Meg Whitman

This weekend’s Inside Washington put on full display the liberal sensibilities of the Washington press corps as Newsweek veteran Evan Thomas yearned for a win in Colorado for incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, “a good guy,” wishing “sometimes justice does triumph,” and former Wall Street Journal reporter Jeanne Cummings, now with Politico, was upset Republican Meg Whitman might win the California gubernatorial race: “She’s  built a turn-out operation of her own and it worries me.”

Thomas soon hailed Lincoln Chafee, the ex-Republican who campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 and is now an independent candidate for Governor in Rhode Island, as “a tiny little ray of hope” since he’s the kind of “liberal Republican” which “did the Republican Party a lot of good.” Despite the fact he abandoned the GOP, Thomas trumpeted him as “a voice for reason in the Republican Party.”

Greg Gutfeld on Saturday marvelously ripped Maureen Dowd's "GOP Mean Girls" column published by the New York Times last Sunday.

Appearing on "Fox News Watch," Gutfeld ridiculed the hypocrisy of lamenting the "evils of smearing women right before smearing women" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent John Blackstone reported on the growing influence of Latino voters, making sure to focus on Republican setbacks: "They favor Democrats over Republicans, 62 to 25 percent....in Nevada, Latinos were urged not to vote in a controversial ad....created by a conservative Latino group, seemed designed to help Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle."

Blackstone went on to deride Angle's campaign: "In ads promising to get tough on illegal immigration, Angle has been accused of stereotyping Latinos and in a much-viewed video she told Hispanic students some of them looked Asian." He then turned to problems in Meg Whitman's California gubernatorial campaign: "...immigration became an issue when Meg Whitman's undocumented housekeeper went public about being fired after working nine years for Whitman."

Blackstone touted the fact that "Among none-Latino voters she's in a dead heat with Jerry Brown at 48 percent each. But add in Latinos, and Brown has a five-point edge, 49 percent to 44 percent."
to problems in Meg Whitman's California gubernatorial campaign: "...immigration became an issue when Meg Whitman's undocumented housekeeper went public about being fired after working nine years for Whitman."

Blackstone touted the fact that "Among none-Latino voters she's in a dead heat with Jerry Brown at 48 percent each. But add in Latinos, and Brown has a five-point edge, 49 percent to 44 percent."

New York Times readers were greeted Sunday morning by the American Left's new feminism wherein it's not only acceptable to demean conservative women, it's desirable.

The architect of this truly bizarre neo-feminism, Ms. Maureen Dowd, proudly wrote in her October 17 column, "We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant":

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown was caught on tape in a conversation with an aide, in which that aide called his Republican opponent Meg Whitman a "whore" and CBS's Early Show, on Friday, didn't find that gaffe worthy to report, even though Brown was forced to apologize. ABC's Good Morning America, didn't do much better, as while they did report on the sexist phrased being hurled at Whitman they didn't get around to it, until the second hour of their show. ABC's Juju Chang, in a news brief, noted "Some salty language in the race for California governor. It's difficult to hear, but it's a voice mail recording that captures Democrat Jerry Brown" and an aide, "who used a not-so flattering word to describe" Whitman. Chang went on to play a clip of the aide saying of Whitman "She's a whore."

NBC's Today show, for some reason, bleeped out the offending word, but did offer the most extensive report of the controversy and unlike their morning competitors highlighted the story in the first hour of their program with Vieira teasing at the top of the show: "And caught on tape. A private conversation between California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and an aide recorded on a voice mail and derogatory word is used to describe rival Meg Whitman. The Brown camp is apologizing but Whitman's camp is calling it unforgivable, today." Vieira's colleague, Natalie Morales, then offered a full story, six minutes into the show.

It’s a topsy-turvy, upside-down political world out there for people who thought Barack Obama would be cruising at a 70 percent approval rating while crushing the Republicans like bugs. In fact, the opposite has happened. The Senate Majority Leader is in grave danger of involuntary retirement. Everyone in Washington concedes Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to bang the gavel in January.

So why in the world does the tone of news coverage suggest all kinds of political problems...for conservatives, as if they were the collapsing majority in this campaign?

