Rick Santorum

Bush Derangement Syndrome, then Palin Derangement Syndrom and now...Santorum Derangement Syndrome?

Friday night on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the economics editor for the Economist magazine, expressed dread that the possibility Rick Santorum could win the Republican presidential nomination “completely terrifies me. I mean, how many decades back, how many centuries back does he want to take us?” She proceeded to relay the derogatory charge “Santorum would be a fine mind for the 13th century.”

During the opening monologue on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, host Maher derided Rick Santorum as "the little creep that could" because of the GOP presidential candidate's recent electoral victories. He also mocked the concern conservatives have about abortion by cracking that Mitt Romney had come to CPAC with a "fetus in a jar" to try to outdo Santorum with the audience. (Video below)

Referring to Santorum's victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri from the past week, Maher hit the GOP candidate:

Pressing Rick Santorum on his opposition to women serving in combat, CNN's Wolf Blitzer quoted a liberal veteran who harshly criticized Santorum's policy. Blitzer did not identify the veteran or his group as "liberal," thus failing to address the critic's possible political motives against the conservative candidate.

"A very angry response from one veteran," Blitzer noted, before quoting the co-founder of VoteVets.org. The group identifies itself as the "largest progressive organization of veterans in America." [Video below the break.]

In the only network morning show interview with Rick Santorum in the wake of his three-state victory on Tuesday, NBC Today co-host Ann Curry on Friday pestered the former Pennsylvania senator on whether he would "commit" not to do any negative campaigning and attempted to portray his recent comments on women serving in military combat roles as a gaffe.

Curry put this question to Santorum early in the interview: "...it is clear that negative campaigning generates votes....aren't you going to now have to go negative? Will you commit that your – you and your PACs will not? Or are you going to have to now?"

Only two days after admitting that Barack Obama has a problem with his "frightening" birth control decision, Chris Matthews on Thursday was back on offense. He berated Rick Santorum as a "theocrat" and knocked Reverend Franklin Graham as a "disgrace."

The Hardball host singled out Family Research Council President Tony Perkins as the representative of all those who would question Obama's faith. Matthews interrogated, "Tony, do you think this president is a Muslim?" He added, "Why [do] your people" make such allegations?

After 19 days of controversy, CBS Evening News on Tuesday finally got around to covering the growing dispute between the Obama administration, who wants to impose a mandate for sterilizations and birth control on religious institutions, and the Catholic Church and its allies, who see it as a violation of religious liberty. All of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on Tuesday covered the issue.

On Wednesday morning, CBS This Morning was actually the only network morning show that devoted a segment to the "hot-button issue," as anchor Gayle King labeled it. NBC's Today show gave a mere news brief on the "uproar" over the new federal policy, while ABC's Good Morning America ignored it.

Hawking his new novel on Wednesday's NBC Today, author Josh Bazell launched into a rant against the GOP and Rick Santorum specifically: "If I were to create a character who, say, had been the senator from Pennsylvania...get up at a debate and say that global warming was a hoax and that we had to change the Constitution to limit the rights of gay people. No one would believe that." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Bazell, son of NBC medical correspondent Robert Bazell, further proclaimed: "And if I said then, you know, that the entire Republican establishment sat quietly through this, no one stood up and said, 'You know, that's a crazy man talking,' it would just seem like I was being biased." For his part, weatherman Al Roker simply nodded along with the liberal screed, offering no objection.  

Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday, began his discussion with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum by saying, "You were not considered among your Republican colleagues to be the most popular member of the class in the Senate. I don’t think that’s an understatement."

After co-host Mika Brzezinski incredulously asked, "What do you mean by that, Carl," the former Pennsylvania Senator pushed back (video follows with transcript and commentary):

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there she goes again.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow falsely claimed, "Rick Santorum says that he would like states to be able to make contraception illegal' (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Florida, the audience and some of the contestants grew visibly weary with moderator Wolf Blitzer's continued efforts to get the candidates to address each other's dirty laundry.

After the CNNer attempted this with Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House responded, "This is a nonsense question" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It appears that even Andrea Mitchell doesn’t watch MSNBC.  During Tuesday's edition of her eponymous program, while speaking to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, the anchor failed to acknowledge former Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) strong repudiation for comments made by an attendee at one of his campaign events over the weekend.

While the presidential hopeful did not initially correct the woman’s allegations that President Obama was a devout Muslim who was illegally occupying the White House, appearing on Morning Joe today, Santorum strongly condemned such rhetoric as being bizarre and out of touch with reality. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Rick Santorum to John Heilemann [and by extension to MSM at large] on today's Morning Joe: "it's your responsibility to defend the president, not mine." Ouch! If Newt's deft dicing of John King and Juan Williams paid huge electoral dividends, Santorum might anticipate a much-needed bump after running roughshod over the New York mag reporter.

