Republicans Split Over Beck And Limbaugh; Long May Their Confusion Reign
Conservatives Roar; Republicans Tremble
Many top Republicans are growing worried that the party’s chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities, according to interviews with GOP officials and operatives.
Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh— figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or influence.
Some of the leading 2012 candidates are described by operatives as grappling with the same tension. The challenge is to tap into the richest source of energy in the party — the disgust of grass-roots conservative activists with President Barack Obama and their hunger for a full-throated attack on his agenda — without coming off to the broader public as cranky and extreme.
Mitt Romney has purposely kept a lower profile and stuck to speeches on specific policy issues, in part to avoid the early trade-off between placating party activists and appearing presidential. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, one of the most active potential opponents for Obama in 2012, said that media portrayals of a narrow-minded party could make it harder to attract the middle-of-the-road voters needed to make the GOP a majority party again.
“The commentators are part of the coalition, not the whole coalition,” Pawlenty said in a phone interview. “The party needs to be about addition, not subtraction — but not at the expense of watering down its principles.”
“We need more voices,” said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, one of the party’s up-and-coming leaders. “Our party’s challenge has been that we need to be more inclusive — we need to attract the middle again. ... When one party controls all the levers of power in Washington, they’re going to try and villainize whoever they can on our side. It gives us an opportunity now to try and harness the energy and point it in a positive direction, so that we can attract the middle of the country to the common-sense conservative views that we have been about as a party.”
Political operatives of all stripes like to fancy themselves as coolly controlling practitioners — who can shape public images and direct the activities of party regulars from their perches in Washington.
But the reality of the GOP during the Obama presidency is that the party’s image and priorities are in many ways being imposed on Washington — driven by grass-roots energies that lawmakers and strategists can scarcely control.
At the same time, there are powerful incentives for Washington politicians to play to the crowd and bow to the influence of commentators like Beck, who at the moment is far more famous than any of the GOP’s congressional leaders.
When Republicans such as Rep. Phil Gingrey have complained about these figures in public, most have quickly apologized in the face of outraged phone calls and e-mails from conservative activists.
House and Senate Republicans both seized on the issue of federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now after Obama critic Andrew Breitbart launched the controversy on his site BigGovernment.com with video of two people posing as a pimp and a prostitute in the group’s offices.
As vividly illustrated by Rep. Joe Wilson, elected Republicans are seeing the benefits — national media attention and fundraising — from embracing the trash-talking style of talk show hosts. Wilson went from being a little-known member of the House minority who had repeatedly failed to get on the A-list committees to a cause célèbre for the right wing because he shouted “You lie” at Obama during a joint session of Congress.
Elected Republicans Blaming Limbaugh And Beck For GOP’s Woes
Yeah, all that’s holding the Republicans back is Glenn Beck and El Rushbo.
Many top Republicans are growing worried that the party’s chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities, according to interviews with GOP officials and operatives.
Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or influence.
Everyone, all together now: awwwwwwwwwww.
Quick quiz: which of the following wingnut media types do not engage in angry, flamboyant rhetoric? El Rushbo, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, Bill Bennett. Because they were all spewing their hateful tirades when Republicans were winning elections and talking of permanent majorities.
Turd Blossom is right for once:
“The question will be whether the Republican candidates next year can talk about a lot of kitchen-table issues and the deficit and spending,” Rove said.
And that’s why Republicans are screwed. Because those Republican candidates will tell us that the Answer to Everything is smaller government, lower taxes, increased defense spending, and keeping the brown people out. Exactly what they said during the “angry white man” Gingrich 90s, exactly what they said when they ruled the country during the Bush/Cheney years, and exactly what they said in 2006 and 2008 when they got their asses bounced out of every level of government.
Being closely associated with two hugely unpopular clowns with substance abuse issues may not be helpful to an already reeling party, but it’s the failed policies and incompetent governance of the GOP that killed the GOP — not the wingnut media industry.
Palin, Limbaugh, Beck … Now It’s Republicans Seeing The Downside
Some moderate conservatives see danger in the vociferous right, especially among broadcast pot-stirrers. They want to advance the GOP by changing the tone.
“I am not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously quipped. “I am a Democrat.” Then there were those old jokes about Democrats forming “circular firing squads.”
