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Why Santorum Scares the Left February 28, 2012 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, we have some headlines that are in the Drive-By Media today. Most of them are about Santorum and how out of touch he is and how what a wacko he is and what a creep, what a fanatic. I had 'em set aside. I'll just run through the headlines here.ABC: "New Lows Among Conservatives Mark Romney’s Popularity Problem."This is an ABC News/Washington Post poll on Romney's plummeting popularity with conservative Republicans. From the Right Scoop: "Santorum: Romney Uniquely Unqualified to Take on President Obama." From the National...

Republicans haven’t quite thrown away what they see as a winnable presidential election, at least not yet. But they’re trying their best. In GOP circles, there is more than a whiff of panic in the air. Unemployment is still painfully high, Americans remain dissatisfied with the country’s direction, even the most favorable polls show President Obama’s approval at barely 50 percent — and yet there is a sense that the Republicans’ odds of winning back the White House grow longer day by day. Mitt Romney, whose main selling point is his supposed ability to beat Obama in November, has shown...

Last year, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson had some advice for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: “Find some way to lose weight.” It is advice Robinson gave in his Washington Post column and later on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” His argument was Christie needed to use his weight loss to set an example for a country fighting a so-called obesity epidemic. But Christie wasn’t receptive to Robinson’s criticism. On Wednesday’s broadcast of “Morning Joe,” Christie spoke about an interview he conducted with Oprah Winfrey, where he was open about his weight struggle. However, he also criticized Robinson for being ignorant about...

Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner. Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence. Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of...

Allapundit covered this story after it first broke, and the entire thing looked like a slow motion train wreck from the beginning. During an appearance on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson broke out some jaw dropping comments regarding a story about Rick Santorum and his family following the death of one of their children only hours after being born. Their decision to take the child’s body home for a few hours as part of the grieving process was described by Robinson as, “not a little weird. He’s really weird.�Through a strange turn of events, I was...

First Colmes, now this guy. Is the way Santorum grieved for his dead child really going to be part of the lefty commentariat’s oppo playbook this year? Really? Even after Santorum’s wife was reduced to tears by what Colmes said? If she had aborted the baby a few weeks earlier and let the body be dumped in the trash, these cretins would be marveling at how much more “progressive� she is than her husband. Instead she carried the child to term and the two of them brought the body home for a few hours so that the family could mourn...

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around. That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what's been happening might be theft. The gist of the CBO study, titled "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income...

Suddenly, White House aides and liberal columnists like Stuart Rothenberg and Eugene Robinson are attacking Donald Trump with a vengeance. Why? When I asked a high-level Democrat in Washington why the full-court press was being directed at Trump, this person said, "Simple. He's touched the third rail of Obama's mysterious birth certificate and the White House and those who advocate for the president in the media are petrified that Trump's very name, stature and ability to generate headlines is going to give the subject a whole new life. "Hence, they have to try to belittle him and marginalize him as...

<p>There was a hypocritical double-standard on display by the Morning Joe folks who turned Haley slowly over a spit today. Hat tip NB reader Ray R.</p> <p>Eugene Robinson took the lead in belting Barbour for sending his children to private schools in Mississippi rather than to local public schools attended by black children. Joe Scarborough chimed in with his Mississippi-childhood recollections of such post-integration private academies springing up. Mike Barnicle did his bit, contributing the tale of whites in South Boston pulling their kids out of integrated public schools in favor of parochial and private ones.</p>

    Just a quick trip down memory lane for those who think “Take Back America” has an obviously racist connotation.

MSNBC: Meet the Press moderator David Gregory and The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson discuss how President Barack Obama can win back voters on the economy.

Via RCP. Don’t misunderstand: This is 100 percent nonpartisan criticism, he insists. It could have been written at any point in the last 10 years. "According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum…" "In the punditry business, it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of...

Appearing as a guest on Friday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, during a discussion of conservative talker Glenn Beck’s "Restoring Honor" rally, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson dismissed Dr. Alveda King – niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and former Georgia state representative – as a "figurehead or puppet" of Beck because of her scheduled participation in the rally.

