Jeanne Cummings got a much-needed lesson Friday about money not being everything in politics.

After she claimed on PBS's Inside Washington that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's revival in the race was all due to multimillion dollar donations from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer correctly replied that the former Speaker's ascendancy resulted from his debate performances in South Carolina not money (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich severely admonished CNN's John King for beginning last Thursday's debate in South Carolina with questions about the former Speaker's ex-wife.

King asked Gingrich about this highly-publicized incident on his program Tuesday, and the former Speaker told his host, "You didn't have to take the bait. You didn't have to pick it up. You could have ignored ABC" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a confounding decision, the Republican candidates agreed to a second debate, to be held tonight in Tampa, moderated by NBC’s Brian Williams who, along with Politico’s John Harris, back on September 7 repeatedly peppered the then-larger Republican presidential field with liberal talking points and Democratic agenda items. Below, an excerpt from my September 8 post, with illustrative video:

Williams hit Texas Governor Rick Perry from the left on his state’s poor economic indicators (“no other state has more working at or below the minimum wage”) , chastised him for cutting education funding and, citing how “your state has executed 234 death row inmates,” demanded to know whether he’s “struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?” More examples and video below.

After the media's disgraceful intrusion into Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's former marriage last week, it would be hard to make the case they've been too easy on him.

But that's exactly what MSNBC's Joe Scarborough did on Monday's Morning Joe (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Saturday said "Republican audiences do not know that most people on food stamps are white."

This occurred during his network's coverage of the South Carolina primary (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Comedienne Wanda Sykes speculated Thursday that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry had to drop out of the race because "he was one more debate away from saying the N-word." 

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show to bash all the GOP candidates, she also told the host that Newt Gingrich might have wanted an open marriage with his ex-wife because she said he had a "tiny penis" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich severely scolded CNN’s John King for beginning Thursday’s debate in South Carolina with a question about allegations made by his ex-wife earlier in the day.

After the debate ended, CNN contributor David Gergen said, “This is one of the most explosive moments we’ve seen in debate history. It was also one of the harshest attacks we’ve had on the press that I can remember in a long, long time…I think that there’s a reasonable chance after talking to people here tonight that he could win South Carolina based on that answer” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CNN’s John King despicably started Thursday’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina by bringing up allegations made by Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife earlier in the day.

When asked to respond to the controversy, the former Speaker of the House said, “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that,” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had a rather testy exchange with Fox News's Juan Williams during Monday's debate in South Carolina.

After Williams accused the former Speaker of the House of being racially insensitive when referring to Barack Obama as "The Food Stamp President," Gingrich said, "The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's George Stephanopoulos responded to host Stephen Colbert's question of why he - as debate co-moderator last Saturday - asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney about whether states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives, as he argued that the question revolved around the "right to privacy."

He then suggested that a bet with co-moderator Diane Sawyer motivated him to be so persistent in asking Romney followup questions on the subject. After Colbert asked what it felt like when Romney called it a "silly thing" for Stephanopoulos to ask such a hypothetical question, the ABC anchor responded:

In an early-Sunday version of an Associated Press report which has since been revised to exclude the paragraph I'm about to cite, the wire service's Steve Peoples (authorship shown here) apparently had a hard time understanding how Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney could possibly have criticized President Barack Obama's economic stewardship in Saturday's New Hampshire debate in light of what he (Peoples) must have thought were wondrous numbers in the government's Friday employment report.

Even if you ignore the fact (which you really shouldn't) that December's reported 200,000 job additions after seasonal adjustment hid a mediocre actual performance on the ground in historical context, Peoples' reaction was remarkably ignorant and offensively aggressive:

Out the 41 questions directed to the six Republican presidential candidates during Sunday's NBC News/Facebook debate on Meet the Press, 25 of them were from the left, 13 questions were neutral, mainly about the campaign horse race and electability, and only three questions pressed the candidates from the right.

Early in the debate, moderator David Gregory demanded to know how much "pain" the candidates would inflict upon Americans by cutting spending. Newt Gingrich called out Gregory for the slanted query: "David, you know, I, I find it fascinating that very, very highly paid Washington commentators and Washington analysts love the idea of pain. What – who's going to be in pain? The duty of the president is to find a way to manage the federal government so the primary pain is on changing the bureaucracy."

