Rick Santorum

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose lobbed a series of questions from the left at Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. Rose wondered if the recent trend towards social issues in the Republican presidential race was "troubling." The Wisconsin Republican replied, "It's not troubling for me, and...I think that's more about the media, and maybe the Democrats, who are trying to move it in that direction."

The anchor also touted the auto bailout as an Obama administration success: "The bailout- should that be an issue, and should the voters look at Governor Romney and Governor Santorum [sic] and say, we had an economic bail-out of the auto companies and look what happened? Profits are up, and they're both doing well." Rose later asked Ryan if he thought that the apparently better economic numbers was "good news for President Obama" [audio available here; video below the jump].

It’s been nearly three weeks since President Obama faced a political backlash over his plan to force religious institutions to bow to government bureaucrats when it came to supplying birth control coverage to their employees. Since then, the liberal media — led by the broadcast networks — have helped re-script the story to suit the President’s political needs. Instead of a story about the overreach of big government and violation of religious freedom, the networks are now spinning the birth control story as one about out-of-control conservatives, to the point of ignoring broad and continuing opposition — including a lawsuit by seven state attorneys general — to the President’s power grab.

The MRC reviewed coverage from the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts starting with Obama’s February 10 declaration of a unilateral “compromise” meant to end the controversy. Our analysis shows how the networks re-framed the story from one that was damaging to Obama into one that reporters thought would hurt his opponents:

According to liberal New York Times columnist Charles Blow, "Rick Santorum scares the bejesus out of people" and could never be elected President. The journalist appeared on MSNBC, Tuesday, to dismiss the idea that the Republican could appeal to independents, should he get the nomination.

Blow, who just last week made an ugly, anti-Mormon remark about Mitt Romney, did his best to portray Santorum as unable to broaden his appeal: "You cannot pivot from 'college is where Satan is having his biggest impact' and pivot that into an economic issue. That's just a fallacy. That's not going to happen."  [See video below. See MP3 audio here.]

Speaking on Tuesday’s edition of Morning Joe, John Heilemann introduced a new level of attack on Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum by snarking that the conservative former senator has Tourette's syndrome.  

In response to host Joe Scarborough assessing the Santorum candidacy as an amateur operation, Heilemann fired back with the following absurd and disgusting comment, “The thing we saw in the debate which is his tendency to be Bob Dole-like and senatorial. Locked in legislative tivies [sic] on one side and then on these cultural issues to have these kind of Tourette's-like outbursts of sincerity that are just very indiscipline [sic].”  [Video below.  MP3 audio here.] 

Willful ignorance combined with anti-Christian bigotry: not a pretty sight. Bill Keller, former New York Times executive editor turned Times columnist, put both on display on today's Morning Joe.

Joe Scarborough played a clip of Santorum criticizing President Obama and Hillary Clinton for at times speaking of "freedom of worship" rather than "freedom of religion." Santorum made his point crystal clear: merely having the freedom to pray is not enough.  People must have the right to practice their religion outside the confines of the sanctuary. But Scarborough and Keller claimed not to understand what Santorum was saying.  Keller then added his ugly coda: "sometimes Santorum sounds like he's creeping up on a Christian version of Sharia law." Video after the jump.

In the wake of new sexual revelations concerning John F. Kennedy and a nineteen-year-old White House intern, you would think media members would shy away from putting the former president on a pedestal concerning his religious beliefs.

Yet there was ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer Monday telling George Stephanopoulos of his previous day's interview with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, "Couldn’t believe that he was going on the offensive on church and state and the separation of them against John Kennedy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd went after the “uncharitable nasties” in the Republican field in her Sunday column, “Ghastly Outdated Party,” and for good measure accused Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida of stealing the election for his brother George in 2000.

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates -- be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes -- and try to destroy them with it.

If you were to believe MSNBC's Alex Wagner -- which, I'm sure you don't -- GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is anti-college, believing the acquisition of higher education to be a mark of snobbery.

"Is it hypocritical, given Rick Santorum and the fact that he holds not one, not two, but three degrees -- more than the president, -- for him to allege that having a higher education is a form of snobbery?" Wagner pressed Santorum campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart on today's edition of Now with Alex Wagner. I don't know what they teach at Brown University, where Wagner went to college, but one hopes it has nothing to do with Wagner's deliberate mischaracterization of Santorum's recent swipe at President Obama.