The media elites sound like they’re resigned to the idea that a lot of Democrats are going to be unemployed in November. Their coverage seems designed now to stanch the bleeding, to devote their coverage to close races where they can bash conservative challengers in the hope of turning the tide there.

Greta Van Susteren on Friday absolutely skewered Gloria Allred, the attorney representing California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's former housekeeper.

In a fiery nine minute discussion on Fox's "On the Record," the host accused her guest of being "unthinkable" and "rotten" by bringing this issue to light, especially right before an election.  

"You're getting your client deported by putting a big neon sign, 'Hey, I'm here illegally, I signed documents falsely, and I've done that under penalty of perjury,'" scolded Van Susteren.  

"On the eve of an election, to raise something like this, which has the possibility of smearing unfairly, calling someone a liar and subverting the electoral process...I think all three things are rotten" (video follows with comments and highlights along with full transcript at end of post, h/t Ed Morrissey): 

Good Morning America on Friday continued to hype the allegations that gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman knowingly employed an illegal alien, airing the fourth segment on the topic in just two days. As though ABC hadn't played a role, reporter David Wright labeled the controversy "the story that won't seem to go away for Meg Whitman."

He added that it was a "major distraction for her campaign as this race heads into the final month." Wright explained how attorney Gloria Allred is representing Nikki Diaz, the illegal alien who was fired by the California Republican.

What Wright failed to mention is that Allred is also a partisan Democrat who has donated $10,000 to Democratic candidates and the California state party. In 2003, she tried to take down the last Republican gubernatorial candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (ABC's George Stephanopoulos did mention Allred's liberal leanings on Thursday. Wright in a report the same day, did not.)

As the Democrat-loving media pile on California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman over the illegal alien status of her former housekeeper, a strange thing happened at the New York Times Friday: columnist David Brooks published a positive piece about the former eBay CEO.

In fact, "The Austerity Caucus" never mentioned this new scandal that has most mainstream media members doing backflips.

Instead, Brooks presented a surprisingly even portrait of an extremely intelligent woman always ready to spout off facts about an issue with lightning speed:

Should Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, GOP candidates for Governor and Senate in California, respectively, be worried by recent CNN/Time poll numbers showing both trailing by sizable margins? In short: no, not really.

That's because Time/CNN seem to have stacked the deck by significantly overestimating the number of Democrats likely to vote in this year's strong anti-Obama electorate.

According to the Weekly Standard's Jay Cost, the Time/CNN poll seems to think that Democrats will have more of their voters this year than in their banner 2008 year. Cost examined the Time/CNN numbers, compared them to exit polls from previous elections, and concluded - accurately, I believe - that the poll significantly oversampled Democrats.

Good Morning America on Thursday devoted nine minutes and three segments to the "bombshell" accusations that are "rocking" the California governor's race.

After relating the allegations that Republican Meg Whitman knowingly hired an illegal housekeeper, reporter David Wright proclaimed, " The political risk for Whitman? That she comes off at heartless or hypocritical." [MP3 audio here.]

"Either way, not a good day for her campaign," he added. Wright even framed the issue as a "she said/she said" controversy. After noting that when Nikki Diaz, the housekeeper, "applied for the job, Diaz had provided proof of Social Security and legal residency," Wright added that "Diaz's lawyer insists that Whitman knew for years those documents were false."

Co-host Stephanopoulos interviewed both Whitman and liberal lawyer Gloria Allred, who is representing the woman. He began by hyping the allegations as a "potential bombshell in the California governor's race."

The news that it could be a good year for women electorally did not cheer up the likes of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson and the Politico's Jeanne Cummings, because it turns out it's only going to be a good year for women on the Republican side like Nikki Haley, Meg Whitman, and Carly Fiorina or as Carlson put it: "It's not a compassionate women year." [audio available here]

Matthews, on Monday's Hardball, invited on Carlson and Cummings to take a look at "gender politics" and found that it could be a good year for women, just not the kind of women they like, in other words the more conservative momma grizzly types that Sarah Palin supports. Cummings even bemoaned that a loss of the House could result in "one giant blow to women" in that it "could take down the Speaker, Speaker Nancy Pelosi" who was "a real shining star for the achievements and the rise of women in government."

