You are talking to an CNBC aficionado here, a long time, who knows exactly how Rush and Drudge came to know of Santelli and his now famous tea party rant.
Quick is fluff, but she’s given weight above and beyond that on the show. She often scowls with disdain at Joe Kernan - and to conservative guests too. Andrew Ross Sorkin was brought in to beef up the liberalism on S Box - and Joe Kernan is the most sensible of the anchor crew, but he’s only conservative for NY - NJ - not really what I’d call a base conservative.
The whole bent is now far more left than it used to be, and Santelli’s rant is the catalyst. It’s like the NBC big wigs never watched it, thought of it as only a tv show for Merrill Lynch and Edward D Jones offices - until the Santelli moment.....then they systematically liberalized all the programming.
As for TBP - they got him to say some good (stupid) things about Obama in 2008. And then this blaming Keystone on “politics” instead of liberalism just strikes me as tepid. He’s old enough and rich enough - his give a damn should be broke - he should call it like it is.
2008 was when TBP was lobbying for fed subsidies for his NatGas transportation fuel interests in CLNE and WPRT. When that fell through he went ahead with building out the fueling infrastructure along the E/W interstate corridor through private financing. TBP is nowhere near what we, here on FR, would call a Conservative. He’s a Bidnessman. He knows the rules and plays by them. To him it’s just politics that’s to blame.