“I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias,” a frustrated Newt Gingrich asserted on Sunday’s Meet the Press, citing two blatant examples. First: “Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism” in Vice President Joe Biden telling a black audience “if the Republicans win you will be ‘in chains’”?
Second, President Obama “voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion -- that’s a 20 percent issue,” a position which Democrats “couldn’t defend...for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans.”
Gingrich charged: “If the news media spent as much time on the extremism of the Democrats as they spend trying to attack us, they would not be able to adopt that plank this week.”
Audio: MP3 clip
Another guest panelist, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, declared “I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice,” but when Gingrich challenged him to defend the Democratic Party platform support for taxpayer funding of late-term and partial-birth abortion, Friedman called it “a defensible position,” then suddenly decided “I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.”
Seconds earlier during the roundtable, NBC News eminence Tom Brokaw maintained Republican opposition to abortion is antithetical to full rights for women. “I think this is the century of women,” he asserted before fretting “there is even among some Republican women out there” the view that the “party doesn’t quite buy into that yet.” He contended “the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.”
From the September 2 Meet the Press:
TOM BROKAW: I happen to believe, and you know the kind of family in which I have been raised, I’m living with all women, and I have been witness to this both in my wife and my daughters and now my granddaughters, I think this is the century of women. I really do believe-
DORIS GOODWIN: Hooray.
BROKAW: -that there’s going to be more gains made by more women across every part of our lives – cultural, political and economic. And I think that there is even among some Republican women out there, that that party doesn’t quite buy into that yet. I mean, there are extraordinary achievements made by Nikki Haley and Condi Rice and everyone else. But the real issue on this campaign for women will be the social issues or economic issues, will one trump the other? Because the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.
DAVID GREGORY: Understanding, Mr. Speaker, the difference between Todd Akin talking about rape versus the abortion plank in the platform, I understand there is that distinction. Nevertheless, the question, social issues versus economic issues as being a big motivator for women, is a question.GINGRICH: Let me just take a second to disagree with Carly, I think Todd Akin was the choice of the people in Missouri, and Todd Akin has publicly apologized. And I think that the last poll show he’s beating the Democratic Senator. I think that we ought to go on from that, Karl Rove said some terrible things on Friday for which he has apologized which should remind us, people make mistakes. Vice President of the United States-
GREGORY: He was joking about if he shows up and murdered someone.
GINGRICH: No. In the age of Gabby Giffords, it is not a joke to say that a Member of Congress ought to get murdered. And I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias, okay. Let me give you two examples. Vice President of the United States goes to a black audience and says if the Republicans win you will be in chains. Now, where is the -- how can Biden remain as Vice President? Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism? And we talk about people saying things they ought to get off tickets. How come Biden shouldn’t get off the ticket? Second example, the Democratic Party plank on abortion is the most extreme plank in the United States. The President of United States voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion, that’s a 20 percent issue. The vast majority of women do not believe the taxpayers should pay to abort a child in the eighth or ninth month. Now why isn’t it shocking that the Democrats on the social issue of abortion have taken the most extreme position in this country and they couldn’t defend that position for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans?
TOM FRIEDMAN: I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice. And I think that that is where the country should be. That is where many, many women in this country are. And I’m glad there are people running for the presidency who will defend that position. Period. Paragraph. End it.
GREGORY: Newt, I guess the question, too, is whether you’re seeking even in the Akin example of this kind of to seek an equivalency between that and say, Biden, who is using language that Republicans have used about, you know, the regulatory shackles, as opposed to making an overt racial-
FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I do believe that’s a defensible position but I also believe I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.