The journalism watchdogs over at "PolitiFact" don't do justice to their name, Rachel Maddow frequently complains.

This from an MSNBC pundit whose claims about Republicans are best understood as "politifiction." (video after page break)

In a discussion Monday about the recent accidental Koran burning by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski disgustingly suggested that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum doesn’t respect non-Christian religions.

The former Senator commented in response to the burning that, “I think you highlight it when you apologize for it. You make it sound like there was something that you should apologize for. And there's -- there was no act that needed an apology. It was an inadvertent act and it should have been left at that.”  [Video below.  MP3 audio here.] 

Rick Santorum had a bit of a testy exchange with NBC's David Gregory on Sunday's Meet the Press.

After Gregory asked if Santorum was going to "rail against areas of our culture that [he] disagree[s] with" if elected president, the former senator smartly replied, "It's so funny. I get the question all the time, 'Why are you talking so much about these social issues'...as people ask me about the social issues" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CBS’s Bob Schieffer, on Sunday morning’s Face the Nation, pressed Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over how Republicans have moved “too far to the right” to win before cuing up Maryland’s Democratic Governor, Martin O’Malley, to agree while fretting “we’ve spent the last couple of weeks here talking about running against birth control for goodness sake” – as if the media have nothing to do with that. Schieffer twice falsely credited President Obama for having “backed away” from requiring religious institution cover birth control.

Schieffer also marveled over Obama’s presumed success and so wondered: “How do you go after Barack Obama, though, right now? I mean, the stock market is up. It looks like the unemployment is going down. David Axelrod in his campaign said the other day Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. It’s going to be a tough job for you, is it not?”

As NewsBusters reported Friday, HBO's Bill Maher recently gave $1 million to pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action.

On CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, host Howard Kurtz correctly observed, "There’d be a bigger fuss if comedian Dennis Miller gave a million dollars to a pro-Romney or a Santorum Super PAC" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical").

It turns out that the Christianity Today item tells us that it's not evangelical Christians who misidentify Santorum, whose Roman Catholic faith is well-known. The entity which committed the misidentification by deliberately including the former Pennsylvania senator on a list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" while acknowledging that he is a Catholic was ... Time Magazine, in February 2005. Thus, there is no support for Zoll's headline claiming that many people "mistake" Santorum's "religious identity," and that he somehow "benefits." Zheesh.

ABC's John Berman on Friday chided the Republican presidential candidates for not talking about jobs enough, lecturing the GOP field that social issues could harm their chances of winning the White House. Berman whined, "...The shift to the right in rhetoric could be hurting in the middle."

Regarding Romney's planned speech on tax cuts, Friday, Good Morning America's Berman condescended, " [Romney says [his plan] will help create jobs. Jobs. Remember that word? The candidates uttered the word jobs just four times in two hours in this week's debate." Of course, as Berman proved with video clips, it was the candidates– and not debate moderator John King– who brought up jobs.

CBS This Morning on Friday boosted left-wing comedian John Oliver's smear on Rick Santorum, and conservatism in general, where he equated the GOP presidential candidate with a hardcore drug like crack cocaine: "America likes its conservatism cut with plenty of baking powder because one hit of the pure stuff, and you'll wake up with Eric Stoltz...having just plunged an adrenaline needle into your heart."

Anchor Charlie Rose praised the offensive crack, which aired on Thursday's Daily Show: "Don't you love John Oliver?" Erica Hill agreed with her co-anchor, and added, "Always gives us a good laugh. We like that." Later that morning, a post on the far-left website Daily Kos praised Oliver's entire rant as "brilliant," as it supposedly "tells the truth about what the GOP really wants to do" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Rick Santorum’s recent rise in the polls in the GOP primary has escalated the liberal media’s attacks on the former Pennsylvania Republican Senator, primarily on his socially conservative views. This is not surprising since journalists have admitted, in several surveys, to being far more liberal on social issues like abortion than even the general public. One such survey of journalists, from top media outlets, found that nearly all of the media elite (97 percent) agreed that “it is a woman’s right to decide whether or not to have an abortion,” and five out of six (84 percent) agreed strongly.” For more please visit the MRC’s Media Bias 101 page. 

