Ron Paul

Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web caught the Washington Post either misrepresenting the motives of an anonymous informer in connection with Ron Paul's long-ago newsletters, getting duped by said informer, or trying to dupe its readers. Perhaps it was a bit of all of the above, all of which worked out to conveniently smear Paul without giving him -- or readers -- a chance to know who was going after him.

The 1700-word story by Jerry Markon and Alice Crites ("Paul pursued strategy of publishing controversial newsletters, associates say") concerned the degree of knowledge the presidential candidate had of allegedly racially charged material in his newsletters published during the 1990s. The contradiction follows the jump:

On Tuesday's The Daily Show on Comedy Central, as he recounted the racist newsletters that were published in the 1990s under the name of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, host Jon Stewart mocked other GOP candidates after clips of them attacking Paul for not taking seriously the threat of a nuclear Iran, suggesting that the candidates were not so concerned about racism. (Video below)

Moments later, as he mocked Republican voters for adding former Senator Rick Santorum to the list of candidates they are willing to consider, Stewart took another race-based shot at the Republican Party as he used a box of Whitman's chocolates as a prop and pronounced the brand name as if it were "White Man's."

After showing clips of the candidates criticizing Paul's willingness to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, Stewart cracked:

During MSNBC coverage of the Republican Party Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, shortly after 8:30 p.m, MSNBC's Chris Matthews lumped "neocons" and the socially conservative Moral Majority movement in with segregationist Dixiecrats as he asserted that Republicans had picked up the "droppings" and the "effluent" of the Democratic Party, causing the Republican Party to be too "junk laden" to open their minds to Ron Paul's far-left anti-war views. (Video below)

In light of the development this weekend that Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were the only two presidential candidates who had enough valid signatures to appear on the Virginia Republican primary ballot on March 6,  the American Spectator's John Fund appeared on Sunday's Fox and Friends on FNC and suggested that Newt Gingrich may yet find a way to secure a spot on the Virginia ballot. (Video below)

Christopher Hitchens, RIP, would likely have loved the rough-and-tumble of today's Morning Joe.  The first half-hour was a jolting fix for political junkies.  

If the goring of Newt Gingrich was predictable, there was much that was not.  Michelle Bachmann's debate performance was roundly praised.  Lefty Jeff Sachs put himself to Ron Paul's right on the Iranian threat.  Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch reported that normally-Dem New York CEOs have deserted Obama en masse.  Video after the jump.

Presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is a libertarian who thinks the federal government is far too much of a national nanny. Regardless of what you think of his views, he's pretty consistent on his libertarian philosophy. As such, it's incredibly easy for dismissive journalists to misrepresent his policy stances and campaign promises.

Take for example, MSNBC's Chuck Todd. After airing a clip of the Texas Republican pledging at a rally in New Hampshire to overturn a federal ban on transporting raw milk across state lines, the Daily Rundown host snarked, "So there it is... don't even regulate milk. You know, that's Ron Paul in a nutshell."

MSNBC's supposedly conservative host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday continued his months-long attack on the Republican presidential candidates.

After telling his Morning Joe viewers that he would consider voting for potential third party candidate Ron Paul if Newt Gingrich won the nomination, Scarborough said he could "in five minutes write a list of 200 Republican members of the House of Representatives" more qualified than "the presidential candidates that are running right now" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Today's Morning Joe has been one long festival of Gingrich gouging.  

Joe Scarborough set the tone early. During the opening segment Scarborough announced that, like Glenn Beck, if the choice comes down to Obama vs. Gingrich, and Ron Paul is running as a third-party candidate, "I'm going to give him a long look." Video after the jump.

The GOP presidential candidates, at the upcoming ABC News debate in Iowa, should brace themselves to be splattered with tough questions from the left from moderator George Stephanopoulos. The good news for them is that most should be well-prepared for the left-leaning sliders, as many have already been subjected to Stephanopoulos’s liberal questioning on Good Morning America. In 20 interview segments this year with the GOP candidates, totaling nearly two hours (110 minutes), an MRC review has documented Stephanopoulos has consistently pressed his guests from the left. Of questions with an ideological bent 75 percent (36) were from the left with just 25 percent (12) of them coming from the right.  

When current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich showed up on the January 18 edition of Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos prodded the former Speaker of the House if he was prepared to put 129 million Americans at “risk” with his opposition to Obamacare. (video after the jump)

The liberals on PBS's Inside Washington Friday were all giddy at the thought of Newt Gingrich as the Republican presidential nominee.

So sure this would be good news for the president he adores, syndicated columnist and PBS fixture Mark Shields said this would result in the "landslide reelection victory of Barack Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CBS's Jan Crawford played up Newt Gingrich's "baggage" on Friday's Early Show, underlining how the Republican presidential candidate is "going to be hit hard for his ties to corporate interests, the ethics allegations...even his personal relationships- his adulterous affairs." Crawford also spotlighted the claim that only Herman Cain's "die-hard supporters...think that he can stay in this race."

The correspondent first reported on the allegation that Cain had a 13-year affair with Ginger White and how the candidate recently admitted to helping White financially. Crawford shifted to Gingrich by stating that "in a crowded field, that could help candidates like Newt Gingrich, who continues to surge ahead." She then used her "baggage" term, and highlighted a "scathing new ad" from GOP competitor Ron Paul, which targeted Newt.

