Rick Perry

Right-leaning New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was thrown into the David Brooks chair on the weekly political roundatable on NPR's All Things Considered Friday. NPR anchor Robert Siegel insisted Rick Perry had a whole set of strange and anti-scientific statements that suggest he's "too far right" to be electable. Notice how NPR just rolls up everything they disagree with and loads it into one question for the "conservative" panelist:

On his syndicated program, Sunday, Chris Matthews slammed Rick Perry for being too "nasty" to Barack Obama. The liberal host also wondered if the fact that Perry is not a Mormon gives southerners a "permission slip" to like him.

Speculating on the Texas Governor's popularity, Matthews theorized, "Do you think part of this southern appeal of this guy, who is to most of us this guy, Rick Perry, is he's not a Mormon. He's a Southern Baptist."

It's been a bad week for Michelle Goldberg. Last Monday the Daily Beast columnist laid out a loopy conspiratorial post about how Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry were theocrats-in-waiting, Christian "dominionists" who were bound and determined to destroy the separation of church and state.

Since then, former Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers shot holes in Goldberg's argument, liberal religion reporter Lisa Miller dismissed Goldberg and other alarmists as misinformed,  and now Daily Beast contributor and former Billy Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross is weighing in with an August 21 story entitled "Christian Dominionism Is a Myth" (emphasis mine):

Like clockwork, as soon as Rick Perry joined the GOP presidential field, the liberal media started slashing at the Texas Governor, impugning him as a “name-calling,” “human tornado,” “anti-science” racist —just “Bull Connor with a smile,” according to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Plus, Perry’s best-in-the-nation record on job creation is really a myth — not a “Texas miracle” but a “Texas tragedy,” according to CBS News.

As for Barack Obama, CNN shows they play no favorites, holding the President’s feet to the fire in a grueling interview: “The last time you were elected, you got Sasha and Malia a cute little puppy, Bo. What are you going to get them the next time, if you’re re-elected?” These quotes, plus many more, in the latest edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables (best quotes after the jump; full issue posted here at MRC.org).

ABC Highlights Complaints That 'There is Little Heart' in Rick Perry's Texas

On Saturday's World News on ABC, correspondent Jim Avila filed a report in which he focused mostly on aspects of Texas's economy that receive praise, but he ended up warning that things may not really be as good as they seem, as the ABC correspondent highlighted claims that, "deep in the heart of Rick Perry's Texas, there is little heart."

Avila concluded his piece:

As Saturday's The Early Show on CBS hosted John Avlon of the Daily Beast and conservative commentator Margaret Hoover for a discussion of Texas Governor Rick Perry and other GOP presidential candidates, both guests had skeptical views of the current field, with Avlon finding some of Perry's recent statements "sort of irresponsible," and quipping that "George Bush looks like Abraham Lincoln compared to the whole crowd right now."

CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, filling in on Face the Nation, just couldn’t comprehend how a candidate espousing true conservative views could possibly capture the White House. Referring to Rick Perry, she demanded: “Can the Republican Party elect someone President who doesn't believe in global warming?”

She described Perry’s fairly conventional conservative assessment of Social Security as “controversial,” citing how in his book he described the program as “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal,” a “bad disease” and that “it was set up like a, quote ‘illegal Ponzi scheme.’” Repeating her earlier formulation, O’Donnell wondered: “Can you elect a Republican to the White House who thinks Social Security is a bad disease?”

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Ed Schultz last week admitted deceptively editing a Rick Perry speech, but he never apologized to the Texas governor for using the doctored video to accuse him of making a racist remark about President Obama.

Howard Kurtz, ironically on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, falsely claimed, "To his credit, Schultz acknowledged his mistake and apologized" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Economist Ben Stein had some harsh words for Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry on "CBS Sunday Morning."

Responding to comments the Texas governor made earlier in the week concerning Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Stein said, "I hope he'll get some moderation in his speech, and some lessons in economics, and soon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It might not be surprising to see someone sit in the rarefied liberal air of a PBS set and dismiss the undignified palaver of talk radio and Ann Coulter, but on Friday's PBS NewsHour, this line was coming from former Bush speechwriting chief Michael Gerson, and the target was Gov. Rick Perry.

Gerson and liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus were sitting in for David Brooks and Mark Shields. (In other words, Gerson was in the "I agree with Mark" chair.) Both agreed that Perry really gaffed in suggesting Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was "treasonous" if he shoveled more dollars into the economy before the election:

Establishment press reporters will insist from now until the cows come home that they play it straight. Their actions all too often belie their claims.

One such face-hitting example came yesterday in Associated Press reporter Chris Rugaber's coverage of the government's Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report. If it weren't already given away in this post's title, veteran media bias sleuths would have had no trouble detecting the "clever" technique employed in the following two paragraphs on seasonally adjusted state job gains and losses from Rugaber's risible rendition (key sentences bolded):

Unemployment is at 9.1 percent, housing and stock prices are plummeting, national debt is exploding, and Medicare is going bankrupt.

Yet MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews' greatest fear is a president that doesn't believe in evolution or climate change (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's not just conservative evangelicals like me who think liberals like Daily Beast/Newsweek's Michelle Goldberg are whipped into a paranoid frenzy over Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann's supposed ties to Christian "dominionism."

Washington Post religion writer Lisa Miller -- no stranger to criticism from NewsBusters -- took to the "On Faith" blog yesterday to tell readers to "Beware false prophets who fear evangelicals."

I've included some excerpts of her piece after the page break (my emphasis in bold italics):

When NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Friday, asked Haley Barbour if Rick Perry had to "clean up his language?" the former head of the RNC brushed back the host of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports by subtly accusing her of engaging in typical liberal media tricks. 