The disdain for Santorum from that media elite began almost as soon as he arrived in the Senate in 1995. The following is a collection, in chronological order, of the 10 most vicious anti-Santorum quotes from the MRC’s archive: (videos after the break)

CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer has a mid-week interview offered online called “Face to Face.” On Wednesday, Schieffer welcomed socially liberal former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson. He viciously attacked Rick Santorum -- Republicans "won't have a prayer" of winning with him -- and said the social issues will cause the voters to “take us all to Alaska and float us out in the Bering Sea or something.” Schieffer began by pointing out Simpson was one of his favorites: “I have to say, I'll let my biases be known, one of my favorite people to cover over the years when he was in the Senate and since, Al Simpson.”

Schieffer wondered why Mitt Romney couldn’t nail down the conservative vote, and then pulled out the hoary quadrennial media mantra that the Republican nominee will have to lunge toward the center in the fall to have any chance:

Liberal MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir on Thursday declared it "incredible" that Republican candidates such as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich would "blame the media." A few seconds after making the comment, the host smeared Santorum as having "third century Constantinople" views when it came to social policies.

Bashir mocked the GOP presidential candidates for their debate performances and insisted that Republican voters don't like them. He chided, "They don't seem to see the obvious signs of dissatisfaction. They don't hear the criticism. Instead they just blame the media." Bashir added, "It is incredible to hear the fab four complain about the media." A few seconds later, Bashir, part of the media, was hurling vicious insults at the Republicans. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

While she grilled Rick Santorum's press secretary over his debate performance, CNN host Soledad O'Brien asked an Obama aide nothing even approaching a critical question on Thursday's Starting Point, and even teed her up to bash Republicans.

O'Brien mirrored her own network's treatment of President Obama in Wednesday night's debate – avoiding critical questions on the President's record and past statements. Instead, she kept the focus squarely on Republican missteps in her interviews with both Republican and Democrat staffers. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

David Gergen had some harsh criticism for the remaining Republican candidates for president Wednesday.

Appearing on CNN's post-debate show, Gergen said, "For a lot of women it sounds like four white guys who are out there telling them, 'Here’s how we’re going to control your lives'” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Following Wednesday night's presidential debate on CNN, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took on the deliberate campaign on the part of Democrats and their media enablers to stigmatize him as purely a "social issues" candidate with limited appeal to Americans not as concerned about those topics.

Chatting with CNN analyst Gloria Borger following the GOP candidate contest, Santorum responded to Borger's question that he is "spending way too much time talking about divisive cultural issues" with a full-on rebuttal. "I understand the game," the former Pennsylvania senator said. "I do get these questions [...] and then the next question from the reporter is 'Why are you talking so much about social issues?' Full transcript of the exchange follows.

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose promoted a talking point used by liberals, including President Obama, that Warren Buffett and other billionaires want their taxes raised. After playing a clip of Chris Christie ripping Buffett, Rose asked Jack Welch, "Do you agree with the governor of New Jersey, or do you agree with...Buffett, that there ought to be more tax on the super-rich?"

When Welch replied, "I don't feel under-taxed in any way at all," Rose insisted that "most of the people that are in your economic bracket tell me they're prepared to pay more taxes if, in fact, they could be sure where the money was going."

During Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's NewsNation, host Tamron Hall had to admit her audience clearly doesn’t pay attention to basic political facts.  While covering a Rick Santorum speech at a Tea Party event in Arizona Hall said the following: "I don't know if this is a joke or not but some people, many people have Tweeted asking why does he have ash on his forehead?  Asking if he's Catholic.  Yes."  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

One would think that when a network mocks Santorum's religious beliefs and calls him extreme on a daily basis that their viewers would know that he is a devout Catholic.  Apparently that is too much to ask of the average MSNBC viewer.  

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.'"

At the top of Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry admonished Rick Santorum for accurately describing President Obama's religious history: "Fanning the flames. Rick Santorum takes a new shot at President Obama's faith by mentioning his controversial former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright."

In a later report, correspondent Peter Alexander announced: "Rick Santorum isn't backing down from what some viewed as a shot this weekend at the President's faith....On Fox News, Santorum may have fanned the flames, when he again insisted he was not questioning the President's Christianity."

As NewsBusters has been reporting, America's press have for the past 48 hours been in a coordinated attack on Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum cherry-picking the same sentences from a lengthy speech he gave Saturday in order to falsely accuse him of impugning President Obama's religious beliefs.

On Monday, the former Pennsylvania Senator discussed the matter with Fox News's Sean Hannity claiming that this is another example of "media trying to destroy conservatives" (video follows with transcript and commentary):