As NewsBusters reported, James Pinkerton on Fox News's MediaBuzz Sunday predicted that all the press's gushing and fawning over Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie will end if he gets the nomination to face Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Washington Times columnist Joe Curl echoed such sentiments Sunday while adding, "The kingmaking certainly has shades of the media love affair with Sen. John 'Maverick' McCain":
I'm fully aware that Daily Beast contributor Dean Obeidallah is a comedian, but would the following comment he made on Twitter Sunday be funny if made by a conservative comic about Democrats?
"Anyone else hoping Ted Cruz and John McCain settle their feud in an Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton style duel? Id [sic] be rooting for John McCain":
As the government shutdown was nearing it's end Wednesday evening, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams conducted a live interview with John McCain, urging the Arizona Senator to slam fellow Republicans over the budget showdown: "Senator, let's talk about the damage in order, to the country, to your party, your profession, and how much of this do you lay at the feet of Senator Cruz from Texas?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
McCain began by noting political damage for both parties in the wake of the stalemate but then quickly obliged Williams, launching into an rant against conservatives in Congress: "The problem with their strategy was that it was a fool's errand. We were not going to de-fund ObamaCare. That's why we had an election in 2012. That's part of what that was all about. So it was a terrific mistake. We inflicted pain on the American people that was totally unnecessary....We Republicans have a hole that we've got to come out of."
The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it’s almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of “Morning Joe.”
The media have designated as Public Enemy Number One a recalcitrant bloc of Tea Party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama’s statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year, and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, the same wailing and gnashing of teeth has come from the liberal Republicans.
[***UPDATED*** October 11, 11:15 ET, More analysis and full transcript added]
In an interview with Senator John McCain for The Daily Beast's annual Hero Summit on Thursday, the blog's editor-in-chief Tina Brown launched into an unhinged rant blaming conservatives for the government shutdown: "The story of this political crisis is really, you know, the culpability not just of the Republican crazies, but of the Republican non-crazies. I mean, how do we get to the point where Mitch McConnell is Rand Paul's bitch?...Why aren't the moderate Republicans, you know, fighting back? We're always saying why don't, you know, the moderate Muslims fight jihad, but, you know, this is jihad." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
The three networks on Thursday morning allowed a scant 65 seconds to Senator John McCain's "blistering" op-ed published in the communist newspaper Pravda, featuring a call for freedom and tolerance in Russia. Although ABC, CBS and NBC quickly summarized the Senator's international rebuttal to Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed, the morning shows offered the briefest of quotes and mostly portrayed the piece as a grudge match with Putin.
CBS This Morning devoted just 19 seconds to the "blistering opinion piece." Rose narrated, "[McCain] accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of corruption and repression." Good Morning America's Josh Elliott allowed 23 seconds and insisted that the Senator "blast[ed] Russian President Vladimir Putin." According to Today's Savannah Guthrie, McCain offered a "scathing" attack on Russian corruption. Mostly absent from the three networks were full quotes highlighting the Senator's main topic, a defense of democracy and freedom.
In an effort to report on the popularity and status of President Barack Obama now that he's well into his second term in the White House, Politico website writers Todd S. Purdum and John F. Harris posted two articles on Wednesday. The first is entitled “What's wrong with President Obama?” and the second missive is called “And what's right with President Obama?”
The second article claims that Obama's personality is one of his strong points: “His smile remains dazzling, even if he flashes it less often.” That drew several responses from people on the Twitter social media website, including @KentBushart, who charged that the message is “Pure Presidential love from glue-sniffers at Politico.”
CNN's Chris Cuomo teed up Sen. John McCain to bash fellow Republicans on Monday's New Day, for putting partisanship before the country on Syria and the budget.
"Do you believe if there were President Romney that members of your party would have the same resistance to going in that they are showing right now?" Cuomo pressed McCain on a Syria intervention. Would Cuomo ask if Democrats were supporting President Obama's foreign policy purely out of partisanship?
Senator John McCain had harsh words for Great Britain Friday following that country’s decision to not participate in a coordinated attack on Syria.
Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show, McCain said, “I feel badly about the British. They're our dear friends, but they're no longer a world power. It's just a fact of life.”
Senator John McCain made an interesting observation Sunday about National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, McCain said, “There's a young generation that believe that he is some kind of Jason Bourne.”
There’s nothing liberal media members love more than a Republican who attacks other Republicans in front of the TV cameras. That probably explains the media’s rediscovered fascination with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 GOP presidential nominee. ABC’s Jeff Zeleny interviewed McCain last Friday for the ABC News / Yahoo News online series The Fine Print, and he used the veteran senator as a weapon against some of the younger, more conservative senators.
Zeleny set the tone right from his opening script, in which he proclaimed, “[McCain] is drawing sharp criticism from some of his new Republican colleagues, like Senator Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, but he’s throwing that criticism right back, saying they make him worry about the future of the Republican Party.”
This just in: John McCain supports Hillary Clinton over Rand Paul for president in 2016! That was the message that CBS’s Gayle King implied during a news brief on Thursday’s CBS This Morning. King reported on a recent interview in The New Republic in which Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) was asked who he would vote for in 2016 if former Secretary of State Clinton faced Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) in the general election. McCain’s reply, which King reported, was, “It’s gonna be a tough choice.”
That was enough for CBS to run with. King then proclaimed, “McCain and Paul have butted heads a few times in the Senate. In the interview, McCain praised Clinton's work as secretary of state and called her a rock star.”