Are there no limits to where leftwing media members will go to bash Republicans?

On Monday, the Huffington Post actually published a front page article with the headline, "Michele Bachmann Pours Water For Men At GOP Primary Forum In Iowa":

Jon Stewart, on Thursday's Daily Show, repeatedly mocked Rick Perry for his, as he put it, "brain turd" moment at this week's CNBC debate. However, Perry wasn't the only GOP candidate Stewart made fun of. Everyone from Perry to Santorum took a hit. The only candidate Stewart didn't mock was Mitt Romney, whom the Daily Show host declared to be the winner of the whole race. "It's over! Indecision 2012 Mercy Rule Edition. Because in presidential primaries, as in little league, if one team is up 10-0 in the third you call it a day an you head over to Friendly's for some Fribbles and some food poisoning."
                                             
Stewart initially teased his audience with the Perry clip by calling it: "Rick Perry's now infamous ABC Wide World of Sports agony-of-defeat-worthy brain turd." Then he went on to savage the other GOP contenders on his November 10 show. (video after the jump)

There are softballs and then there are softballs.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory teed one up for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that was specifically designed to mock the Republican presidential candidates while allowing her to brag uninterrupted about the foreign policy successes of Barack Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Hours before Republican presidential candidates faced off in Tuesday's debate in Las Vegas, Martin Bashir took a swipe at six of them.

On the MSNBC program bearing his name, the host said that since Mitt Romney is "the inevitable candidate," the rest of the contestants are auditioning "for future employment" at Fox News (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Rachel Maddow should never be put in charge of crowd control. Not until she learns to count.

Maddow is clearly flummoxed by what actually constitutes a crowd, as can be seen in her commentary on audiences at Republican presidential debates. (video after page break)

In a Thursday morning post setting the table for last night’s Republican presidential debate in Orlando, New York Times chief “Caucus” blog reporter Michael Shear became the latest Timesman to falsely finger the Tea Party audience at a CNN debate last week as cheering on the prospect of letting a hypothetical man die for lack of health insurance.

Shear listed six things to watch for in Orlando last night. The last item:

During a prerecorded commentary on CBS Sunday Morning, left-wing CBS commentator Nancy Giles complained about the "bloodlust" of GOP audience members who applauded Texas's use of capital punishment at the recent MSNBC debate and a small number of audience members who applauded at Monday's CNN debate after moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if someone who chose not to purchase insurance should be allowed to die.

CBS played a clip of the exchanges but notably left out Rep. Ron Paul's answer to Blitzer's question as he argued that organizations like churches used to help provide health care before Medicaid existed, leaving Giles to give the impression that Rep. Paul had been unconcerned about the uninsured dying. Giles:

It sure didn't take HBO's Bill Maher long to make his first hateful remark about the religious right.

Roughly one minute into his opening monologue on Friday's "Real Time" the host said, "In today's Republican Party there's a term for people who hate charity and love killing - Christian" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Friday said the people in the audience at Monday's Republican presidential debate were "applauding the death of a young man without health insurance" and therefore were like the John Birchers "that Bill Buckley kicked out of the conservative movement in the mid-1960s."

Unfortunately, the host of "Morning Joe" has, like so many others in the media, badly misinterpreted what occurred when Texas Congressman Ron Paul was asked what should happen to a voluntarily uninsured man who falls into a coma (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman just can't stop offending of late. Krugman confounded even liberals with his ill-timed blog post on the morning of September 11 decrying President George W. Bush and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as “fake heroes” in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. In his Friday column “Free To Die,” he suggested Republicans would prefer people die for lack of health insurance, using as evidence the dubious claim that the audience watching CNN’s Republican debate “erupted with cheers” at the prospect of a (hypothetical) man dying for being unable to afford intensive care. Has Krugman actually watched the clip?

Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan.

But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.”

“NBC Nightly News” is the highest-rated daily news show in the morning or evening. In mid-August, this show had been ranked number one for 100 straight weeks, pulling an average of 7.7 million viewers. This makes Brian Williams the king of the TV-news hill. To be sure, it’s obviously a smaller hill than the Walter Cronkite era, but in political terms, Williams, like Cronkite, is E.F. Hutton. His newscast can set the tone across the rest of the  “news” media.

But all that royalty evaporates in the presence of Barack Obama. The contrast was jaw-dropping between Williams roaring like a lion against Obama’s Republican challengers at the Reagan Library on September 7, and then bowing gently like a lamb at the White House three days later.

Rachel Rose Hartman's Tuesday item for Yahoo! News's "The Ticket" blog carried a misleading headline ("Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die") implying that the majority, if not all, of the audience at Monday's GOP presidential debate thought that the critically injured who are uninsured should be left to die. In reality, only a handful cheered and/or laughed in response to Wolf Blitzer's question.

Despite this headline, Hartman did acknowledge in her lede that "if you're uninsured and on the brink of death, that's apparently a laughing matter to some audience members at last night's tea party [sic] Republican presidential debate." She then recounted how Blitzer, who moderated the joint debate with the Tea Party Express organization, turned to Rep. Ron Paul and "asked a hypothetical question...about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly goes into a coma and requires intensive care for six months."