National Review

Two years ago today, I chronicled wire service reports which appeared shortly after John Hinckley's unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 reporting that schoolchildren in many parts of the country cheered when they heard that he had been shot.

At the time, I suggested that school teachers and administrators who were appalled at the reactions might have been protesting a bit too much. Today, I located a 2004 item at National Review by Stanley Kurtz about another group which was happy to hear about the assassination attempt. The left's hypocrisy about "civility" -- and for that matter, basic human decency -- clearly goes way, way back:

National Review magazine has published an excellent and comprehensive response to New York Times Book Editor Sam Tanenhaus's dishonest smear of conservative thought in a cover story for The New Republic. The article by National Review contributors Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg appears in the March 25 issue.

After first explaining that for the left, "The explanation for conservatives’ opposition to President Obama and his agenda must be found not in our ideas but in our pathologies," they argue (bolds added by me):

The scary-looking "military style" AR-15 has been the target of the hyper-emotional left in the media ever since the Newtown shooting.  Most notably, Piers Morgan tried to take conservative commentator and CNN contributor Dana Loesch to task for owing one.  Last night, Dan Rather said on Morgan's show that,"there is no need to have these high-powered assault weapons."

But as it turns out, an AR-15 is an eminently sensible firearm for home defense, particularly for young women as Celia Bigelow and Aubrey Blankenship of American Majority Action explain in a January 23 piece at National Review Online:

As NewsBusters colleague Kyle Drennan noted today, the liberal media has mobilized their legions to defend embattled U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, complaining that the criticisms leveled by Republicans are motivated by racism, sexism or both.

But there most certainly is a double standard at play as Eliana Johnson of National Review noted in an excellent November 21 post in which she detailed how left-wing journalists and members of Congress attacked Condoleezza Rice as an incompetent Bush hack. Johnson wrote that:

On Wednesday’s Jansing & Co., MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing tried to establish that there is one question “we can all anticipate and not be surprised by,” and that is a question to Mitt Romney about the 47 percent comments, because it had a “very negative effect” on voters. Jim Lehrer must repeat Obama's TV ads in a question?

But what about the “other race speech” video of Obama from 2007? In perfect formation with the DNC line, Jansing asked disgraced CBS anchor Dan Rather if that smacked of Republican desperation: [ video below the break, audio here ]

In an irony of ironies, a CNN roundtable on media bias featured a liberal figure of the institutional media, Chrystia Freeland, claiming that Paul Ryan has gotten "pretty fabulous treatment" at the hands of the media. Her statement came on Sunday's Reliable Sources.

"I think he's had pretty fabulous treatment in the press and maybe actually a lack of scrutiny of what he's actually saying," Freeland opined, pointing to the "image" of him as "superwonk." She ironically addressed media bias as a liberal member of the mainstream press. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Does anyone remember anybody in the establishment press speculating over who might hold Cabinet positions during a second Bush 43 term in the fall of 2004 without qualifying it with "if Bush is reelected"? Neither do I.

But at the Politico on Thursday, the closest Josh Ragin got in an item found at the web site's "The Cable" section speculating on whether John Kerry or Susan Rice is better positioned to be Obama's nominee to be "America's next top diplomat" (i.e., Secretary of State) was quoting a Republican Senate aide who merely referred to the possible fireworks "if it's the beginning of a second Obama term." That doesn't even qualify as a qualifier either, because a victorious Obama might attempt to confirm a new nominee to replace Hillary Clinton during a lame-duck session. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

The war against Chick-fil-A, whose COO dared to support traditional marriage, continues. This time, the battlefield is college football – specifically, Chick-fil-A’s sponsorship of two college football games.

OutSports.com editor Cyd Ziegler took to Huffington Post on August 20 with a piece titled, “Stop Chick-fil-A from Forcing College Football Players to Wear Their Logo,” which advocated the end of the Chick-fil-A's sponsorship of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game and the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

UPDATE: Maddow responds.

She's touted by the liberal media as one of the brightest commentators on television, yet MSNBC's Rachel Maddow got thoroughly demolished by National Review editor Rich Lowry on Sunday's Meet the Press.

When continually asked by Lowry to defend the President's $700 billion Medicare cuts in ObamaCare, Maddow repeatedly refused making herself look tremendously foolish (video follows with transcript and commentary):

National Review editor Rich Lowry made a tremendously pessimistic prediction on PBS's McLaughlin Group this weekend.

"Despite the heartening support for Chick-fil-A – we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the restaurants - private sector and government bullying of opponents of gay marriage is the wave of the future" (video follows with commentary):

Roland Martin and National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru had a heated debate Friday about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) unsubstantiated claims regarding Mitt Romney's taxes.

Toward the end of the battle on CNN's OutFront, Ponnuru marvelously told his opponent, "You've got to call these things as you see them, not just be a political hack for your team" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At National Review (here and here), Stanley Kurtz has proven beyond doubt that Barack Obama sought the far-left New Party's endorsement in 1996. In the process, he has rendered a central claim made by the Obama campaign at its "Fight the Smears" web site in 2008 ("Barack Did Not Seek New Party Endorsement") and swallowed whole by the gullible establishment press utterly false.

In 2008, Ben Smith, who was then at Politico, also swallowed the line from the New Party's founder that the party never really had "members," which is going to be the focus of this post:

In the wake of Richard Mourdock's landslide victory over Republican Senator Richard Lugar in Indiana's primary Tuesday, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift made what some might consider a staggeringly stupid prediction on Friday's McLaughlin Group.

"The Tea Party will cost the Republicans control of the Senate" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

National Review's Reihan Salam on Sunday proved once again that liberal media members no matter what their number are no match for one well-informed conservative.