But these days, it seems like Republicans are the ones duking it out with each other … or at least examining where they are and where they should be headed after recent electoral drubbings.
Mainstream Republicans are looking at the loudest of the conservative voices — Sarah Palin and the most prominent of the talk-show types (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al) — and concluding that the GOP needs to do something different if it’s to succeed.
Steve Schmidt, former campaign strategist for John McCain, said Friday that nominating former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for president in 2012 would be “catastrophic” for the party.
“In the year since the election has ended, she has done nothing to expand her appeal beyond the base,” Schmidt said at a forum sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and web site.
“The independent vote is going to be up for grabs in 2012,” he said. “That middle of the electorate is going to be determinative of the outcome of the elections. I just don’t see that if you look at the things she has done over the year … that she is going to expand that base in the middle.”
Meanwhile, Schmidt’s old boss “is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image,” reports politico.com. That means recruiting candidates, raising money, and campaigning on their behalf.
“Those familiar with McCain’s thinking say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”
Speaking at the same two-day Atlantic event as Schmidt, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina said party leaders need to call out “birthers” and other conspiracy theorists on the right. “Say, ‘You’re crazy.’ In a respectful way.”
Graham dismissed Rush Limbaugh as someone who “makes hundreds of millions of dollars being able to talk on the radio.” And of today’s hottest conservative/libertarian phenomenon he said, “Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He’s aligned with cynicism, and there’s always been a market for cynicism.”
But perhaps the most devastating critique of the vociferous right — from the right — comes from David Brooks, resident conservative columnist at The New York Times.
Referring to them as “media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party,” Brooks wrote this week:
“The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the GOP. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.”
Is this tug toward the center by prominent middle-of-the-road conservatives likely to succeed?
“Much of the party is fonder of Palin than of McCain, and thinks that the catastrophe was in nominating him; in their version of events, going with McCain meant selling out conservatism and inviting disaster,” writes Gabriel Winant at salon.com. “This kind of thinking sends a party into a downward spiral. The GOP base is likely to view McCain’s current efforts, and Schmidt’s comments, not as healthy argument, but as a corrupting influence.”
No surprise in Rush Limbaugh’s response to the current hoo-hah.
“I think it’s time for the McCain crowd to acknowledge they are losers and pack it in,” he emailed political blogger Greg Sargent. “They’ve done enough damage to the Republican Party. Move aside and let a brighter, more principled, and more competent generation of people clean up the mess they helped create.”
More on the reshaping of the GOP here.
“I am not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously quipped. “I am a Democrat.” Then there were those old jokes about Democrats forming “circular firing squads.”
But these days, it seems like Republicans are the ones duking it out with each other … or at least examining where they are and where they should be headed after recent electoral drubbings.
Mainstream Republicans are looking at the loudest of the conservative voices — Sarah Palin and the most prominent of the talk-show types (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al) — and concluding that the GOP needs to do something different if it’s to succeed.
Steve Schmidt, former campaign strategist for John McCain, said Friday that nominating former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for president in 2012 would be “catastrophic” for the party.
“In the year since the election has ended, she has done nothing to expand her appeal beyond the base,” Schmidt said at a forum sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and web site.
“The independent vote is going to be up for grabs in 2012,” he said. “That middle of the electorate is going to be determinative of the outcome of the elections. I just don’t see that if you look at the things she has done over the year … that she is going to expand that base in the middle.”
Meanwhile, Schmidt’s old boss “is working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image,” reports politico.com. That means recruiting candidates, raising money, and campaigning on their behalf.
“Those familiar with McCain’s thinking say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”
Speaking at the same two-day Atlantic event as Schmidt, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina said party leaders need to call out “birthers” and other conspiracy theorists on the right. “Say, ‘You’re crazy.’ In a respectful way.”
Graham dismissed Rush Limbaugh as someone who “makes hundreds of millions of dollars being able to talk on the radio.” And of today’s hottest conservative/libertarian phenomenon he said, “Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party as far as I can tell. He’s aligned with cynicism, and there’s always been a market for cynicism.”
But perhaps the most devastating critique of the vociferous right — from the right — comes from David Brooks, resident conservative columnist at The New York Times.
Referring to them as “media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party,” Brooks wrote this week:
“The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the GOP. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.”
Is this tug toward the center by prominent middle-of-the-road conservatives likely to succeed?
