Howard Kurtz didn't have a good Father's Day.
After being shocked that Republicans would actually prefer Obama jokes over those about Republicans, the "Reliable Sources" host expressed dismay that Fox News analyst Dick Morris would actually toe the GOP's line (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Former Clinton adviser turned CNN political analyst Paul Begala Wednesday evening gave Anderson Cooper the predictable Party line about Weinergate being no big deal.
Without skipping a beat, the host of "Anderson Cooper 360" replied, "But, Paul, if this was a conservative Republican, would you be saying the same thing?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Trashing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) as "Dr. Kevorkian," CNN political contributor Paul Begala condemns the congressman's bold proposal to revamp Medicare in his latest op-ed for CNN.com. If the GOP follows Ryan's plan, "like lemmings," Begala writes that their agenda will end in disaster.
He interprets the plan as nothing less than an attempt "to deny ill and infirm seniors the health care they deserve – while giving oil companies billions in taxpayer subsidies." The "lives and health" of the elderly are now in the hands of the "tender mercies" of the insurance companies. Is this a hint at death panels?
Ryan's plan involves transforming Medicare, which he sees as a fiscally unsustainable program in the long run, into a voluntary system where the elderly are covered by private insurance companies and their premiums are subsidized by the government.
Former Clinton advisor and current CNN contributor Paul Begala thought he was being clever Friday evening when he took a cheap shot at George W. Bush on HBO's "Real Time."
Without skipping a beat, St. Louis Tea Party founder and Big Government editor Dana Loesch smacked down her CNN colleague with a delicious jab at his former boss (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Late last week, CNN announced its plan to team up with the Tea Party Express to co-sponsor a Republican presidential debate in September. While this creates the possibility that Republican candidates will actually face questions of interest to Republican primary voters (as opposed to the typical liberal media agenda), it’s also probably the first time a media organization will partner with a group that its on-air correspondents and commentators have trashed over the past two years.
CNN’s liberal commentators have been savage to the Tea Party. Back in 2009, longtime CNN house liberal Paul Begala slammed the Tea Party as “a bunch of wimpy, whiny, weasels who don’t love their country.” A couple of weeks before this year’s election, CNN’s 8pm ET co-host Eliot Spitzer said the Tea Party was “vapid” and leading America “down a dangerous road....They’re going to destroy our country.”
But CNN’s supposedly objective correspondents and anchors have showcased a similar hostility to the Tea Party, attacking them as racist, extremist, pawns of Fox News, or using the vulgar “tea-bagging” nickname favored by left-wing activists to disparage the group. A few of the choicer examples from the MRC’s archive (including video):
The hypocrisy of liberal media members knows no bounds - even on Thanksgiving.
On Thursday, CNN contributor Paul Begala wrote a piece for the Huffington Post extolling the "quintessentially liberal virtue" of generosity despite conservatives giving far more to charity:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.Discussing with Andrea Mitchell today the kerfuffle over Pres. Obama's Christianity, Chuck Todd hearkened back to PBO's infamous bitter-clinger line. Obama offered his pronouncement at a private, hoity-toity fundraiser in San Francisco—and Todd claimed Obama didn't mean to demean by it.
"And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." -- candidate Barack Obama, remarks at fundraiser, April, 2008
CNN.com's Kristi Keck filed a story on Friday reporting the Republican National Committee started a website mocking President Obama's series of vacations and other actions during the BP oil spill. The headline was "Obama vacation brings rest, relaxation and rebuke." The story's pull quote came from Democratic partisan and CNN regular Paul Begala, who eventually said something incredibly false about his own consistency on the president-bashing:
Paul Begala, a CNN contributor and former adviser to President Clinton, said that vacationing or not, "The president is the president wherever he is.
"I thought it was silly when people attacked Bush for going on vacation, so I'll be consistent and say it's silly when people attack President Obama for going on vacation," he said.
"The Democratic Party is moving faster and more aggressively than in previous election years to dig up unflattering details about Republican challengers. In House races from New Jersey to Ohio to California, Democratic operatives are seizing on evidence of GOP candidates' unpaid income taxes, property tax breaks and ties to financial firms that received taxpayer bailout money."So began a Washington Post article published Wednesday with the provocative title, "Democrats Digging Harder Than Ever for Dirt on Republicans."
As one reads Philip Rucker's piece, you can almost feel the entire Post staff wishing for Democrats to produce a "macaca" moment that just might save them from a devastating defeat in the upcoming midterm elections (h/t Glenn Reynolds):
There's really little opportunity for the spirit of bipartisanship to exist when you have a part-time operative for the Obama administration/cable network political commentator throwing bombs about the GOP for not catering to the Obama administration's wishes on health care reform.
CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist Paul Begala bashed the opposition on Fox Business Channel's Feb. 10 broadcast of the "Imus in the Morning" program. He claimed the problem wasn't stubborn congressional Democrats wheeling and dealing behind closed doors on health care reform legislation but Republicans wanting to be obstructionists.
"Well, it is kind of preposterous," Begala said. "The Republicans bit is, ‘Well, we'll work on health care if you stop and end and scrap all the progress we've made over the course of a year.' Well no, actually. The health care bill already has 213 Republican-sponsored amendments - 213. And for that they got zero Republican votes. I guess they got one in the House, David [sic - Joseph] Cao."
CNN analyst Paul Begala sure likes creating what liberals call a "climate of violence." A week after insisting Barack Obama should deck Scott Brown on the basketball court – "throw him an elbow under the hoop" – he appeared on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report and joked about how Obama’s "going to clock John Boehner right in the face."
In addition to that Republican-punching vision, Begala strangely insisted that Taco Bell workers speak Spanish in talking about bipartisanship: "I say gracias to the guy at Taco Bell. That doesn't make me bilingual."
Even more strangely, Begala insisted Obama hasn’t been blaming the Republicans for the faltering economy: "The Republican economic philosophy ruined this country and this poor president inherited it and is trying to fix it."
When Colbert asked what the Democrats were going to do next, Begala offered his familiar formula of always offend, never defend: