The fraudulent impression of balance on the PBS NewsHour doesn’t just occur on Friday night with Jonathan Capehart “versus” David Brooks as they agree on nearly everything.
On Wednesday night, the NewsHour had an interview segment they titled “Democratic and Republican strategists on what worked and what didn’t in midterm campaigns.”
There’s one tremendously dishonest part of that headline. The “Republican” was Sarah Longwell of the “Republican Accountability Project,” which openly roots for Democrats in elections. No one who actually wanted Republicans to win was invited to speak.
Speaking of her focus groups, Longwell was happy that Republicans who are pro-life without exceptions lost big. It’s a “good night” for Democracy when Democrats like Josh Shapiro win (and no one mentions how Shapiro spent big bucks to support his opponent in the primary.)
LONGWELL: And I got to say, it was a really good night for democracy. The thing that had been keeping me up at night was the idea that these sort of governor's races and secretary of state races could get swept up in this red wave, and you would have a bunch of people certifying elections in 2024 who didn't believe in certifying the actual results.
But, in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, we had — there were very good nights where the Democrats won and they kept out these election deniers. But it was a very bad night for Donald Trump and his candidates that he had sort of put forward.
As usual, PBS and their liberal base don't think there's any such thing as "election deniers" in the Democrat Party. In Georgia, Brian Kemp kept out "election denier" Stacey Abrams, but that didn't come up in this segment. Later, Longwell was thrilled Democrats succeeded in defining Republicans as extreme on abortion, as she found in her focus groups:
LONGWELL: But when it came to vote choice in a Whitmer vs. Tudor Dixon, like in Michigan, for example, everybody knew that Tudor Dixon had said that, if a young woman was raped, she should still have to carry the baby to term.
Democrats did a great job. They spent a lot of money early. They defined candidates on these issues. And by the time it came down to vote choice in this election, the swing voters knew how extreme these Republican candidates were. And, ultimately, that made a ton of difference.
Whitmer favors exactly zero limits on abortion, but PBS thinks that's compassionate, not extreme. Longwell wrapped by expressing regret that more Republicans didn't lose.
LONGWELL: Well, as somebody who's been extremely alarmed to watch the Republican Party's descent into conspiracy theories and election denialism, I'm, frankly, thrilled to see such a repudiation of a lot of the election deniers in these key swing states.
That being said, the party continues to radicalize. And a lot — there are a lot of election deniers that won last night. They're just all in safer areas. And so I remain deeply concerned about the state of the Republican Party.
There was a similar feel back on August 17, when the NewsHour discussed Liz Cheney’s primary loss with Longwell and former Wyoming state Rep. Tim Stubson, two backers of Cheney. Longwell said she wasn’t Republican now: “there really is no going back to the party that I came up in, to the party that I knew. It has now fully embraced Donald Trump in his anti-democratic movement.”
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