“Much of the party is fonder of Palin than of McCain, and thinks that the catastrophe was in nominating him; in their version of events, going with McCain meant selling out conservatism and inviting disaster,” writes Gabriel Winant at salon.com. “This kind of thinking sends a party into a downward spiral. The GOP base is likely to view McCain’s current efforts, and Schmidt’s comments, not as healthy argument, but as a corrupting influence.”
No surprise in Rush Limbaugh’s response to the current hoo-hah.
“I think it’s time for the McCain crowd to acknowledge they are losers and pack it in,” he emailed political blogger Greg Sargent. “They’ve done enough damage to the Republican Party. Move aside and let a brighter, more principled, and more competent generation of people clean up the mess they helped create.”
More on the reshaping of the GOP here.
Brooks: Beck, Limbaugh Have No Real Power, GOP Falling For "Media Mythology"
Let us take a trip back into history. Not ancient history. Recent history. It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
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Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.
Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.
Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! Republican voters have not heeded their masters in the media. Before long, South Carolina looms as the crucial point of the race. The contest is effectively between Romney and McCain. The talk jocks are now in spittle-flecked furor. Day after day, whole programs are dedicated to hurling abuse at McCain and everybody ever associated with him. The jocks are threatening to unleash their angry millions.
Yet the imaginary armies do not materialize. McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can’t even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can’t even deliver South Carolina!
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.
But, of course, we shouldn’t be surprised by this story. Over the past few years the talk jocks have demonstrated their real-world weakness time and again. Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their House election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their campaigns.
In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because “we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.” Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Ditto heads advanced.
Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.
But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.
They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 3, 2009
A column on Friday by David Brooks incorrectly described the 2006 campaign by Randy Graf of Arizona for a House seat. He was trying to win the seat for the first time; he was not running for re-election.
Bachmann: I’m Comfortable With Rush Limbaugh And Glenn Beck Being The Voices Of The GOP.
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Mike Pence: Rush Limbaugh And Glenn Beck Speak For Many Americans
The chairman of the House Republican Conference says it’s “hogwash” that GOP leaders are worried about what Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party movement are doing to their party’s image.
In a story headlined “Conservatives Roar; Republicans Tremble,” POLITICO reported Thursday that “many top Republicans are growing worried that the party’s chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities.”
But House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence(R-Ind.) says it’s not so.
“You know, the American people cherish their freedom of speech and a free and independent press. That's why I found this morning's headlines so troubling,” Pence said Thursday. “Goaded on by a White House increasinglyintolerant of criticism, lately the national media has taken aim at conservative commentators in radio and television. Suggesting that they only speak for a small group of activists and even suggesting in one report today that Republicans in Washington are ‘worried about their electoral effect.’
“Well, that's hogwash.
“To suggest that men and women that are taking a stand for fiscal discipline and traditional values in the national debate today only speak for ‘grassroots activists’ is absurd. As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands that filled town hall meetings this summer and the nearly a million Americans who gathered here in Washington in September. Millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents are worried about liberal social policies and runaway federal spending, deficit and debt.
“So to my friends in the so-called ‘mainstream media’ I say, ‘conservative talk show hosts may not speak for everybody but they speak for more Americans than you do.’”
Why Beck And Limbaugh Are Bad For The Republicans
The current debate over whether Barack Obama’s opponents are motivated by his policy or his race dominated the Sunday news shows, with a general consensus emerging that policy was the main factor. It was nonetheless conceded that racism was a disturbing presence in many of the protest events. Sadly, no Republican spokesperson on the shows said anything to condemn the organizers that allowed and may have encouraged the ugly manifestations of racism.
Many of the recent protests reminded me of rallies last fall at which Sarah Palin would talk about “taking back our America” and accuse Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” The fact that media types like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh engage in overt race-baiting on a daily basis only adds to the perception that the GOP is out of sync with its basic principles and values. It seems no Republican luminary would dare question Beck or Limbaugh for fear of facing primary challenges down the road, which is somewhat ironic when you consider that neither of the two is an actual member of the GOP. After all, opposing a liberal administration is good for ratings.
Both Beck and Limbaugh represent a brand of populist extremism that has bubbled up at different times in American history. Recall Father Coughlin during the FDR years, Senator McCarthy during the post WWII hysteria over communist infiltration, and George Wallace in the 60s playing on the fears of the white working class. The difference now is that Beck and Limbaugh have a greater range thanks to the Internet. While a lot of their shtick is more entertainment than information, they have mesmerized the mainstream media, which seems to react to their eccentricities on a regular basis. CNN and MSNBC often ask their analysts to react to some of the more extreme interventions of Beck and Limbaugh. The result is a larger-than-life reality show of which the Republican party is merely a spectator.
It may be that the Republican leadership in Congress, prospective presidential candidates, and RNC Chair Michael Steele figure that the extremism, the populism and maybe even the racism will bring Obama down, leaving the voices of reason and moderation to pick up the pieces. If that is the case, it is a risky proposition. America has seen revolts against policies, perceived threats to freedom, big government, unpopular wars and so on, but at the end of the day, Americans choose to be governed by balance and moderation, both in their leaders and their institutions. The principle of checks and balances is enshrined in the Founding Fathers’ thinking and is embodied in the constitution. Politicians who exploit the rants of Beck and Limbaugh may make some short-term gains in the polls—as Sarah Palin has done—but in the long run, America will opt for candidates that appeal to their hopes and dreams as opposed to their fears and greed.
Fortunately , there are voices within the Republican party that have the potential to rise and challenge the extremism of the far-right—people like David Frum and Joe Scarborough, two Republicans who have dared to question the antics of Beck and Limbaugh. Reasonable conservative pundits and journalists like David Brooks, George Will, Peggy Noonan, and Kathleen Parker consistently make the case for smaller government, less taxation, rugged individualism, and greater inclusivity in ways that honour the vision of conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley. But they cannot match the theatrics and charisma of Beck and Limbaugh. Unless the elected leadership shows more courage, the Republican party will remain a hostage of the fringe. Obama`s approval may have dropped in recent months, but the Republicans are still far from making the gains that will make them a viable alternative in the 2012 presidential election.
This is not a plea for an eventual Republican takeover of the US government on my part. Rather, it is based on a belief that good government happens when opposing views confront each other in the political process. Obama and the Democrats won the election and have the legitimacy to fulfill their promises, and this blog hopes to see the changes promised by Obama come to pass, especially in foreign policy, health care reform, the environment, and financial regulations.
Still, changing America is not as cut and dry a process as winning an election. It is the product of debate within a system of government that is based on checks and balances and characterized by a propensity toward bipartisanship in making policy and legislation. Bipartisanship depends on individual political leaders reaching across party lines for the common interest and proposing policies that can be grounds for a potential compromise. It was a precursor to historical legislation like Medicare, civil rights, social security, the foreign policy of the Cold War. However , as long as Beck and Limbaugh call the shots, the Republican party will fail to meet its promise .
Littwin: Believers Let Fox News Channel The GOP
Let's begin by stating the obvious: Barack Obama's war on Fox News is beneath the dignity of the office.
Of course it is. Going to war with Fox News would be beneath the dignity of my office — and all I've got is a pod with a view.
I mean, if Rush Limbaugh's company is beneath the dignity of the dog- fighting NFL, then Glenn Beck's name should not even be whispered within hail-Marying distance of the Oval Office.
But this war is not exactly what you might think it is. There's more going on here than a thin-skinned politician whining about the media.
That's an old story — much older, say, than Dick Nixon and his enemies list. Back in the day, way back in the day, John Adams was using the Alien and Sedition Acts to actually put off-putting reporters in jail.
Our updated story is different. It's about the red-blue divide and how Fox, a cable news channel, has somehow taken over the red party's position on the board.
I don't know if that's unprecedented, but while Republicans have been reeling from electoral defeats, Fox News — with help from talk radio — has effectively become the opposition party.
And so, Obama's advisers go on the Sunday news shows to argue that Fox News is not real news, suggesting that, in fact, Fox News is the propaganda wing of the Republican Party.
But they've got it backward. The Republican Party is closer to being the political wing of Fox News.
That doesn't make it any smarter for Obama to take Fox on so directly. I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish. If the point is to delegitimize Fox, the truth is that whoever goes head to head with a president is going head to head with a president.
For Fox, this is brier-patch strategy. The more Obama goes after Fox, the better the ratings. This is a war Fox can't lose.
And each Obama attack simply illustrates how short of the promised post-partisan America we are. Post- partisan America, circa 2009, starts with Olympia Snowe and, to this point, ends with Olympia Snowe.
