Government shutdown

Eager to declare Republican defeat in the budget showdown on Wednesday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Peter Alexander proclaimed: "As John McCain said, Republicans have to understand, 'We lost this battle.' Let's put this very simply, after a shutdown that lasted 16 days, a shutdown led by House Republicans who wanted to undermine the President's new health care law, by the end of today,…

Brent Bozell isn’t the only conservative opinion leader to focus on how the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll was used by NBC as “absolutely devastating to Republicans.” Rush Limbaugh found “it just dispirited every Republican who heard about it. And it ignited and made joyously happy every Democrat and every media person who heard about it.” But at The Huffington Post, liberal pollsters Mark…

On Tuesday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor accused the Heritage Foundation of "strapping dynamite to the bridge" in trying to influence the agreement to end the government shutdown, and went on to mock Heritage President Jim DeMint as wearing "clown pajamas." After host Al Sharpton griped about DeMint being a "far, far right" influence on congressional members, Taylor…

For the second time in one day, an MSNBC anchor accused Republicans of betraying the United States. According to Ed Schultz on Tuesday, House GOP members who won't agree to all of Barack Obama's demands on the government shutdown are committing "economic terrorism" and plotting a "coup d'etat" against the President. Schultz brought on Democratic Congressman Joseph Crowley to discuss whether…

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this government shutdown has been the inability of the average person to get a handle on what's really going on. Outfits like the network evening news shows, the Associated Press, the New York Times and others compose their spin, and almost invariably tilt their coverage towards the Obama administration and Democrats; developments favoring the GOP and…

The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it’s almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of “Morning Joe.” The media have designated as Public Enemy Number One a recalcitrant bloc of Tea…

Although Democrats stymied a bipartisan debt ceiling deal over the weekend, CNN's chief political analyst focused on poor polling for the Republicans in Congress on Monday, and wondered if it couldn't be like "Katrina" for the party in the long-run. "I think public opinion, this has been a disaster for the Republican party, unmitigated. Everybody admits it. And the question is whether this is…

At the top of her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Andrea Mitchell wrung her hands over "angry Tea Party protesters" who gathered in Washington over the weekend to denounce the Obama administration's politicization of the government shutdown being "whipped up" Sarah Palin and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Later on the program, she…

In his Monday column Politico's Roger Simon unleashed an anti-GOP rant where he accused the Republican Party of letting "racism out of the closet," accused it of waging "a war against babies" and wished death on two of its leaders Ted Cruz and John Boehner. In his column headlined "Government shutdown unleashes racism" Simon wasted no time in attacking Republicans by putting his twist on old…

After the veterans' march against National Park Service barricades on Sunday, last Tuesday's rally for amnesty could be studied for contrasts...except the networks almost entirely skipped over those protests. ABC and NBC aired nothing. CBS offered eight seconds, a 22-word snippet  in their "Eye Opener" quick-clip segment at the start of Wednesday's This Morning: "An arrest for several Congress…

Does Candy Crowley work for CNN or the Democratic Party? It was tough to tell Sunday when after the State of the Union host asked guest Rand Paul (R-Ky.) if recent polling indicated the beginning of the end of the Republican Party, she actually asked him if he’d ever consider becoming a Democrat (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Obama-loving media couldn't wait to report findings from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll concerning how the public are giving far more blame for the government shutdown to Republicans than the President. What they chose not to report was that 51 percent of respondents in the very same poll said of Barack Obama, "He is putting his own political agenda ahead of what's good for the country…

People Magazine is known for its sugary boosting of Democratic celebrities, from helping the Clintons show off Chelsea in 1992 to boosting the Obamas in both election years. In the latest edition, readers can see how People handles conservatives. There it is, in the table of contents: “Meet Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the Canadian-born conservative Republican at the center of the government shutdown…

Talk about your government shutdown. Conservatives would have enjoyed watching liberal TV reporters sputter if President Bush had completely skipped the first row of reporters and picked only friendly reporters, even writers for conservative blog sites. But the media elites would have thrown a major tantrum about censorship -- including Jay Carney in his tenure at Time magazine. Put the shoe on…