Posted on 01/15/2014 2:44:05 PM PST by Kaslin
During the 2012 presidential campaign, somehow each and every Republican presidential contender had a sink thrown at him (or her) via what reporters call "investigative journalism." Every time a Republican rose in the polls, the media tried to knock him or her down, like a game of Whac-A-Mole.
The very last man standing was Mitt Romney, who didn't receive the official "Gotcha!" from The Washington Post until May, with a 5,000-word opus on "Teenage Haircutgate." That's why it's so strange the national media would decide so early it was time for journalistic carpet bombing of the Great Squishy Northeastern Hope of 2016, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
It was just weeks ago that NBC's Matt Lauer was swooning over Christie and lining him up to denounce House Republicans as cruel and miserly on Superstorm Sandy subsidies. After he won, CBS reporter/former Biden aide Chip Reid was announcing that Christie "wanted a big re-election victory, in part, to show that Republicans who favor consensus over ideological purity can win -- even in blue states like New Jersey." CBS claimed wins by Christie in New Jersey and liberal Terry McAuliffe in Virginia showed America was engaged in a "move to the middle."
Christie can forget all that hugging and mugging with President Barack Obama in 2012, as if that were going to inoculate him forever. Democrats have been harping for weeks -- especially on their propaganda channel MSNBC -- that a "Bridgegate" scandal was going to be Christie's undoing.
On Jan. 8, the scandal exploded. The (Bergen, N.J.) Record revealed Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly declaring in an email in September, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." The Democratic mayor of Fort Lee wouldn't endorse Christie for re-election, so Christie aides decided to punish the public on the George Washington Bridge that goes from Fort Lee into New York City. There goes the image of Christie "favoring consensus."
The same national press that conducted a blackout of the trial of Philadelphia murderer Kermit Gosnell as lawyers exposed his horrific late-term abortion mill -- that was dismissed as a "local story" -- decided a few autumn days of traffic jams in Bergen County to be the hottest outrage for everyone from Jacksonville, Fla., to Boise, Idaho. In fact, their burst of reporting indicates that they believed this was the most important story in the world -- by far.
In the first two days of the story after the emails on the manufactured traffic jams came to light, ABC, CBS and NBC devoted 88 minutes of breathless coverage to the story. To put their transparently partisan aggression into perspective, that's 88 minutes in two days compared to two minutes of coverage in the last six months of the IRS-tea-party-targeting scandal.
In less than a week, there was 44 times as much coverage of the bridge than of the IRS in six months. Had Christie absolutely zero national potential or ambitions, the traffic jams would have remained a local story. But he's a presidential hopeful who would challenge the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton -- and so, it was time to take him down.
The national Democrats are grateful. Hand in glove with the negative media coverage, Democratic National Committee communications director Mo Elleithee sent out a fundraising email: "Before the next campaign starts, we need to make sure that Americans across the country know the real Chris Christie, and that Democrats have the resources to keep him out of national office. Chip in $10 to make sure we can stop Chris Christie."
What's not in any doubt is that the publicity and fundraising aims of the White House and the DNC line up remarkably well with the "news agenda" of our national TV networks and newspapers.
Even conservative pundits have insisted that when Chrstie maintained during his endless press conference that this was planned, he had better be telling the truth or his career is finished.
At the risk of sounding casual about the truth, it could be argued that lying your face off to the press and the American people has never impeded the careers of Bill or Hillary Clinton, and it certainly didn't keep Obama from being elected or re-elected.
Our "objective" journalists would be worthy of respect if they observed a single standard on truth-telling and political scandal coverage. But once again, with "Bridgegate," we are reminded this is a pipe dream.
Good. Pile on. Let’s make sure he can’t rise from the ashes.
I think its the election of De Blasio that fed this. Voters in Manhattan have 2 local leaders to compare and contrast. A communist and a moderate Repub.
The NYC communist media are starting to early to destroy the Repub even before the commie administration begins because they're afraid of Christie's power.
When one of these candidates actually calls on God to fight back against the smears, we are going to see something astounding happen.
Conservatives KNOW the media is as corrupt as the political party they serve, but still.... seeing the raw numbers like this, in black and white, sometimes still makes my jaw drop. The total and unapologetic bias is just astounding.
You’re being “asses” if you fail to figure God into the story.
Even the lowliest, most checkered squish who actually DOES call on God for victory (and I think this is where even Sarah Palin may have a blind spot, believe it or not) is going to kick into turbo mode. Because goodness, both on earth and heaven, are about grace, and have always been. We couldn’t earn it and God makes a monkey out of us if we try to. Anyhow, IF he does, then all the junk will prove to make it that much greater a visible victory.
And for the life of me I don't understand why every Republican does not point out these stats and challenge the talking head hosts when they appear on their shows, be it on Sunday morning or any of the others - slam them hard and get outraged. Instead - they play nice nice and will always be playing catch up.
Bruce Springsteen's mocking of fan and admirer Christi deserves retaliation so I suggest that Christi people start digging deep for their own fun lyrics featuring BS.
As a libertarian leaning conservative, Christie has already said there is no room for my ilk in a Christie led Republican party. I agree. If he somehow gets the nomination, I’ll vote Democrat for the first time since 1976. Not that the RATS are better, but at least the GOP-e occasionally fights the liberal ideas that come from a Democrat president. Christie would purge conservatives, and team up with RATS and the GOP-e to pass a liberal agenda.
Who'll be the rino sucker bait they troll out now? My guess is Ryan.
Christie could redeem himself to lots of people if he’d go to msnbc studios and announce he was going to “kick that slobbering Chris Mathews’ ass”.
There isn't much payoff in that for politicians. The people who will respond positively are already on board. Rather than win over the undecideds, politicians who point out press bias get cut up by the media for complaining. They look after their own. Look at what happened to Nixon. Since then, politicians try not to focus on press bias but try to work around it.
The Democrat Media (but I repeat myself -- BIRM) have convinced them that they'll never get their message out. Mark Halperin of TIME and (I think) The Daily Beast was boasting to Charlie Rose on PBS about this at the Republican convention. There Halperin was, the son of the Pentagon Papers traitor Morton Halperin, sitting in the Republicans' house, bragging about shutting out the main Republican messages to the voters, and slicing and dicing everything they said and spinning it to the voters in a way that the public would find incoherent and incomprehensible.
And he predicted that Clint Eastwood's great "Empty Chair" speech supporting Romney and attacking The Impostor would never be seen by the People -- and he was right. The MSM filtered that completely, as they did the GOP-produced video intended to introduce the candidate (for once without 'Rat filters and spin) to the People. The Ratboys scheduled that one completely out of the convention coverage and blacked out the entire GOP on their key candidate presentation.
Bozell is understating his case, since describing it fully and clinically would sound hysterical.
The old adage about "never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel."
I agree with both of you however - I honestly think the right person (Cruz, Paul, Lee, and maybe a few surprising guests) should attack the questioner with their obvious bias and do it on every show they are on, maybe even coordinate with the people attending on the same Sunday but different shows - if done properly I do think it would have an impact.
This is what he deserves after CRYING because he got to talk to Bruce Springsteen!!! Can one imagine a BIGGER ASS?
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