But who leads the Obama opposition? Boehner? McConnell? Palin? Pawlenty? Huckabee? Romney?
Or Glenn Beck?
Ah, Glenn Beck — the Weepy One, who must have learned his acting chops from Balloon Boy's dad — goes after the czars. He takes down Van Jones. He makes the cover of Newsweek. He becomes chief cheerleader for the tea parties.
And his ratings, yes, balloon.
We've had political divides before. I seem to remember we were once so divided, we had an entire civil war. But what's changed is that the sides now have their own TV networks, that the divide has become institutionalized, that liberals watch MSNBC and conservatives watch Fox.
And now, any crazy thing that anyone thinks can be validated by some guy who is smart enough to get his own TV show (see: Lou Dobbs, birther edition).
And yet, I think Fox may, in the end, be a bigger problem for Republicans than for Obama. For Republicans to make a political comeback, they will have to appease Fox viewers and also try to reclaim the political center — if there still is one.
Obama's problem isn't Fox. It's making sure Harry "Why Won't Anyone Follow Me?" Reid gets 60 Democratic votes for health care.
Supposing Obama gets health care passed and supposing the economy improves next year — which is what economies inevitably do — it's going to be tough to win in 2010 on an anti- Obama platform.
But for now, there's Fox and there's Beck. I don't know if you've watched Beck, but you should, or you won't know what you're missing. I YouTubed a recent segment — I can't remember whether Glenny wept — in which he was arguing against volunteerism because, it seems, Hollywood and Obama are both in favor of volunteerism. It's all over the blogosphere because — just check out the transcript.
"Celebrities are coming together to make it cool to volunteer," Beck says. "Disney gives you a free day at the park. This is all fine, but doesn't it seem a little bit convenient that all of this comes out now at the same time the Obama administration is calling for it? Obama controls the message through the media he holds in his pocket. Or in his little hand. And soon if you disobey, he'll just go (and we see Beck slap his own hand)."
It's thrilling TV, in that it's loony- tunes TV. And then because this is Obama he's talking about, Beck inevitably takes the extra step, right into the abyss.
"Well, this is fantastic," he says. "It's almost like we're living in Mao's China right now."
Yes, Chairman Mao.
There was a turning point in media history, the day Beck said Obama was a racist who hated white culture — and nothing happened. Hardly anyone blinked. These may be fighting words, but I think I understand how that's possible: Fox News may have great ratings, but its audience is limited to people who are used to watching Fox.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 ormlittwin@denverpost.com.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200910230002
Former White House press secretary and current Fox News contributor Dana Perino has recently contrasted the Obama administration's criticism of Fox News with the Bush administration's treatment of MSNBC, saying, "I could have taken that tack, but I thought it was not the right thing to do and I think it's mostly because it's really unproductive, it feels un-American, and it's not inspiring." However, Perino did criticize NBC, MSNBC's parent network, during her time as press secretary, asserting that NBC had "intentionally" mischaracterized remarks made by President Bush.
Perino said she "could have" criticized MSNBC, "but I thought it was not the right thing to do ... it feels un-American"
Perino to Van Susteren: I felt criticizing MSNBC from the podium "was not the right thing to do ... it feels un-American." On the October 22 edition of Fox News' On the Record with Greta van Susteren, Perino stated: "What was interesting to me is, just from my perspective having been in a White House, there is a network, MSNBC, that I could have said that about the evening anchors, or some people in the morning or -- I could have taken that tack, but I thought it was not the right thing to do, and I think it's mostly because it's really unproductive, it feels un-American, and it's not inspiring."
Perino on Fox & Friends: "[T]here were some people who really wanted me, from the podium, to go after MSNBC, and I just thought it was a bridge too far." Perino stated on the October 19 edition of Fox & Friends: "I could have asked the same thing about MSNBC or about some of the programs that are on CNN. I understand that there are some commentators that have prime-time hours on Fox that they don't agree with and that they wouldn't want to do interviews with. And that's fine. But I think that they should then, you know, rise above it." She later added: "[B]elieve me, there were some people who really wanted me, from the podium, to go after MSNBC, and I just thought it was a bridge too far, not something that should be done from the White House. If they want to have the DNC bash Fox News all they want, you know, so be it. But, I would not do it from the White House. I don't think it's presidential, and I think people would see through it."
