Posted on 06/23/2012 5:41:20 PM PDT by Kaslin
All three journalists invited to the journalists' roundtable on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR Friday played down the Fast and Furious scandal as a loser for Republicans. Jeanne Cummings of Politico wanted Congress to drop it like a hot potato: "to create this big constitutional clash with the White House makes Congress, once again, look like it's just got its eye off the ball. This isn't what people want them to do... we're going nowhere here."
NPR reporter Ari Shapiro recalled how Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales was dogged by a U.S. Attorney-firing scandal because Republicans were willing to harp on it. But the Democrats are united for Obama, so it somehow cannot be a scandal: "I think it's only when and if we see Democrats turning against Holder, which I don't expect we're going to see, that this will really enter a new phase." How convenient is that reasoning?
Doyle McManus was mildest, sticking to the line that anything that distracts from the economy is somehow a bad idea for Republicans to pursue (without anyone noticing the utter lack of pursuit by "objective" journalists):
McMANUS: It's not a great issue for the president or the White House. They are on the wrong side of this in that, you know, if you want to -- that, initially, when the Justice Department was asked about this program, about the gun -- what's called gun-walking into Mexico, they said, well it's not going on. We don't know anything about it. They've acknowledged that wrongdoing.
On the other hand, is this really what Republicans in the House want to be talking about and arguing about on television for months and months? Well, no, actually their agenda is -- of course, is supposed to be to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. And so they run the risk of looking as if they're pursuing the administration on everything else but jobs.
Substitute host Terence Smith wondered where (if anywhere) this was going:
TERENCE SMITH: Jeanne Cummings, several reason attorneys general have had problems with Congress and been in tight spots with the executive refusing to turn over documents or whatever. What's the political impact to this? And look ahead to the election. Is anybody going to be talking about this?
CUMMINGS: No, they aren't going to be. And that's -- I mean, I agree with Doyle that it's not good for either side. But I think, on balance, this is -- Congress has just gotten itself, you know, in a patch where they should probably find their way out. I mean, if you look at any focus group with voters, all they care about is the economy. That's all they care about. And for -- to create this big constitutional clash with the White House makes Congress, once again, look like it's just got its eye off the ball. This isn't what people want them to do.
They are tired of the confrontations in Washington. They're frustrated by it. And they think that Washington doesn't understand their problems and isn't trying to help them. This just gives them one more reason to think that Washington is out of touch. And then, in the end, when you look at what would be the real impact of all of this, if they find them in contempt, that should be -- that contempt citation would be enforced by the U.S. attorney general who works for the Justice Department. So we're going nowhere here.
Then came the listeners with their (liberal) input:
SMITH; I have some emails here, including one rather sharply worded one from David on the subject of the contempt citation. He writes, "It appears that 85 percent of the country holds the Congress in contempt. Therefore, the hearings on Fast and Furious are an attempt to distract from the economic issues that the Congress is not able to handle. Isn't that the fact, Ari Shapiro? -- says David.
SHAPIRO: This is a point that Spokesman Jay Carney made at the White House yesterday in the briefing. He said, if Congress wonders why they are the most unpopular of any Congress in recent memory, maybe if they would spend their time working on the economy instead of what Carney called partisan fishing expeditions, they might see their numbers go up. You know what? As you mentioned, many attorneys general recently have been in this kind of trouble with Congress.
And I covered the Justice Department when Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was under fire for the U.S. attorney dismissals, which ultimately led him to leave the post of attorney general under a cloud. And one big difference between that controversy and this controversy is that when Gonzales was under fire in Congress, there were Republicans and Democrats calling for him to step down. Now, we've seen six Republican senators call for Eric Holder to step down, but the Democrats have been a united front. And I think it's only when and if we see Democrats turning against Holder, which I don't expect we're going to see, that this will really enter a new phase.
PS - Nobody died in Watergate.
If they had multiple video showing Obama and Holder driving a bus load of automatic weapons to Mexico and trading them for drugs, then loading the bus up with illegals, all previously convicted of crimes in the U.S.
Then delivering the drugs to a children’s school and giving each illegal a knife and gun before letting them off the bus, well the media would spin it as a sting gone wrong.
They're working hard to try to make this a reality. I don't believe it's working. They can only get away with altering realty when their new chosen reality is much closer to the truth. This one is way off. Arms were sold to criminals under Obomas watch. People are getting killed. That's the issue here. They can't spin that fact.
"Reality" is going the other way. People are starting, finally, to pay attention to what this is all about. The MSM tried not to even acknowledge it, as in "ignorance is bliss", but the story got out anyway. They failed doing their part in the cover up.
A “loser for Republicans”...
Isn’t it wonderful how they care so much about us, that they are looking out for our best interests, that they don’t want us to get hurt?
Acknowledging wrongdoing = Democrat speak for "We lied".
DEFUND NPR totally!
I heard one buzzing earlier this evening fly by my ear. I was lazy, and didn't even bother to swat it.
Never mind.
NPR is nothing more than the broadcast arm of the left wing of the Democrat party. Fine. But what bothers me is that money extorted from the taxpayers goes to pay for this partisan drivel. If the Republicans take the House and White House,NPR needs to be tossed off the taxpayer dole right after Planned Parenthood.
Does anyone actually think that NPR will have honest, knowledgeable, non-political reporters/journalists who are not Democratic hacks on their show?
Even an ocassionally thinking liberal like Juan Williams was treated like a Klansman at an Obama rally.
Hey, Watergate was a story about a second-rate burglary to gain the upper hand in an election, which a President improperly concealed when he found about it after the fact. All Fast & Furious is, is a case where the feds, in a plot to screw us all out of our civil rights under color of law in contravention of their oaths of office, engaged in a conspiracy which involved committing an act of war against a sovereign nation and getting hundreds of people killed. That certainly can't compare to the scandal that Watergate was.
Leftists always say it backwards to try to make it sound sane. The President and the DOJ are the ones causing the Constitutional clash Crisis and the ball that we need to keep our eyes on is the treasonous dictator in the WH and all his carefully selected minions. Losing sight of them will be our final undoing.
NPR is a “progressive’ and left leaning toward the supine
organization subsidized by the Democratic Party.IMO. It is by this standard that It ought be expected the journalists they select would support the Democratic Party view.
They're like Pacifica Radio in the early 60's, when they were cerebral and balanced; they invited in people like Wm. F. Buckley as often as they did Norman Mailer and Izzy "Communist Traitor" Stone (who worked for Moscow).
That changed in 1966 with the commencement of the Vietnamese War. Orders came down from Moscow Center, and the Communists on staff promptly took the place over in a palace coup and slammed the editorial policy over hard left, Moscow-line, and it's stayed there ever since.
Pacifica first came to my attention (tho' there was an outlet here in Houston, buried in the middle of the college radio stations and low-power classical stations) when I was out in California in 1993, and heard on late-night radio some Amerindian racist driveling on about how the People are going to take over America and promptly rename it with some big-cheese Indian name and run all the white people off.
NPR is becoming more and more like Pacifica was in the 60's, and I shouldn't be surprised to find that it's being run now by out-and-out Communists.
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