Hugh Hewitt

With no manufactured outrage to hammer Mitt Romney at the moment, liberal journalists are now eagerly touting a series of polls which appear to show President Obama pulling away from the GOP nominee in several key states.

Unfortunately, these polls are relying on sample sizes which are skewed tremendously leftward with far more Democrats than Republicans and as such, they are unlikely to be good predictors of actual Election Day turnout. Do the pollsters themselves actually believe in their own sample sizes though? At least one appears not to.

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "Sometimes [Rick] Santorum sounds like he's creeping up on a Christian version of Sharia law."

In response to this nonsense, the Republican presidential candidate told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt later that day, "This is the intolerance of the Left. If you have religious beliefs that they don’t believe in, then they marginalize you" (video follows with partial transcript):

On Monday, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt hosted Politico.com editor John Harris to discuss Politico's coverage of the aftermath of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Hewitt charged that Politico's reporting - both on the Tucson massacre and in general - has been driven hard to the left in recent years. Here's full audio of the exchange, via Breitbart.tv:

Monday night marks the debut of Lawrence O'Donnell's very own show, called The Last Word, on MSNBC and if his guest spots on various programs on that network and the syndicated McLaughlin Group over the last few years are any indication, he's bound to give Keith Olbermann a run for his money for over-the-top loony tirades.

O'Donnell reared his bigoted side on the December 8, 2007 edition of the McLaughlin Group. He not only went after former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, but also his faith, seen in the following rants he made after the former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate delivered a speech defending his "demented, Scientology-like" Mormon faith:

MSNBC's David Shuster on Monday continued to hit Sarah Palin for supposedly inciting hate against liberals and Democrats on her Facebook page. The cable channel's graphic hyperbolically complained, "Sarah Palin's Dem Hit-list." With no sense of irony, Shuster then brought on the vitriolic Mike Malloy to trash Palin.

Malloy is the liberal radio host who said in 2009 that Dick Cheney has "been eating the blood of a Jewish or a Muslim baby," to cite but one example. And yet the MSNBC anchor queried this purveyor of hate speech about whether Sarah Palin is bad for the Republican Party.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt also appeared and clearly annoyed Shuster by touting Palin's intelligence and by deriding MSNBC. At one point, the incredulous Shuster focused on a comment Hewitt made about Democrat Senator Barabara Boxer. He wondered, "Hugh, did you just say [Palin will] make the contrast in terms of intelligence with Barbara Boxer?" [Audio available here.]

Conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt and liberal publisher Arianna Huffington squared off on Sunday in an epic ideological battle about Fox News's Glenn Beck and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

With Howard Kurtz moderating on CNN's "Reliable Sources," the outspoken pair found very little to agree about.

Unfortunately, Kurtz was by no means an impartial host oftentimes letting Huffington off the hook while pressing his conservative guest more strongly on points he didn't agree with (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary):

Barack Obama likes to claim he believes in the free market, even as he lards his administration with what Hugh Hewitt has delightfully dubbed "Mickey Maoists" like Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom.

But Ed Schultz has given away the game.  On his MSNBC show this evening, Schultz said of ObamaCare: "this is the first step toward single-payer. I admit that."

Here's Schultz's full statement . . .

The Sacramento Bee has drawn some heat for a September 24 article about California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's previous voting record.

In the piece, author Andrew McIntosh alleged that "Whitman regularly skipped elections in California and several other states where she lived and worked."

On Monday, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt took McIntosh to task:

Leave it to a liberal with a microphone to condemn a practice he relishes when not pontificating.

A recent example -- Ed Schultz from one day to the next on his radio show last week.

On Wednesday, Schultz had this to say about conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt urging Americans not to buy GM or Chrysler vehicles since they are now manufactured by largely government-owned "socialist" companies (click here for audio)

A couple days ago at the gym, listening to a Hugh Hewitt podcast and perhaps not paying as much attention as I should have while pedaling away, I heard Hugh mention that Barack Obama doesn't understand the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What was Hugh referring to? As the British would say: the penny just dropped.  A few minutes ago, CNN's Situation Room played a clip of Obama saying this about his plan for Iraq:

BARACK OBAMA: I'm going to call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and give them a new mission, and that is to bring the war in Iraq to a close.  We are going to get out.

There's only one problem.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff does not have operational command of U.S. military forces.  That authority resides in the commanders of the various Unified Combatant Commands.  CENTCOM is the command with responsibility for Iraq [and 26 other countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan].  Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed Pres. Bush's appointment of Gen. David Petraeus as CENTCOM commander.  Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is the new US commander for Iraq, replacing Gen. Petraeus. Those are the people, along with the Secretary of Defense, to whom the orders Obama spoke of would be issued.

 View video here.