The following is the full segment as it was aired on the August 30 edition of Hardball:

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post implied that Friends of Abe had raised money for California GOP candidates, which is not the case. We apologize for the mistake.

In the giant morass of Hollywood leftism, there is a small - but growing - group of conservatives doing its best to sway the utter one-sidedness of celebrity politics.

The group, known as the Friends of Abe, includes a number of well-known A-list personalities, some of them renowned for their outside-the-mainstream (in their line of work) politics. Kelsey Grammar, Gary Sinese, Dennis Miller, and Jon Voight among them.

But though the group is small, secretive, and far less influential than its political-professional counterpart (the rest of Hollywood), "conservative frustration with the Democratic control of Washington might be helping them flourish," according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Jerry Brown was known as "Governor Moonbeam" in the 1970s, and ran for president from the left three times (to the left of Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, and to the left of Bill Clinton in 1992). But now that he's running for governor again, Time magazine is trying to convince its readers he's really a centrist. In the August 2 magazine, reporter Karl Taro Greenfeld helpfully laid out Brown's case that he's a penny-pinching budget hawk:

He was never as eccentric as his Governor Moonbeam reputation would suggest. He was a budget hawk before that term was fashionable: he rejected the governor's mansion to live in a Sacramento apartment, was chauffered in a in a Plymouth Galaxy instead of a limousine and declined his own pay raises.

That's a weird passage: rejecting all the ritzy trappings of power is eccentric. But offering these small, symbolic poses does not make you a budget hawk. In trying to score Republican opponent Meg Whitman's ads, Factcheck.org recounted a 1992 story from the liberal New York Times:

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday repeated Democratic talking points as he challenged Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. Speaking of Whitman's tenure as CEO of Ebay, he admitted the company was "very successful," but critiqued, "You made a fortune. But your opponent, Jerry Brown, says that government is a completely different world."

The former Democratic operative turned journalist later repeated the words of Whitman's opponent: "Jerry Brown also says that the heart of your economic platform, he says, is tax cuts that are going to benefit you but not do much for the state of California."

In what seemed like a second attempt to undermine Whitman's business credentials, Stephanopoulos asserted, "You know, you see all of the shenanigans on Wall Street. And there's just as much distrust of the business world today as there is of politicians."

Chris Matthews on Friday called George W. Bush and Sarah Palin know-nothings. 

Chatting with California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown on "Hardball," the MSNBC host also called the Republican candidate for governor in that state Meg Whitman a know-nothing.

"What is it in the American psyche or character that says, if you don`t know anything, you`re somehow an average person or average guy and you have horse sense?" asked Matthews.

"What is it about people that keep picking people like George W. Bush to be president? And you see these people like Sarah Palin out there with fans." 

It seems in Matthews' view, governing Texas, Alaska, or running one of America's leading Internet companies requires zero intellectual capacity (video follows with transcript and commentary, h/t Weekly Political Review via Twitter's @ndgc12dx):

Americans learned something interesting about the priorities of the New York Times Tuesday: its editors believe a political candidate pushing an employee three years ago is more important than a candidate calling his campaign rival a Nazi last week.

Such seems apparent from the Times' choice to report California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's alleged employee shoving incident in 2007.

By contrast, the Gray Lady has still not informed readers that Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown last Tuesday likened Whitman to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Brown said the following to KCBS radio's Doug Sovern:

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, on this weekend's syndicated The McLaughlin Group, slighted conservative pro-life women everywhere when she applied California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's "so yesterday" description of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's hairstyle to women who hold anti-abortion views in the Republican Party. Clift, in a segment about the primary victories of both Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman began actually crediting Sarah Palin as "Saint Sarah" for the wins as she claimed that the former Alaskan Governor is "emboldening conservative women" and "reshaping the religious right" but then went on to question if pro-life women candidates could win statewide races in California because their views would be seen as "so yesterday." Incidentally, The Washington Times' Monica Crowley had to correct Clift as she pointed out her liberal spin wasn't even entirely accurate as Whitman is, in fact, "pro choice." [audio available here]

The following exchanges were aired on the June 12 edition of The McLaughlin Group:

With Americans heading to the polls in less than five months, the liberal media have once again adopted their typical strategy of depicting every Republican candidate as being a far-right extremist.