Christmas came early for demagogues. The court decision putting a hold on the worst provisions of Arizona's new anti-Latino immigration law is a gift-wrapped present to those who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities. As surely everyone knows by now, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the state from enforcing parts of the law that look patently unconstitutional. The political fallout is pretty clear: In the short run, at least, Republicans win and Democrats lose. Longer term, the impact of the immigration issue on the major parties' prospects is...

The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism -- and potential violence -- in the Age of Obama. I put the word Christian in quotes because anyone who plots to assassinate law enforcement officers, as a federal indictment alleges members of the Hutaree militia did, is no follower of Christ. According to federal prosecutors, the Hutaree -- the word's not in my dictionary, but their Web site claims it means "Christian warrior" -- are convinced that their enemies include "state and local law enforcement,...

Homeland Security: Forget about foreign jihadists getting nukes or planting bombs in their underwear. The real enemies, some say, are domestic militia groups who play at war and those nasty Tea Party racists. The raid on a Michigan militia group accused of plotting war against the government will no doubt feed into the arguments of those who claim in the wake of health reform that the vast right-wing conspiracy is not only angry, but armed and dangerous. According to an Associated Press report, "Authorities said the arrests underscored the dangers of homegrown right-wing extremism of the sort seen in the...

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud. If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they're free to stop melting. That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real — a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we...

Eugene Robinson, of the Washington Post, is finally looking past Obama’s skin color and his own. He wrote a piece being way too kind to Obama and naively surprised by his actions: President Obama's brief display of drive-by compassion Thursday in New Orleans was, for me, by far the worst outing of his presidency thus far -- and the biggest disappointment. I covered Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath -- the flood in New Orleans that drowned a great city, the storm surge in Mississippi that erased whole communities, the devastation, the agony. For weeks afterwards, I had trouble sleeping. I...

The New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes yesterday, including one for uncovering the prostitution scandal that forced Eliot L. Spitzer (D) to resign as New York governor, while Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the prize for commentary for his writing about the campaign that led to Barack Obama's election....

The Congressional Black Caucus delegation that visited Havana last week was naive not to notice -- or disingenuous not to acknowledge -- that Cuba is hardly the paradise of racial harmony and equality it pretends to be. Still, that's no reason for the United States to continue the illogical, ineffective, hard-line policies that have produced an unbroken 47-year record of failure. President Obama's action yesterday -- he eased some restrictions on travel, gifts and remittances, but only for Cuban Americans -- is barely a start. He should go so far as to actually base our Cuba policy on reality. After...

Q. How do you know the Obama inaugural speech was a bit of a flop? A. When even an unreconstructed Obama fan like Eugene Robinson pans perhaps its key passage. The Washington Post columnist participated in the post-inaugural kibitz session on MSNBC. Before moving to his remarks, lets’s consider the lineup the network chose for the segment: Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, the aforementioned Robinson, and as cherry on top . . . Keith Olbermann. Now that’s what I call fair-and-balanced coverage! Olbermann suggested that a certain passage was the heart of the speech. Robinson agreed, but then proceeded to politely...

Far be it from me to sow discord in MSNBC ranks, to stir up old animosities between colleagues there. But if Joe Scarborough is going to do a mocking imitation of Keith Olbermann in full Special Comment rant, well then, blogging ethics compel me to report it. The jumping-off point on Morning Joe today was Eugene Robinson's current WaPo column. After claiming that he didn't want to kick the president on his way out the door, Robinson proceeded to do just that. The columnist described a variety of measures adopted by the president in prosecution of the war against terror...

The amiable Gene Robinson is a regular MSNBC guest, but he's apparently not a regular MSNBC viewer—at least not of Keith Olbermann's show. Otherwise he would have never claimed, as he did tonight, that no one accused Geraldine Ferraro of being a racist back in March when she said that, for current political purposes, Obama was lucky to be black. For it was none other than Olbermann host who accused Ferraro of precisely that. On this evening's Race for the White House, David Gregory invited Robinson to comment on a Ferraro op-ed in today's Boston Globe in which the former...

He calls it Hardball but Chris Matthews showed again tonight he's a softy when it comes to Barack Obama. Poor Chris was palpably crestfallen when NBC News political director Chuck Todd laid out the case, chapter and verse, that political payback, even revenge, explained Sen. Bob Casey's endorsement of Obama as much or more than the "spiritual" reasons Chris so wanted to believe in. CHRIS MATTHEWS: I didnÂ’t expect this guy. HeÂ’s a very cautious U.S senator in his first year, his first term, and what did he do? Almost a spiritual announcement he made today: IÂ’ve got to be...

