Remarking that Wisconsin voters had "decided to leave their governor in office" on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams contemptuously declared that "money flowed into that state from all over the country, from people who had never been to Wisconsin, had no connection to Wisconsin. Part of the new and unlimited spending that is changing politics in a hurry." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
After Williams credited the out-of-state money for "a huge victory for the Republicans," chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd breathlessly proclaimed: "Walker and national Republicans responded aggressively [to the recall], launching an unprecedented fundraising and TV ad campaign, outspending Barrett and his labor allies by a 3 to 1 margin on the air alone. Overall, nearly as much money was spent in this one state for one election than Mitt Romney has spent to secure the Republican presidential nomination."
Campaign Financing
Searching for an excuse to explain what went wrong for Democrats in Wisconsin, the broadcast networks blamed "a record-shattering $64 million poured into" the recall election by "conservative out-of-state groups" supporting Republican Governor Scott Walker.
On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Bill Plante promoted Obama campaign talking points on the major Democratic loss: "...what it called the 'massive spending gap'. Governor Walker's supporters raised $31 million to $4 million for the challenger, Tom Barrett....with most of that money coming from out of state – a huge chunk of it from the super-PACs." On Tuesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Dean Reynolds proclaimed: "Their efforts resulted in an avalanche of ads attacking Walker's Democratic opponent..."
On May 27, going to the same theme Scott Bauer employed at the Associated Press yesterday, USA Today's Ben Jones did his level best to cast Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as the richly funded perpetual campaigner, while portraying Walker's recall challenger, former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, as the underfunded man of the people underdog. Of course, as was the with Bauer's bombast, there's not a word about union-driven funding, which Walker estimated in an April Newsmax interview at about $60 million. This seems like preemptive excuse-making for a Walker victory on Tuesday. Preelection polls show Walker ahead by anywhere from 2 to 10 points.
Without a whit of skepticism, Jones relayed the following dissembling quote from a Barrett spokesperson which follows the jump:
Though he hasn't been alone in his applying the campaign fundraisng double standard in Wisconsin's recall election, Scott Bauer at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has a particularly odious item today about the dollars raised by each side. It's particularly odious because the word "unions" appears only once -- as the target of Walker, who has, as Bauer sees it, "rocketed to stardom after taking on public sector unions." There is no mention of the millions of union dollars which have poured into Wisconsin from all over the country, which, thankfully, someone else has quantified.
Bauer also continues to bitterly cling to the notion, concerning which yours truly has been nagging him since February of last year, that "most Wisconsin public workers lost their collective bargaining rights" as a result of Walker-supported legislation which passed in the Legislature last year -- as if they no longer have any collective bargaining rights at all. This has been and continues to be a flat-out falsehood. The first five paragraphs of Bauer's bombast follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):
The New York Times on Thursday published a front page piece about a Mitt Romney supporting Super PAC that allegedly considered bringing a lot of attention to Barack Obama's America-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Conservatives George Will and Laura Ingraham both slammed the Times for this shoddy report on ABC's This Week Sunday with the former saying the truth "didn't fit their narrative" and the latter claiming it "was a shot across the bow that if you are a wealthy person in the United States, you happen to be conservative, you're going to get involved in this election, then we are going to watch everything that you do" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham gave a much-needed education to ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday about the tremendous double standard involving campaign contributions.
After Ingraham pointed out that Barack Obama is never held responsible for things MoveOn.org does, ABC's This Week host foolishly said, "The president's been held accountable for Bill Maher" leading the conservative talker to smartly respond, "Did he give that money back to Bill Maher?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams decried a pitch to use President Obama's former radical left-wing pastor Jeremiah Wright in a campaign ad: "...there was an explosive headline this morning. The New York Times reporting that a Republican super-PAC was considering an expensive anti-Obama ad campaign that would have put the issue of race front and center in the campaign..."
Williams conveniently skipped over Wright's vicious anti-American rhetoric in several sermons, preferring to cast the story in racial terms. The only sound bite featured of Wright in the segment was brief and again described in racial terms, as correspondent Peter Alexander explained: "...the plan for a short film to publicize Wright's racially incendiary sermons, including this remark following 9/11." The sound bite that followed showed Wright ranting: "America's chickens are coming home to roost."
Leading off Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams enthusiastically touted the President's fundraising efforts: "President Obama cashing in the day after his gay marriage announcement." Moments later, Williams proclaimed: "Tonight, it is clear President Obama is hoping, at least, to capitalize on the history he made yesterday, becoming the first American president to come out in favor of same-sex marriage."
Williams fully embraced the cynicism of Obama's sudden flip-flop on the issue, noting how the President would be "appearing before a sympathetic audience tonight" of big-money campaign donors who "might not have been so sympathetic to the President before the gay marriage announcement."
Richard Nixon was roundly declaimed by the liberal press for creating an "enemies list" of private citizens, focusing some of the power of the American executive to bear on individuals. While Nixon's enemy list was private, Barack Obama's list is public. Besides being singled out by the president and his team, Obama's "enemies," mere large-dollar donors to Republicans, are being harassed by liberal activists, pundits, and Democratic Party operatives.
The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel takes a good look at just one individual, Frank VanderSloot, who has been singled out by the liberal smear machine for daring to support Mitt Romney:
For months, the Obama-loving media have been carping and whining about all the money going to conservative Super PACs in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling back in 2010.
Yet as you can see from the following segment on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Thursday, the press are giddy over the prospect the president will raise up to $15 million at actor George Clooney's campaign event later this evening (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On Friday, Bill Maher, the largest donor to Barack Obama's Super PAC, pressured MSNBC's Ed Schultz to contribute to the President's campaign.
This happened on HBO's Real Time less than 30 minutes after Maher said, "For the sake of black America, [Obama] needs the second term" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Liberal journalists Frank Rich and Piers Morgan have teamed up to bash conservatives before, and they raised new fears on Thursday that conservative "rich white men" could buy the election through super PACs. Rich admitted on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight he was "seriously worried Mitt Romney could buy this election," even though to date President Obama has raised more campaign money than Romney.
However, the media also have extraordinary power to influence this election on a daily basis. Liberal media bias may be a non-issue for liberals like Rich and Morgan, but the daily slant on campaign coverage from the three major networks and cable news could have a big hand in tipping the balance toward the Democrats this fall.