As a Monday morning treat for NewsBusters readers, here is a sampling of the quotes from the latest edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables newsletter, a compilation of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. All of the quotes, plus past issues going back to 1988, can be found at www.MRC.org.
Forget What Voters Said, It’s Time for Higher Taxes
Host Christiane Amanpour: “There are many economists who simply say the math does not add up, if you’re not going to agree to raising taxes. Do you agree that taxes will have to be raised, as well?”
Senator-elect Rand Paul: “Well, I think it’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending problem.”
Amanpour: “But it is a revenue problem according to so many economists.”
— ABC’s This Week, November 7.
“Republicans and Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that you may have to raise taxes if you really want to bring the budget under control at some point.”
— Host David Gregory to the National Urban League’s Marc Morial on Meet the Press, November 7.
Stockman “Brave” Now That He’s Pushing Higher Taxes
“With our national debt in the trillions, budget experts will tell you that just taxing the rich isn’t enough. One Republican brave enough to go public is David Stockman, President Reagan’s budget director. He says all the Bush tax cuts should be eliminated — even those on the middle class. And he says his own Republican Party has gone too far with its anti-tax religion.”
— CBS’s Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, October 31.
Grumpy NBC: Tea Party About to “Bump Up Against Reality”
NBC’s Tom Brokaw: “Matt Kibbe, who speaks for Freedom Works, the Dick Armey organization has said, ‘We want this message to go across the country. The people want less from their federal government.’ We’ve heard that before, when it bumps up against reality and you’re talking about closing a base or shutting down an agricultural substation of some kind, then it gets pretty tough to do, Brian.”
Anchor Brian Williams: “Reminds me of the signs at more than one rally this past season: ‘Get the government out of my Social Security. Get the government out of my Medicare.’”
— During NBC’s election night coverage, November 2.
Debunking “Myth” that Election Was Bad News for Democrats
“Even as they were electing Republicans in huge numbers, a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party....Voters were fairly evenly divided on what many Republicans made Exhibit A in their case that the Obama administration had overreached: the new health care law....Voters were also divided on questions of taxing and spending.....And despite what politicians, political analysts and pundits have been saying for weeks, if not months, most of the voters themselves claimed that the election was not a referendum on the President.”
— New York Times correspondent Michael Cooper in a November 5 “Political Memo” headlined, “Debunking the Myths of the Midterm.”
Shame on Americans for Turning Their Backs on “The Anointed One”
“How could we resist a man who simply by opening his mouth could move mountains?...There are many explanations for why he seems diminished by the power of his own office, from the vestigial racism of the American public to his misreading of his own mandate....Of course, Obama has never turned his back on us, but so many Americans have turned their backs on him that it amounts to The Anointed One, as he is sometimes referred, being stripped of something that can never return: his anointment.”
— From “Why President Obama Will Never Be Barack Obama Again,” a November 4 Esquire magazine “The Politics Blog” post by Tom Junod.
Real Problem: Obama’s Policies Just Weren’t Liberal Enough
“If the stimulus had been bigger and the financial reform package clearer and stronger, the public would have had a different — and, I believe, more positive — sense of the President’s agenda.”
— Time’s Joe Klein writing in his magazine’s “Swampland” blog, November 4.
What Happens When Tea Party Shuts Down Government?
Co-host Harry Smith: “So here’s your question — last, but not least. It gets to be February, all is said and done, big Republican wave just rolls in there. There’ll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the Tea Party guys are going to say, ‘Over my dead body,’ and the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?”
Author Ann Coulter: “Well, the media will blame the Republicans.”
— CBS’s The Early Show, November 2.
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