The Laura Ingraham radio show began Wednesday morning with a red-hot burst of outrage at yesterday's National Public Radio debate with the Democratic presidential candidates. She called it "an underreported treasure trove of idiocy" and said the broadcast completely lived up the boutique-liberal NPR stereotype -- which is why it was underreported by the rest of the media.
The show began with an NPR question on why America is so hated in the Muslim world, which couldn't be a bigger softball to Joe Biden, and the rest of the candidates, who quickly blamed the Bush administration for the unsettled Muslim world.
The lead-in to NPR's evening newscast All Things Considered last night was all ‘crazy neocon’
Ingraham also interviewed Major Garrett of Fox News. When she asked him how the candidates looked as they debated, he explained that the press corps was not allowed to watch the debate. Photographers were allowed before and after the debate, but not during the event. Reporters were assigned to a different floor. "You were in a closet upstairs while they were debating downstairs," Ingraham joked.
The scary question that remains is: will NPR and Iowa Public Radio throw a debate for the Republican contenders? Is it something that the Republican contenders would see as helpful (or potentially disastrous) to their campaigns? In a press release, they explained:
NPR and IPR are working with the Republican presidential candidates to reschedule the forum originally planned for December 3. The leading Republican candidates cited scheduling conflicts and multiple debate requests from news and political party organizations. NPR is currently working closely with them to identify another suitable date and location.
Update: Here is the segment of the debate Laura played snippets from:
ROBERT SIEGEL, NPR anchor: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thrives on anti-Americanism. One of our listeners, Ray Conrad(ph) from Keosauqua, Iowa, who incidentally has made campaign contributions to Senator Edwards and also to Senator Biden, sent us a question about that, and he put it this way: "Clearly, many Muslims hate the U.S. enough to want to do us grievous harm. Would you speculate on the reasons for their hatred of us?" Senator Biden, why?
Sen. BIDEN: By the way, terminology matters. I'm a great admirer of Senator Clinton. It's not about not advocating a rush to war. I'm advocating no war. A rush to war means that war, taken slowly, going slowly, is possible. I'm advocating no war, no justification for war.
SIEGEL: Take military off the table, you say.
Sen. BIDEN: Number two, the reason why - the reason why we are disliked so much is because we are trusted so little. The reason why we are disliked so much, obviously - I'm not talking about al-Qaida. I'm talking about the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world who look at us and, when we say and do things as we're talking about now with Iran, conclude that this is a war on Islam.
I'll make one point. When we went into Afghanistan, the word was, the Arab street would rise up. We did it the right way. The Arab street knew that Arabs, the Muslims in al-Qaida were bad guys. They supported us. When we do things that don't sound rational to them, it undercuts our legitimacy. We have no legitimacy.
Notice that although NPR announces the question is a Biden donor, he still directs the question to Biden, without any qualms about whether the question was submitted as a pro-Biden softball.