Time brought the hammer, nails, and lumber to build on Barack Obama’s demand that conservatives "lay off my wife." The June 2 edition of the "news" magazine included a two-page spread on "The War Over Michelle." Reporters Nancy Gibbs and Jay Newton-Small (both females) suggested she’s now "a favorite target of conservatives, who attack her with an exuberance that suggests there are no taboos anymore." They cited Hugh Hewitt, National Review, and an anonymous blog commenter as the villains of the piece.

The Time duo attempted the spin that this is puzzling since Mrs. Obama is so conservative:

In the early going, Michelle Obama was not an obvious conservative target, since in some obvious ways she's so conservative herself.

The voters had a temper tantrum last week . . . Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an angry two-year-old. -- Peter Jennings, November 14, 1994, on the Republican landslide.

[C]onservatives . . . can choose to stand aside from history while having a temper tantrum. But they should consider that the American people might then choose not to invite them back into a position of responsibility for quite a while to come. -- William Kristol, February 4, 2008, on conservative aversion to McCain.

It's one thing to have been bawled out by the late Peter Jennings. But do conservatives have to have their knuckles rapped by one of their own, Bill Kristol? Apparently yes, as per the Weekly Standard editor's New York Times column of today, Dyspepsia on the Right.

CNN correspondent Carol Costello’s report on Thursday’s "The Situation Room" would have you believe that Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio have "lost influence," and the supposed proof is John McCain’s success up to this point in the Republican race for the presidential nomination.

During the report, which aired at the bottom of the 5 pm Eastern hour, Costello proclaimed that Republican primary voters have "betrayed" conservative talk show hosts, and the evidence that this is the case is John McCain’s primary victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. She used a sound bite from former Republican Congressman Bob Barr to reenforce her point. Barr opined that McCain’s success is "a sign that no one or two talk show hosts really wield the influence that they did two or three [election] cycles ago."

You'd hardly expect the chief Washington correspondent of business channel CNBC to negatively stereotype economic conservatives. But appearing on today's Morning Joe, the urbane John Harwood did just that.

View video here.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: [Huckabee is] a different type of evangelical. It's not the evangelical in American politics that's traditionally been very conservative economically. Obviously a lot of people at the Wall Street Journal don't like this guy.

HARWOOD: Oh yeah!

As Republican primary campaign slogans go, "Endorsed by Frank Rich!" might not be a candidate's strongest play. But for better or worse Mike Huckabee is essentially stuck with it after Rich's NYT's column of yesterday. The ostensible theme of "The Republicans Find Their Obama" is that Republican voters are leaning toward Huckabee for the same reasons that Dems are trending to Obama: that both men are relatively young, speak across racial lines, are witty and avoid hyper-partisanship.

But dig down a bit deeper, and it appears that Huckabee's real appeal for Rich is that, social issues aside, he is the most liberal of the GOP frontrunners. Making his case for Huckabee, Rich goes so far to dabble in Christian theology [emphasis added]:

CBS Correspondent Anthony Mason would probably call it the not-so-almighty dollar, and he’d be correct if U.S. economic health was viewed only through the narrow lens of currency exchanges.

“[T]he weak dollar is really wreaking havoc on investor confidence and in many ways, the impact is just beginning to be felt,” Mason said on CBS’s November 12 “The Early Show.” “The dollar, once the gold standard of currencies, is falling hard and fast around the world. At $1.46, the euro is up nearly 12 percent against the greenback. The yen traded at 110.38 per dollar, an 18-month high. And for the first time since 1976, the Canadian dollar has risen over 20 percent in value against the U.S. dollar at $1.06.” (Click here to see video.)

But while the dollar is lagging, some experts think the dollar is undervalued.

It might not be as sexy as an item about an MSM anchor exposing his liberal bias. But if there's one thing I'd encourage conservatives to read, consider and act on in the blogosphere today, it is the Patrick Ruffni column "Information Gaps on the Right" at Hugh Hewitt's blog.

Ruffini's fundamental point is the need for professionalized, conservative "feeder blogs," sites that "tee up" information for other blogs. Ruffini points to Think Progress as a model from the left of what this should be:

In an email to libertarian blog Q and O, Columbia Journalism Review writer Paul McLeary corrected his remarks that stated milbloggers preferred to leave fighting for their country to others. He said he “really stepped in it” and was “careless in [his] choice of wording.” If only the New York Times would correct their mistakes as publicly and clearly as McLeary did.

Based on his explanation, it appears he said he wasn't calling milbloggers chickenhawks, he was calling bloggers like Hugh Hewitt chickenhawks and “didn't take the time to clearly define what (he) was talking about.”

He also fell back on popular lefty tactics that are designed to eliminate opposing opinions. In addition to the chickenhawk gambit, McLeary insisted that writers should physically set foot in Iraq and Afghanistan, limiting discussion to only those reporters and bloggers who have been to those countries, unless, of course, the writer has an anti-military or anti-war position. Good thing that NewsBusters' Mark Finklestein has been to Iraq!

Here is the portion of McLeary's email that Q and O posted (bold mine):