The New York Times on Thursday published a front page piece about a Mitt Romney supporting Super PAC that allegedly considered bringing a lot of attention to Barack Obama's America-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Conservatives George Will and Laura Ingraham both slammed the Times for this shoddy report on ABC's This Week Sunday with the former saying the truth "didn't fit their narrative" and the latter claiming it "was a shot across the bow that if you are a wealthy person in the United States, you happen to be conservative, you're going to get involved in this election, then we are going to watch everything that you do" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: I want to get to Facebook in a little bit, but first, we also saw this flurry this week over Reverend Wright, the return of Reverend Wright, at least to the front page for a day. It was over -- you see it right there -- a proposal given to Joe Ricketts, who's the head of a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, to bring back this issue. Now, as I said in my interviews, George Will, Speaker -- I mean, Mitt Romney has repudiated, Joe Ricketts ended up repudiating, but this was a plan that was made, and it created all kinds of excitement for about 48 hours.
GEORGE WILL: He didn't -- Joe Ricketts didn't end up repudiating it. He repudiated it the instant he saw it. His group is called End Spending. That's what he's interested in, not the social issues, nothing else. He asked through some of his people for someone to produce a plan, but what they got was a plan that ignored what he's interested in and went after Reverend Wright and all this other stuff. Ricketts took one look at it and said no.
No, that wouldn't fit with the Times' narrative, would it?
MATTHEW DOWD, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: The thing about these things -- and all of us who've been in politics have seen these crazy stuff that people do. I know Fred Davis, know Fred Davis well. Fred Davis worked for me in 2004 in the Bush campaign, he worked for me...
STEPHANOPOULOS: He made this proposal.
DOWD: ... in the 2006, in the Arnold Schwarzenegger campaign. Fred Davis is a creative guy, but Fred Davis requires adult supervision. Just like a lot of media guys, they require...
WILL: And he got it.
DOWD: ... adult supervision. The problem is, Mitt Romney didn't -- and this is not going to be an issue -- Mitt Romney repudiated this thing, not because it was going to be effective and he thought it might work and I don't want to do it, nobody wants to talk about this. Mitt Romney knows that if we're talking about Reverend Wright, we're not talking about the economy. And if we're not talking about the economy, that benefits Barack Obama.
Enter Ingraham stage right:
LAURA INGRAHAM, CONSERVATIVE TALK RADIO HOST: There's something else going on here, though. We were seeing a couple of weeks ago evidence now -- the Obama campaign has an enemies list, where Mr. Vandersloot -- you know, very wealthy man getting involved in politics who is being demonized for various -- I guess social issues and so forth. This is another individual, Joe Ricketts, TD Ameritrade, billionaire, who does ending spending. As George said, it's an economic -- they focus on economic issues.
This to me was a shot across the bow that if you are a wealthy...
STEPHANOPOULOS: This wasn't from the Obama campaign.
INGRAHAM: If you are -- but if you are a wealthy, wealthy person in the United States, you happen to be conservative, you're going to get involved in this election, then we are going to watch everything that you do, and you sort of step over the line, you talk about past associations with President Obama, anything like that, we will try to destroy you. This means not even -- as far as I know, he didn't even see this proposal, I believe, George. And the idea that he was considering it was a total false narrative put forward by the New York Times to send a message to other people, don't you dare get involved in this election, in any type of, quote, "controversial way."
Ingraham moments later schooled Stephanopoulos over the media's double standard when it comes to how Democrat and Republican campaign contributions are covered.
Once again, brava Laura!