The current Mississippi governor warned his fellow Republican to be prepared to be "nitpicked by the liberal media elite" because "When you are a conservative, Christian Southerner, Republican, you have to expect that."

(video after the jump)

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media are working overtime examining the records of every GOP candidate for president.

"The bright side though is," conservative author Ann Coulter told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday, "we don't end up with a Republican president who is suddenly having an affair with an intern, or a Republican president who votes present for his entire term as the economy falls into the toilet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on last night's "Hannity" to go over how, in Sean Hannity's words, the media welcomed Rick Perry to the race "Bachmann-style," that is with a barrage of unfair smears and even comparisons of the Texas governor to Democratic segregationist Bull Connor.

[Video follows page break, MP3 audio here]:

The Washington Post reported on Obama's bus tour without making much of the protesters (but promoted supporters strangely suggesting he "inherited a very big deficit.") The president's conversation with Tea Party activist Ryan Rhodes only appeared once -- in the Fact Checker column, as the Post's Glenn Kessler suggested it was dubious for Rhodes to claim Vice President Biden compared the Tea Party to terrorists, and awarded Obama a "rare Geppetto" (as opposed to the usual liar's "Pinocchio") for defending Biden.

But in Friday's Post, Krissah Thompson's report on Rick Perry's campaigning in New Hampshire was dominated by protesters and hecklers from the left. The headline was "Perry hits bumps on campaign trail in NH: Candidate faces tough questions from protesters, others."

Richard Corliss, a liberal film reviewer who found Oliver Stone's "W." too tame for his tastes has decided to let his readers know that, some two years and seven months since the 43rd president left office, he's still not over his anti-Bush derangement.

Corliss shoehorned his strange asides about President George W. Bush -- and 2012 presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) -- in his  August 18 review of this summer's remake of "Conan the Barbarian":

Times reporter Ashley Parker’s profile of Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the campaign trail in New Hampshire portrayed a more cautious and subdued candidate, days after Perry’s claim that actions taken by Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, were potentially “treasonous,” a remark that offended the delicate sensibilities of Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum, who found it simply “horrifying.” Parker's Thursday piece from New Hampshire, “Day After Fed Uproar, Perry Tones It Down," featured six paragraphs on an exchange on global warming between Perry and N.H. citizen Jim Rubens, described by Parker as a “a Republican activist and high-tech investor from Etna."

But Rubens is also a consultant with the left-wing environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists, a fact Parker didn’t include but which found its way into the Los Angeles Times: “One of his questioners was Jim Rubens, a Republican from the village of Etna who works as a consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists.” UCS, which was formed in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War, has lobbied against Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") and nuclear power.

According to Good Morning America's Jim Avila, Rick Perry "does not care" about the "overwhelming scientific evidence" of global warming. The ABC reporter on Thursday offered a hostile, condescending take on the Texas Governor.

Avila used odd language to explain that the Texas Governor "has a close relationship with guns, carries one while jogging. " Rather than mention the state's record of job creation, Avila lectured, "Rick Perry's Texas pours more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than any other state in the country and in the campaign trail, yesterday, perhaps we found out why."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Republican presidential aspirant Gov. Rick Perry practically wants to return America to the Articles of Confederation.

That essentially is the argument of Newsweek/Daily Beast homepage editor David Sessions in an August 18 article:

As NewsBusters previously reported, Ed Schultz on his MSNBC program Monday deceptively edited a Rick Perry speech to falsely accuse the Texas governor of making a racist comment about President Obama.

On Wednesday, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart took Schultz to task for this glaring mistake (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

The Christian Science Monitor appears to have a problem monitoring its bloggers. Even though it asserts that its "diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there ... (have) responsibility for the content of their blogs," the largely respected CSM should understand that Jared Bernstein has just embarrassed it bigtime.

To its credit, CSM describes Bernstein, currently a senior fellow at the very liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Director emeritus: Marian Wright Edelman), as a Biden/Democrat hack: "Jared was chief economist to Vice President Joseph Biden and executive director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class." But unless CSM wants to be seen as a place like the Huffington Post, where it seems that anyone can throw up anything regardless of its truthfulness (I'm talking to you, Sam Stein), it needs to at least fact-check info with an obvious surface stench -- and I could smell the acrid aroma from Bernstein's item here in Ohio. His woeful Wednesday post goes beyond predictable cherry-picking into the realm of flat-out errors.

Citing a Daily Beast piece linking GOP candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry to a radical Christian strain called "Dominionism," CNN's Jack Cafferty fretted about a possible Christian theocracy in America on Wednesday's Cafferty File.

"I got to reading this piece, and it scared the hell out of me," Cafferty fearfully remarked of the article's conspiratorial claims. "We contacted both campaigns a few hours ago, haven't heard a word back form either one of them."

[Video below the break.]

One day after trashing Rick Perry as "Bull Connor with a smile," MSNBC's Chris Matthews took the statement back. But he also trashed the Republican presidential candidate, saying he probably would have opposed racial integration of schools.

The Hardball anchor played a clip of Barack Obama touting bipartisan acts from the late Dwight D. Eisenhower. Matthews brought up Eisenhower's role in desegregating public schools and spewed, "Do you think Rick Perry would be for that? Do you think he'd be cheering for Ike today if he brought the troops in to desegregate the schools in Little Rock? I don't think so!" See video below. MP3 audio here.

As the presidential candidacy of Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas revs to life, the New York Times is doing its best in both its opinion and news sections to throw sand in the gears.

Times reporter James McKinley Jr. actively led the cheers for Perry’s Democratic opponent during Perry’s 2010 gubernatorial race. This time around, columnist Paul Krugman on Monday tried and failed to knock down Perry’s successful economic record as Texas governor with a misleading column, “The Texas Unmiracle.”