During Saturday's Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, hosted by ABC, co-moderator George Stephanopoulos bizarrely pressed candidate Mitt Romney on whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. (Video below)

During Saturday's GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire hosted by ABC, after two of the moderators - World News anchor Diane Sawyer and local ABC affiliate anchor Josh McElveen - had devoted six minutes to a discussion of what the candidates would say to a gay couple "sitting in your living rooms" about same-sex marriage and adoption, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich highlighted the double standard in the media's left-leaning sympathy toward gay rights issues but lack of concern about anti-Christian "bigotry" from the left. Gingrich complained: (Video below)

Christopher Hitchens, RIP, would likely have loved the rough-and-tumble of today's Morning Joe.  The first half-hour was a jolting fix for political junkies.  

If the goring of Newt Gingrich was predictable, there was much that was not.  Michelle Bachmann's debate performance was roundly praised.  Lefty Jeff Sachs put himself to Ron Paul's right on the Iranian threat.  Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch reported that normally-Dem New York CEOs have deserted Obama en masse.  Video after the jump.

Anderson Cooper found yet another way to scrutinize Republicans, as on Tuesday he spotlighted GOP candidates attacking each other's record after each promised to run positive campaigns – even though verbal spars happen during every single election.

The segment's title of "Keeping Them Honest" insinuated that the subject is being deceitful or dishonest, and Cooper decided to call the candidates out for backtracking on their promises of positive campaigns – even though an overall positive campaign doesn't necessarily rule out attacks on opponents' records. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

During a panel discussion on Tuesday's NBC Today, NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman decried Mitt Romney proposing a $10,000 bet in the latest Republican debate: "I watched it live, and it was one of those moments where I immediately went [gasp] and you could just – even in your own living room, everything came to a halt. It was a disastrous move."

Advertising executive Donny Deutsch disagreed while still taking a shot at the GOP field: "Look, with the inane things the candidates are saying, in the scheme of things, it's not a big deal." He further added: "Jack Kennedy's family was the fifth wealthiest family in the country when he was elected. This is not a barometer, it's irrelevant."

The media are all in a tizzy about the idea of real estate tycoon Donald Trump moderating a Republican presidential debate.

On Tuesday, one of the candidates, Rick Santorum, told KLIF substitute radio host Steve Malzberg, "I can't see in some cases where Donald Trump would be any worse than what we get from the mainstream media" (video follows with transcript):

Was Brooke Baldwin's kid-glove treatment of candidate Jon Huntsman a harbinger of things to come in CNN's Tuesday night debate? The CNN host tossed the liberal media's favorite GOP candidate softball after softball in a Tuesday afternoon interview – while conservative candidate Michele Bachmann was asked Tuesday morning if she regretted running for president.

In an cushy interview during the 3 p.m. hour of Newsroom, Baldwin heaped praise on the Republican who supports same-sex civil unions and who ripped conservatives as "anti-science" for not believing in global warming. The CNN host fawned over Huntsman's "lovely" daughters and slobbered that "you seem pretty unflappable, and if I may, governor, downright nice." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, co-hosted the GOP debate in Michigan last Wednesday, and had a hand in Perry’s infamous debate “oops” moment, when the Texas governor was unable to list all three of the federal agencies he planned to eliminate as president. On Monday Harwood revealed that a CNBC producer helped prod Perry’s long, awkward moment by shouting a directive into Harwood’s earpiece.

Harwood also writes a weekly “Caucus” column for the New York Times. On Monday he discussed his role in Gov. Rick Perry’s infamous debate "oops," as well as how the audience booed the hosts for bringing up Herman Cain's sexual harassment controversy.

Those watching Saturday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina might have noticed that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) didn't get a lot of questions.

According to a CBS News email message sent to the Congresswoman's communications director, this was intentional (photo courtesy AP, vulgarity warning):

During Saturday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley arrogantly argued with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about the "rule of law" concerning killing American born terrorists overseas.

By the end of the exchange, Pelley, with a smug, condescending expression on his face, looked quite foolish as the audience applauded and one of Gingrich's opponents on stage actually commented, "Well said. Well said" (video follows with transcript and commentary):