On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Salam took on the host, Time magazine's Joe Klein, and the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel on a far-ranging discussion about how both sides of the aisle view taxes, the Tea Party, and social change with the conservative ending up looking like the only knowledgeable person in the room (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday voiced predictable praise for President Obama's just released budget claiming you can't "drastically cut a deficit before you invigorate the economy or you’re going to look at a lost decade."

National Review's Rich Lowry quickly refuted this nonsense telling his progressive co-panelist, "This isn’t a Keynesian budget. It’s a flat out tax and spend big government liberal budget” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A month ago, Aya Batrawy at the Associated Press's Egyptian bureau described those who ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo as "protesters," and absurdly asserted in the face of contrary evidence I was able to find in about five minutes that "the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel ... has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians."

Last week, in the wake of the burning -- more like the gutting -- of the Institut d’Egypte in Cairo and the destruction of and serious damage to thousands of priceless books, manuscripts, documents, and artifacts, Batrawy attempted to deflect blame to the military (which did have a role, as will be seen later) for not sufficiently protecting the building instead of placing it on the arsonists who did the damage. And of course, you'll search in vain for any references to the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi radicals, or Islam. I guess Batraway didn't want anyone to get any kind of crazy idea that this "Arab Spring" enterprise which Western news outlets so gullibly embraced earlier this year isn't exactly working out. Here are several paragraphs from the AP repoter's dispatch (bolds are mine throughout this post):

As is to be expected whenever he's in front of a camera, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, accused Republicans of exploiting "racist elements" in the society.

Fortunately for viewers, the lone conservative on the panel, National Review editor Rich Lowry, pushed back against this nonsense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge.

Breaking Biden's bilge into three sections, they involve his claim about the historical origins of the Tea Party, which Biden characterized as a collection of "barbarians" only a month ago (and as "terrorists" two month ago); his hit at Bank of America and its $5 monthly fee for debit-card use; and the nature of the "bailouts" which followed the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in the fall of 2008. In this first part, I will go after what Biden said about the Tea Party. An excerpt from Oliphant's writeup follows the jump (bolds are mine throughout):

Costello related how Freeman "ran into him [Obama] on the golf course and he said, he said he wanted to tell the President to quote, 'Get pissed off, get fighting mad.'" After reporting that New York Times columnist Charles Blow has written about how Obama needs to be tougher, she asked Blow what he thought about Freeman's comment.

Then Costello followed that up with another gem, as she clumsily described the vicious words of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) toward the Tea Party as straight talk about a political enemy. "Somebody who is trying to give it to people straight, perhaps, is Congresswoman Maxine Waters," reported Costello.

[Video below the break.]

On Tuesday morning, CNN's Kyra Phillips asked why the Republican presidential candidates have not been speaking out on foreign policy in Libya during the climactic battle in the country's capital between rebel and imperial forces. CNN had interviewed Republican candidate Jon Huntsman the night before, but had not yet asked him about the conflict in Libya, in the first of a two-part interview set to conclude Tuesday night.

"This week's battle in Libya, the first big chance for the GOP presidential hopefuls to show their foreign policy savvy," Phillips noted during the 10 a.m. hour of Newsroom. "Why haven't we heard from them?" she asked. Liberal CNN analyst Roland Martin subsequently hammered the Republicans as "wimps" for their silence.

[Video below the break.]

ESPN's LZ Granderson labeled Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as "crazy" Monday, and CNN anchor Kyra Phillips seemed to credit his judgment.

Granderson, a CNN contributor, said of a Bachmann candidacy that "the people aren't going to vote for crazy. And she [Bachmann] still registers as crazy with a lot of independents." Phillips immediately responded that "If you could go back decades, there's a lot of people who vote for crazy, guys."

[Video below the break.]

National Review's Jim Geraghty notes today that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer hasn't gotten the memo on the new tone in Washington. “I think we’re playing Russian roulette with the nation’s credit-worthiness, and unfortunately, all the chambers seem to be loaded on the House side. They want to shoot every bullet they have at the President” said Hoyer on Wednesday's "Morning Joe."

When National Review's Jim Geraghty noted on CNN Thursday that the national unemployment rate has been higher through Obama's two years in office than at any time during Bush's two terms, and that the news could hurt Obama in the upcoming election, CNN's Ali Velshi would have none of it.

Velshi interrupted Geraghty and sternly rebuked his premise, decreeing that "with all due respect, that's just a silly thing to say." Velshi, however, could not offer anything other than ridicule to oppose Geraghty's statement which is factually correct.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

For the second week in a row, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and National Review's Rich Lowry had quite a battle on PBS's "McLaughlin Group."

This time the fireworks started when Lowry called President Obama classless for the way he treated Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) at Wednesday's speech on deficit reduction which led Clift to ask, "What else would you expect from a socialist born in Kenya who’s hiding his birth certificate?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a moment on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" that is guaranteed to make conservatives all around the country smile from ear to ear.

After Newsweek's Eleanor Clift predictably attacked Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and his just-released budget proposal, National Review's Rich Lowry caught her in a serious contradiction and said, "With all due respect, Eleanor, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, George Will this weekend lambasted Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee about separate comments the two have made regarding Barack Obama's background and upbringing.

On Monday, during his fifth day in a row on this subject, MSNBC's Chris Matthews actually compared Will's column to William F. Buckley Jr. banning anti-Semitic writers from the National Review in the '50s (video follows with transcript and commentary):

National Review's Reihan Salam this weekend demonstrated exactly why it should be required that there be at least one conservative present during televised political discussions.

Appearing on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," Salam had a spirited and at times contentious debate with the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan about conservatism, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party (video follows with transcript and commentary):