But Perino did take shots at NBC from the podium
As press secretary, Perino stated how "we had gotten fed up with the way that the President's policies are being mischaracterized" by NBC. In a May 20, 2008, press briefing, when asked about "the back-and-forth between you guys and NBC News," and a letter sent by then-White House counselor Ed Gillespie to NBC alleging the network had "deceptively edited" an interview with Bush, Perino stated, "The reason that we sent the letter yesterday is because we had gotten fed up with the way that the President's policies are being mischaracterized." She added, "We had complained before. And it just reached a boiling point when things had boiled over when we believed that NBC News specifically edited out -- intentionally edited out -- something that the President said in response to a question in an interview regarding Iran, and that it mischaracterized the whole interview because of it."
From Perino's May 20, 2008, press briefing:
MIKE EMANUEL [Fox News correspondent]: On the back-and-forth between you guys and NBC News, one of the issues Ed Gillespie brings up is NBC calling Iraq a civil war for a period, and then Ed notes that it stopped around September of 2007. Then Ed asks in his exchange with NBC, "Will the network publicly declare the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?" I'm wondering if you guys have gotten a response on that matter, and if not, are you still calling for a response from NBC?
MS. PERINO: We have not heard back from them on that specific matter. We anxiously await any response that we would get on it. But I think it's quite telling that they have been silent.
The reason that we sent the letter yesterday is because we had gotten fed up with the way that the President's policies are being mischaracterized, or the situations on the ground weren't being accurately reflected in the reporting. We had complained before. And it just reached a boiling point when things had boiled over when we believed that NBC News specifically edited out -- intentionally edited out -- something that the President said in response to a question in an interview regarding Iran, and that it mischaracterized the whole interview because of it.
As regards the civil war, I remember very distinctly how there was quite the pomp and circumstance when NBC, on the Today Show, decided to declare -- that they were declaring that Iraq was a civil war. But since then, after the surge and things certainly improved in Iraq, NBC has never had a corresponding ceremony to say that Iraq is not in a civil war. I was just curious to find out what they believe.
And the same goes with the economy. When we got the numbers just two weeks ago on the GDP for the economic growth, it said that we had grown at 0.6 percent. And yet the anchor that night decided to disavow that number. We're just curious what part of the official government data that's been coming out for years do they not agree with. So we haven't had a response on that.
And just another point on this is that President Bush is going to continue to state what United States policy is for the next eight months, and certainly during the six months that there's an election going on. If, for example, if tomorrow President Bush says that he believes that the tax cuts should be made permanent, that doesn't mean he's attacking anybody; he is stating his policy. And we just want to make sure it's really clear that we're not going to allow the President's policies to be dragged into the '08 election unnecessarily and unfairly.
Perino specifically criticized an evening news anchor. During the press briefing, Perino stated, "When we got the numbers just two weeks ago on the GDP for the economic growth, it said that we had grown at 0.6 percent. And yet the anchor that night decided to disavow that number. We're just curious what part of the official government data that's been coming out for years do they not agree with. So we haven't had a response on that." Her remarks echoed Gillespie's letter, which stated:
[W]hen the Commerce Department on April 30 released the GDP numbers for the first quarter of 2007, Brian Williams reported it this way: "If you go by the government number, the figure that came out today stops just short of the official declaration of a recession."
The GDP estimate was a positive 0.6% for the first quarter. Slow growth, but growth nonetheless. This followed a slow but growing fourth quarter in 2007. Consequently, even if the first quarter GDP estimate had been negative, it still would not have signaled a recession -- neither by the unofficial rule-of-thumb of two consecutive quarters of negative growth, nor the more robust definition by the National Bureau of Economic Research (the group that officially marks the beginnings and ends of business cycles).
Furthermore, never in our nation's history have we characterized economic conditions as a "recession" with unemployment so low -- in fact, when this rate of unemployment was eventually reached in the 1990s, it was hailed as the sign of a strong economy. This rate of unemployment is lower than the average of the past three decades.
Are there numbers besides the "government number" to go by? Is there reason to believe "the government number" is suspect? How does the release of positive economic growth for two consecutive quarters, albeit limited, stop "just short of the official declaration of a recession"?
Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the "news" as reported on NBC and the "opinion" as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network's viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.
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