Such was on display in this weekend's syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" when the host began the second segment by saying, "This week's primaries proved again that this anti-Washington year may usher in Republicans who owe a lot to the far-right."

Matthews then played a clip from his upcoming special "Rise of the New Right," saying after its completion, "Well, Tea Parties have had some luck with conservatives who have beaten establishment Republicans this year. This past Tuesday night, for example, Nevada Republicans chose a Tea Party candidate to go against Harry Reid. And she's not shy about her extreme views like killing Social Security and Medicare."

After a brief clip of Sharron Angle speaking at a Nevada debate, Matthews said, "And even mainstream Republicans like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina who won nominations this week in California have bent to the right in reaction to pressure from the hard-right."

Matthews then showed a Whitman ad wherein she was talking tough about illegal immigration followed by a Fiorina commercial that had the nerve to use "that tried and true conservative line 'The Democrats are soft on terrorism.'"

The host then asked New York Magazine's John Heilemann, "That's very hard-right talk; is that the smart talk to win an election in California?" (video follows with more transcription of this discussion):

California's Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown on Tuesday called his Republican rival Meg Whitman a Nazi.

You probably didn't hear about this because America's media largely ignored it. 

By contrast, the press had a field day when Republican senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina made a comment about Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) hair that was picked up by an open microphone Tuesday evening.

Why the double standard?

Consider your answer as you read what Brown told KCBS radio's Doug Sovern (h/t NBer Gary Hall):

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer greeted Meg Whitman’s victory in California’s Republican gubernatorial primary by putting forward Democrat Jerry Brown as the savior protecting the nation against Whitman becoming Governor. “Jerry Brown told us today, he wants the country to know that he sees this as an epic duel in California between the politics of ideas and the power of money,” Sawyer warned from Los Angeles in setting up an interview with Brown aired on Wednesday’s World News. Sawyer later relayed how Brown “believes the soul of California is at stake.”

Condemning Whitman’s spending on ads, Brown charged “it's almost like a ministry of information in a totalitarian country,” before he offered up pablum, unchallenged by Sawyer, about how he’ll solve the Golden State’s $20 billion shortfall by telling “legislators you have to get did of your cars, get rid of your perks.”

Sawyer fondly recalled: “For 40 years we watched him – the son of a political family who studied to be a Jesuit priest, then turned Buddhist seeker. When he became governor, he lived in one room, bed on the floor, and rode around in his own Plymouth.” Now, “he says it's a singular time for a man who believes the soul of California is at stake. He remembers studying Buddhism in Japan.” Brown got the last word in ABC’s infomercial for him: “‘Life and death is a serious matter. Time waits for no man. Do your best.’ And that, I think, could be the spirit of this campaign.”

Appearing on the 10:00 p.m. edition of MSNBC’s Countdown show on Tuesday to discuss the day’s primary election results, Chris Matthews expressed his delight that Orly Taitz – a prominent member of the birther movement that pushes the bizarre theory that President Obama was not really born in America – won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in California, and expressed his hope that the fringe candidate would drag down the Republican ticket in the state. Matthews celebrated what he termed a "malignancy" within the Republican party as he openly rooted for Taitz to hurt the GOP:

Keith, we`ve got good news tonight. And that`s the probable nomination of Orly Taitz in California for secretary of state. This is a true malignancy on the Republican party. She will bring down the other two candidates for high office out there. She`ll probably bring down Carly Fiorina, and may well bring down Meg Whitman because she is unacceptable to any reasonable voter.

Matthews went on to advise that California Democrats "tie her up like a witch at the stake":

It is tribalist, it`s malignant, and I believe if I were a Democratic officeholder out there or had anything to do with the Democratic party with Jerry Brown`s campaign, I would tie her to them like a fencepost. I would tie her up, I should say, like a witch at the stake. This is a malignancy.

Matthews went on to reiterate that he thought that Taitz’s current success in California’s Republican party was "wonderful news":

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: