Reporting on Rick Santorum leaving the Republican presidential race on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Ron Mott proclaimed: "It was a campaign filled with highly-publicized gaffes....From calling President Obama out on education, to President Kennedy's famed speech on the separation of church and state....Just two of a number of comments he eventually walked back or was pushed to explain."
Mott also depicted Santorum as only appealing to a narrow group of voters: "Santorum's support was mostly rooted in a core of Republican strongholds, where his unapologetic push for social conservative values, something the GOP establishment largely sought to avoid, was enthusiastically embraced by evangelicals."
Rick Santorum
By Kyle Drennen | April 11, 2012 | 12:04 PM EDT
By NB Staff | April 10, 2012 | 2:28 PM EDT
While he made a much-greater-than-expected showing in the GOP presidential nomination race, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum announced today that he is suspending his campaign. How will the media treat Santorum's announcement and what does this mean for the general election? Post your thoughts and comments here.
By Matt Hadro | April 9, 2012 | 5:30 PM EDT
According to Muslim comedian and CNN regular Dean Obeidallah, Rick Santorum speaks the language of "the Taliban" when he talks about the intersection of church and state in America. On CNN Sunday night, liberal host Don Lemon decided to have a religious discussion for Easter Sunday, and his first question was about the separation of church and state.
Obeidallah has attacked Santorum in the past, and found a way to bring him into the discussion. He referred to Santorum "saying the Bible and our laws must comport," adding later that "He was saying the same things honestly that the Taliban would say, that religious scripture and the laws of that state must agree."
By Scott Whitlock | April 4, 2012 | 12:20 PM EDT
Good Morning America analyst Matt Dowd on Wednesday lectured Rick Santorum to "get out" and stop wasting "any little bit of political capital he has left." Depending on which count one looks at, Mitt Romney is currently 489 delegates short of the nomination.
That fact didn't stop Dowd from making his point clear. Over four sentences, he used the phrase "get out" four times, pronouncing, "I think he has to get out because he wants to preserve any little bit of political capital he has left and a voice in the Republican Party." The same man who, on March 26 slammed conservative states as hypocrites, instructed Santorum, "I think it would be good to get out right now before he loses Pennsylvania. But he has got to try to keep a voice in the party by getting out."
By Brad Wilmouth | April 3, 2012 | 7:26 AM EDT
On Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, as he interviewed Rick Santorum, CNN host Morgan suggested that America needs more gun control, and pressed the GOP candidate on whether it is "caring" for him, "as a Christian," to undo ObamaCare if elected President. (Video below)
By Matt Hadro | April 2, 2012 | 5:54 PM EDT
Soledad O'Brien's CNN show is suffering some pretty horrific ratings, and yet she still had the gall to ask Rick Santorum's communications director why the candidate won't drop out of the presidential race.
The quarterly numbers for O'Brien's morning show Starting Point were the lowest in more than a decade at CNN for that time slot, in fact. She averaged less than 100,000 viewers per day from the age 25-54 crowd.
By Matt Philbin | March 29, 2012 | 2:43 PM EDT
“Thousands of atheists, agnostics and other non-believers turned out in the US capital on Saturday to celebrate their rejection of the idea of God and to claim a bigger place in public life,” wrote Agence France-Press of the “Reason Rally” on the National Mall March 24, 2012.
The Reason Rallyers carried crucifixes with profane statements on them, and signs like “So many Christians, so few lions.” They cheered the headline speaker, militant British atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins stressed that, “I don't despise religious people. I despise what they stand for ...” But he went on to exhort the crowd to “ridicule and show contempt” for believers and their faith.
By Mark Finkelstein | March 28, 2012 | 8:52 AM EDT
Early frontrunner for the most preposterous political analogy of the year . . .
On today's Morning Joe, Tina Brown said Rick Santorum was "like Judas Iscariot." And just what was Santorum's sin that merited comparing him to the man who betrayed Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver? That Santorum, 15 years after the fact, now regrets having supported Arlen Specter when his then-fellow Republican senator from Pennsylvania ran for president. View the video after the jump.
MSNBC's Brewer Compares Republicans to Islamic Clerics Who 'Ripped... Rights Away' From Iranian Women
By Ken Shepherd | March 27, 2012 | 6:06 PM EDT Update/correction (30 March 2012, 16:12 p.m. EDT): Brewer is no longer employed with MSNBC. I was going off of outdated information on her Facebook fan page. The post below is corrected accordingly.
"A compelling, alarming case against the GOP and its 'War on Women.' Lest you think it can't happen here, just ask Iranian women how conservative, religious fanatics ripped their rights away." [see screen capture below page break; h/t @mattjmobile]
That's how former MSNBC host Contessa Brewer introduced her Facebook fans to a March 25 New York magazine piece by Frank Rich entitled "Stag Party: The GOP’s woman problem is that it has a serious problem with women."
By Scott Whitlock | March 27, 2012 | 12:24 PM EDT
The journalists at Good Morning America on Tuesday appeared shocked that a "sour" Rick Santorum dared to aggressively oppose a New York Times reporter, hyperventilating that the Republican presidential candidate has gone to "war against the media."
Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos insisted that the "wear and tear of a long, tough campaign" is beginning to show on Santorum. He piled on, "His Cinderella story has gone a bit sour." Reporter Berman, who often can't refuse using over-the-top language for his stories, began, "Well, cover your ears and hide the children. Dirty words have hit the presidential race." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
By NB Staff | March 27, 2012 | 10:37 AM EDT
Today's starter topic: With his chances of winning the GOP nomination decreasing as time goes by, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said in an interview that he would accept an offer to be the Republican vice presidential candidate if he were offered it by likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney:
By Clay Waters | March 27, 2012 | 8:58 AM EDT
Saturday's front-page New York Times story by Susan Saulny focused on the Santorum campaign in Louisiana before Santorum's easy win in the Republican primary there: "On the Right, Santorum Has Women's Vote."
Saulny emphasized the religious angle of Santorum's appeal. The condescending story provided slight corrective to the paper's misleading previous coverage assuming Santorum lacked support from women, but maintained the unsubstantiated idea, embraced by the Times, that moderate Republican women are turned off by appeals to social conservatism.