NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell appeared on last night's special Sunday edition of "Hannity" to address what's easily become the liberal media's closing campaign tactic for liberal Democrats: attempting to discredit the Tea Party movement and its candidates.
For example, in an October 26 interview with former president Jimmy Carter, Chris Matthews suggested Tea Partiers are simply the mindless dupes of corporate interests.
"Remember the 'poor, uneducated and easy to command types?'" Bozell asked Hannity. To the liberal media, "[t]hat was the religious right 20 years ago. Now it's the Tea Party," Bozell noted on the October 31 "Media Mash" segment:
BOZELL: It's "you poor Tea Party people. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know how you're being manipulated." People are seeing right through this. They're seeing right through what Chris Matthews is trying.
Hannity then aired an October 22 clip of Maggie Rodriguez interviewing Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wherein the CBS "Early Show" host insisted the Tea Party movement was outside the political mainstream:
HANNITY: I guess this is the media elite in New York, Washington and California... They really believe this. They can't believe what's happening to their anoninted president.
BOZELL: Sean, to paraphrase Maggie Rodriguez, there is no question that she does't know what she's talking about. I bet you dollars to donuts she's never been to a Tea Party event.... She certainly doesn't read newspapers. If she read newspapers, she would have seen the Gallup poll yesterday. What did the Gallup poll show us? Forty-eight percent of Americans call themselves conservative. Thirty-two percent moderates. Twenty percent liberals. By 2-to-1 it's conservative over anything else.That's the highest number that conservatives have polled since they started doing this in 1994. Higher than 1994 even. So it's the highest ever. this is a surge for that philosophy. The people who consider themselves as supportive of the Tea Party is at an all-time high in America. She's saying the opposite of reality.
For the full segment, click the play button on the video embed above.