I count Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace among the fairest and most incisive interviewers in the business, and hope his tenure at Fox News is a long one. Anyone who can relentlessly cross-exam Mitt Romney on his changed position on abortion the way Wallace did a while back, then turn around and provoke Bill Clinton to near the point of taking a poke at him, is doing his job and playing no favorites. But should Wallace ever wish a change of venue, never fear: MSNBC apparently can find a place for him. Wallace made some news when, appearing on...

Don't look for Shuster to be guest hosting "Tucker" again any time soon. -- from my column of September 26th. Oy, was I wrong! I had figured that David Shuster wouldn't be subbing again for Tucker Carlson after embarrassing his show, and MSNBC at large, with the tasteless game of "gotcha" he played on Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), exploiting the death of a soldier for partisan political purposes. But tuning to Tucker today, there was Shuster, the supposed MSNBC "correspondent." Carlson is certainly no partisan Republican, having mentioned more than once that he didn't vote for W in 2004. Tucker...

I think that's because the United States, for all its faults, is still the most inclusive society on Earth. Our nation has a way of making outsiders into participants, a way of convincing people that they are protagonists, not just pawns. The United States can fall short of its promises, but it has a genius for manufacturing possibility. If people have even a glimpse of a better tomorrow, no matter how unbearable today might be, they are less likely to pack a car with explosives and crash it into an airport. There's hope for us yet. Have a happy Fourth...

view edit Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 9, 2006 - 20:40. The show bills itself as 'Hardball.' But in surrounding himself with regulars who are either certified liberals or renegade Republicans, doesn't Chris Matthews prove himself to be a softy, unwilling or unable to take the high heat from true-blue Republican flamethrowers? Let me say something that might surprise some NewsBusters readers and dismay others. I like Matthews. Not that conservatives are the arbiters of patriotism, but I do consider Chris someone who loves his country and, as misguided as he may be on various policy issues - has...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 7/1 and 7/2/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: Bush was wrong on all the issues McCain is right onThe Supreme's smack down the Bushies (who cares if it endangers the country, it's NEWS!!!) Topics: Hamdan, Immigration, and Iraq Guests Senator John McCain, Republican - Arizona He's BAAAAACKMcCain's back and Georgie's got himIt's such a tragedy that President Bush didn't listen to Saint...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 5/27 - 5/28/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: The power of the MSM is unassailable!watch as they destroy the evil right wingers and crown the good progressives while blaming everything on the United States (It's what they do best) Topics: Reports of a massacre in Haditha, IraqThe immigration debate Guests Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. Duncan Hunter doesn't realize it yet, but he's...

There's little comfort in the latest polls on the revelation that the National Security Agency, on orders from George W. Bush, is compiling a permanent record of Americans' telephone calls. True, the new surveys by Newsweek and USA Today-Gallup are more encouraging than the Post-ABC News poll last week in which 63 percent said sure, no problem, go ahead and rummage through my life. But even the new polls say that four out of every 10 citizens are ready to surrender privacy and due process without so much as a whimper of protest. That is just stunning. What the hell...

With all that's going on in the world -- appalling new photos from Abu Ghraib, a looming nuclear showdown with Iran, Hurricane Katrina victims being evicted from New Orleans hotels while 11,000 mobile homes sit unused in Arkansas -- isn't it time to move on from the tragicomic Cheney shooting incident? Not just yet. Not until we deconstruct his strange interview with Brit Hume on Fox News the other night. Fox, by the way, did as much as any media outlet to keep the Cheney story alive, first by running story after story accusing other media outlets of keeping the...

Today, on Friday, February 18, 2005, the Associate Editor and Columnist of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, was a guest on C-Span 2. Mr. Robinson says that the Democrats take black people for granted. Mr. Robinson says that although there are black people represented in lower ranks of the DNC, that there needs to be more visible representation of blacks and hispanics for the Democrats. Mr. Robinson also said, he didn't understand why the John Kerry campaign did not have more black people visible during the election process. Mr. Eugene Robinson also said that he understood that the school voucher...