With Americans heading to the polls in less than five months, the liberal media have once again adopted their typical strategy of depicting every Republican candidate as being a far-right extremist.
Such was on display in this weekend's syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" when the host began the second segment by saying, "This week's primaries proved again that this anti-Washington year may usher in Republicans who owe a lot to the far-right."
Matthews then played a clip from his upcoming special "Rise of the New Right," saying after its completion, "Well, Tea Parties have had some luck with conservatives who have beaten establishment Republicans this year. This past Tuesday night, for example, Nevada Republicans chose a Tea Party candidate to go against Harry Reid. And she's not shy about her extreme views like killing Social Security and Medicare."
After a brief clip of Sharron Angle speaking at a Nevada debate, Matthews said, "And even mainstream Republicans like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina who won nominations this week in California have bent to the right in reaction to pressure from the hard-right."
Matthews then showed a Whitman ad wherein she was talking tough about illegal immigration followed by a Fiorina commercial that had the nerve to use "that tried and true conservative line 'The Democrats are soft on terrorism.'"
The host then asked New York Magazine's John Heilemann, "That's very hard-right talk; is that the smart talk to win an election in California?" (video follows with more transcription of this discussion):
JOHN HEILEMANN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Well, it's not...It's very clear in California in particular that this is a problem, and you see both sides of the problem. In the Fiorina race, Tom Campbell would have been the better candidate for the Republicans.
MATTHEWS: To win.
HEILEMANN: To win in, in, in November.
Stop the tape. Saying Campbell has a better chance of beating Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) than Fiorina does is quite speculative. After all, he got absolutely crushed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in 2000 losing by over 2 million votes.
He even lost his own district that year by 15 points!
But even this is somewhat irrelevant, for the truly conservative candidate in last week's Republican primary was the Tea Party's favorite Chuck DeVore. Readers should recall former Alaska governor Sarah Palin taking A LOT of heat last month when she came out in support of Fiorina instead of DeVore.
As such, Matthews and Heilemann trying to depict Fiorina as a far-right candidate here were way off base:
MATTHEWS: Do they want to win or be right, I mean literally right?
HEILEMANN: Well, the Republican primary, the Republican primary electorate seems to want to be right more than it wants to win.
Nonsense. Republicans on Tuesday went with the person with the most money that they believe can beat Boxer. If they had wanted the most conservative candidate, they would have gone for DeVore. That is NOT even debatable:
HEILEMANN: So you wind up then with Carly Fiorina saying stuff it's not clear she really believes in order to win against a candidate who probably would have had a better chance.
Based on what? Fiorina beat Campbell by 32 points! Unfortunately, Matthews didn't challenge Heilemann's ignorant display:
HEILEMANN: Then you have Meg Whitman who an otherwise very attractive candidate with tons of money who's on the fundamentally wrong side as history shows us in California of this immigration issue. These are two candidates who on the surface should be very attractive, very compelling, and they're both so far off on the right they're so stranded.
Amazing.
Like Fiorina, Whitman wasn't the conservative candidate in her race. That was Steve Poizner, the Golden State's Insurance Commissioner.
Conservatives throughout California largely supported him including Rep. Tom McClintock who said in campaign ads:
Steve Poizner is the only conservative candidate in this race and is serious about implementing real reform in Sacramento. I am convinced that Meg Whitman has nothing to offer other than Arnold Schwarzenegger's third term. That is something California cannot afford.
Taking this further, Whitman was John McCain's national co-chair when he ran for president in 2008.
As for her immigration position, Whitman was critical of Arizona's SB 1070.
For some reason neither Matthews nor Heilemann brought this up.
In the end, now that the primary season is over, the goal of America's media will be to make every Republican candidate around the country look far more conservative than they really are.
Something they possibly haven't considered is that in a year when liberal is likely a four-letter word, being branded as far-right might be a good thing.
Hmmm.
As a post facto aside, Matthews and Company did discuss Fiorina's open mike hair comment about Boxer. For some reason, as they chatted about all this "very hard-right talk" from Republicans, the subject of Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown calling Whitman a Nazi never surfaced.
Color me unsurprised.
