Ed Gillespie

Good Morning America's David Muir on Thursday used the announcement that Republican operative Ken Mehlman is gay to push the GOP towards rethinking its stance on marriage.

Talking to former George Bush staffer Ed Gillespie, the ABC host speculated, "...Had Ken come to terms with this...when he was influential in the White House with the President, do you think that he could have influenced the President differently, in looking back?"

(An odd suggestion, considering that Bush's own Vice President disagreed with him.) After reading from the Republican Party's platform on the issue of gay marriage, the GMA guest anchor pressed, "Do you think the Republican Party should take a second look at this?"

In a discussion of the midterm elections on Sunday's Face the Nation, CBS host Bob Schieffer asked members of his political panel a total of seven questions, six of which highlighted Republican difficulties, only one of which actually raised the problems for the Democrats in November.

Instead of acknowledging the greater political challenges facing Democrats, Schieffer began by acting as if both parties were equally in trouble: "You have Democrats on the one hand saddled with a very bad economy, high unemployment....Republicans, on the other hand, have – find themselves suddenly with some very, well, how would I say it, unusual candidates, people who have taken very extreme views on things." Schieffer then proceeded to focus almost exclusively on Republican obstacles.

In his first electoral question to former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, Schieffer asked about one of those "unusual" GOP candidates: "...you have Linda McMahon, who is formally – or maybe she still is part of the World Wrestling Federation." After playing a clip of McMahon appearing at a WWE event, Schieffer pressed: "I expect Republicans are going to be seeing that video a lot this year, and they're going to have to defend it. Is this somebody who's going to be good for the Republican Party? Is this a good image for Republicans to have?"

Channeling her inner Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow on Sunday actually said extending unemployment benefits is "the most stimulative thing you can do" to help the ailing economy.

Appearing on the panel discussion of NBC's "Meet the Press," Maddow boldly presented a liberal view of economics that only the current House Speaker would be proud of.

"I think that most Americans also, though, understand the basic arithmetic that when you're talking about pushing tax cuts that do mostly benefit the wealthy and you're simultaneously talking about getting tough on the deficit, you're talking about a world in which math doesn't work the way most people think it works."

Indeed, for moments before she falsely stated that Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.

But Maddow's best remark Sunday had to be, "If you really want a stimulus, do what we -- what's proven to work in stimulus, which is things like extending unemployment benefits...It's the most stimulative thing you can do" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Keith Olbermann's recent cheerleading for the Obama adminstration's attacks on Fox News is in stark contrast to how the "Countdown" host felt about the Bush White House criticizing NBC last year for questionable editing done in a "Today" show report.

As NewsBusters' Geoffrey Dickens reported on May 19, 2008, NBC aired a piece that morning which "seemed to blame all of the Middle East's problems on the President's policies."

Later that day, White House counsel Ed Gillespie sent a letter to NBC President Steve Capus accusing the network of deceptively editing answers Bush had given during his interview with Richard Engel "to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it." 

Two days later, Olbermann made Gillespie one of his "Worst Persons in the World" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

In the wake of back to back disappointments the past two elections, as well as Arlen Specter's recent defection to the Democrat Party, liberal media members -- and even some not-so liberal media members -- have been blaming the GOP's supposed demise on Republicans being too conservative.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took issue with this popular yet obviously debatable theme:

[W]hen I hear Democrats like Arlen Specter and read editorialists like E.J. Dionne saying how liberal--or, or how conservative the Republican Party's become, they've got it backwards. We have not been conservative as a party, we've been radical. 

That was just one of many eye-opening statements by Scarborough during this segment that have been edited together in the video embedded right. Below the fold is a partial transcript of this enlightening discussion that included former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie:

Though there have long been concerns about liberal bias in the media, 2008 was the year the referees took off their striped shirts and donned a team’s jersey.

So wrote former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie in his National Review piece castigating what has become of journalism in our country. 

To be sure, the former counselor to George W. Bush, having watched his boss for years get torn to shreds by a media Gillespie claimed "loathed the president," has a lot of opinions concerning liberal bias.

In this article, they marvelously came out:

Ed Gillespie, counselor to President Bush, fired off a letter today to NBC News President Steve Capus complaining about misleading editing in Richard Engel's recent interview with the president.

See NB contributing editor Geoff Dickens's blog post on the May 19 "Today"-aired exclusive interview here.

For the Gillespie letter itself, check out WhiteHouse.gov.

(via TheHill.com)

For more criticism of Richard Engel's biased reporting, check out the NewsBusters archive here.