Heilemann had called on Santorum to explain his failure to correct a woman at a town hall meeting in Florida yesterday who said President Obama was an "avowed Muslim" and legally unqualified to be president. After noting that he has repeatedly been on the record saying that he doesn't believe PBO is a Muslim and recognizes that he is legally qualified to be president, Santorum said that he chose not to chastise an elderly and infirm lady.  Then came Santorum's grand slam, as set forth above.  Heilemann only dug himself deeper when he responded by saying that prez candidate McCain had always defended Obama on the campaign trail. Video after the jump.

A day after calling South Carolina GOP voters racist, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday referred to the Republican electorate as "lemmings" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A South Carolina State Senator on Tuesday put MSNBC’s Martin Bashir in his rightful place.

As the host attacked Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s lack of knowledge about world events, Sen. Larry Grooms (R-S.C.) marvelously replied, “I think he’s got a better understanding than maybe you” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Leftist talk radio host Mike Malloy never stops wishing for the death of conservatives. On January 6, he talked of "Sick Santorum," and said "I think he's Catholic, right? What you ought to do is call Francis Cardinal George out in Chicago and maybe you and he can get together for a cup of -- hemlock." He wants Santorum and Cardinal George to kill themselves.

On both January 6 and January 9, Malloy launched vicious broadsides against the Catholic Church. (On the 9th, he also said libertarians were perpetrators of violence.) He began on the 6th: "I hate to see an organization like the Catholic Church --  that has been one of the bloodiest, most suppressive, most oppressive, most violent organizations in the history of not just religion but of the entire human race try to claim victim status because a bunch of queers want to march a parade down the g*ddamn street! That's what drives me crazy!"

Well, she’s certainly making a case for the title.

In a piece titled, When white people lack “bourgeois values”, the Salon Editor at Large manages a race and class-baiting exacta, covering an alleged economic disdain shown by Republicans towards African-Americans, and charging the GOP with promoting policies which “shackle women to the home”.

In attacking a Rick Santorum speech on family values, in which he correctly stated, “When the family breaks down, the economy breaks down,” Walsh had this to say:

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Chelsea Lately show on the E! network, HBO comedian Bill Maher declared that he recently told former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who will be appearing as a guest on tonight's Real Time show on HBO, that "I don't, like, hate your f------ guts,"  soon adding, "like I hate Newt Gingrich," inspiring agreement on hating the former House Speaker from host Chelsea Handler.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Arizona Senator John McCain complained about ABC's George Stephanopoulos because the ABC host asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives.

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's George Stephanopoulos responded to host Stephen Colbert's question of why he - as debate co-moderator last Saturday - asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney about whether states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives, as he argued that the question revolved around the "right to privacy."

He then suggested that a bet with co-moderator Diane Sawyer motivated him to be so persistent in asking Romney followup questions on the subject. After Colbert asked what it felt like when Romney called it a "silly thing" for Stephanopoulos to ask such a hypothetical question, the ABC anchor responded:

New York Times political profile writer Mark Leibovich, in Manchester, N.H. on Saturday, filed “The Santorum of 2012 Comes From a Long History of Political Brawling.” Times Watch sees a clear preference for Democrats and hostility toward Republican subjects in Leibovich’s writing, and this profile of GOP candidate and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is certainly not a game-changer in that regard, even citing the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat and former local Klan leader, as some kind of moral authority against Santorum.

Sitting through the Republican debate on Saturday night with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was just painful, from beginning to end. Some of it was just political Ambien.  But when it was finally over, there was just one question. Who in the GOP in his/her right mind invites a historically shameless Democratic spin controller like Stephanopoulos to “moderate” a primary debate like this – ever?

The only thing that can be said in defense of that horrible decision was turning to NBC the next morning and seeing “moderator” David Gregory be even more slanted in his questioning. ABC slanted the ideological questions in their debate by a ratio of six questions from the left to each one from the right. The NBC ratio was eight to one.

Hours before New Hampshire voters would choose a Republican candidate to oppose President Obama, CNN host Kyra Phillips brought on liberal columnist L.Z. Granderson to tout his latest op-ed which – surprise! – blames social conservative Rick Santorum in part for triggering violence against gays and transgender people.

The openly-gay Granderson penned a nasty take-down of the candidate and claimed his "homophobic" rhetoric justifed, for some, the murders of transgender people and gay bullying – even while Granderson reveals he can't "hate" Santorum. In the CNN interview, Granderson also scolded other Republicans for their lack of love toward gays, immigrants, and the poor. [Video below. Click here for audio.]

Talk about irony. The front page of today's Washington Post featured a large photo of a Rick Santorum rally in New Hampshire, with two of MRC's "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!" signs front and center. That's nice, but perhaps the Washington Post should read its own front page more often.

Just days ago, a Post columnist personally and  viciously attacked Senator Rick Santorum's family over how they dealt with the death of their newborn son. Even though some at the Washington Post recognize their paper's dislike of  Santorum and his social-conservatism, this hasn't stopped the paper from printing outrageous and offensive content on its pages.