Hillary Clinton’s failure to engage in any press interviews may have led to a near-blackout on her speech at Texas Southern University on Thursday accusing the Republicans of voter suppression. ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored the story until Sunday – when CBS took it up on Face the Nation.
The PBS NewsHour gave it one sentence on Thursday night, and on Friday they set up Mark Shields to accuse Republicans of a “great fraud” by claiming there’s any voter fraud.
"Today Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting," Mrs. Clinton claimed. "What part of democracy are they afraid of?"
That’s a typically shameless question from someone who seems quite afraid of how candidates for president in a democracy speak with the press.
This didn't extend to the cable networks -- unsurprisingly, voter-ID-obsessed MSNBC was all over it.
On Friday morning, the newspapers placed the speech inside the paper: The New York Times on A-16, and The Washington Post on A-6. (The Post put "apocalyptic" conservatives on the front page.) USA Today only had a one-sentence preview.
The two national papers included pushback from RNC spokesman Orlando Watson. He accused Clinton of being "misleading and divisive" and noted that her home state of New York does not provide early voting. "Her exploitation of this issue only underscores why voters find her dishonest and untrustworthy," Watson said in a statement.
On Sunday, new Face the Nation host John Dickerson brought Hillary's harsh criticism directly to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry:
DICKERSON: Governor, I want to get your reaction here Hillary Clinton attacked you directly. Let`s listen to what she said. And I want to get your reaction.
CLIP of HILLARY CLINTON: Here in Texas, former Governor Rick Perry signed a law that a federal court said was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority voters. He applauded when the Voting Rights Act was gutted and said the laws protections were outdated and unnecessary.
DICKERSON: Governor, your reaction. But also Hillary Clinton`s folks and she says, there really aren`t a whole host of cases of voter fraud, and that this is something you`re just trumping up. Your reaction?
PERRY: I think that the people of the state of Texas overwhelmingly support voter identification and that`s what this is really about. Hillary Clinton believes that all wisdom emanates out of Washington, D.C. She`s the classic Washington insider. And she wants Washington to take this over.
Listen, we've seen this with the Affordable Care Act. We've seen it with education policy. If you think that Washington needs to be controlling our voting and our oversight for voting, I just don`t agree with that. And I think most Americans believe that the governors, the legislators and overwhelmingly passed in the state of Texas. She's basically looking at the people of Texas and other states that have put these types of voter identification laws into place and saying we don`t trust you.
In a CBS roundtable, National Journal's Ron Fournier announced "She's exactly right. These laws have got to be modernized and brought into digital age. But is she a person who can get it done? Or is she going to be another politician that makes a lot of promises, create these wedge issues and then when she gets into office, she divides rather than unites. She plays to her base rather than getting things done.That would be my worry. She's absolutely right. It's got to be done. But is she the leader who can get it done? I don't know yet."
