On Monday’s CBS This Morning, while covering Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls, correspondent Nancy Cordes noted the Republican presidential candidate’s “outspoken opposition to ObamaCare and his willingness to take on both sides of the Washington establishment resonates with Iowa conservatives,” but warned: “That approach has made Cruz deeply unpopular with leaders in his own party, who worry that he could be just as polarizing of a nominee as Trump.”
Ted Cruz
By Rich Noyes | December 14, 2015 | 8:15 AM EST
After a five-week hiatus, the Republican presidential candidates meet tomorrow night for their next prime time debate, moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Based on how the various networks handled the first four debates, viewers of Tuesday's CNN debate should expect: 1) the questions will be aimed at getting the candidates to fight with one another; 2) Donald Trump will take more airtime than any of his competitors; 3) Blitzer and his colleagues will gobble up more speaking time than any of the individual candidates; and 4) the audience will be much higher than for the Democratic debates.
By Mark Finkelstein | December 14, 2015 | 7:58 AM EST
Joe Scarborough prefaced his remarks this morning by saying "this is the sort of thing that right-wing bloggers get very angry about." So let's oblige him . . .
On Morning Joe, Scarborough said "I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz or Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton."
By Geoffrey Dickens | December 10, 2015 | 9:30 AM EST
An MRC analysis of interviews from January 1 to December 4 finds the broadcast networks have pounded the candidates with a blizzard of hostile and left-wing questions.
By Tim Graham | December 10, 2015 | 8:30 AM EST
NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep is a big fan of President Obama, and when he interviews him, he helpfully sets him up. In a recent interview on race relations, Inskeep added little prompts instead of questions. That’s not what Ted Cruz received on Wednesday’s show. Inskeep was blunt when discussing the new Trump idea of banning Muslims from entering America: "Which Muslims do you want to keep out of the United States?"
NPR posted the full transcript online. What that demonstrated was that NPR and Inskeep routinely sliced out (for time and surely, for political convenience) Cruz whacking away at Democrats and explaining what's wrong with Islamism.
By Mark Finkelstein | December 10, 2015 | 8:19 AM EST
The last person you'd imagine backing Donald Trump's Muslim ban might be Mika Brzezinski. Yet on today's Morning Joe, a reluctant Mika came close to doing just that. Brzezinski springboarded off the news that the visa screening program failed to stop Tafsheen Malik from entering the country although she was already radicalized at the time.
While professing her opposition to the plan, she called the news "incredibly disturbing." When former Obama car czar Steve Rattner admitted that the process in place "had failed," Mika suggested: "are you saying something that might be in line with Donald Trump's policy?" Mika went on: "I'm not sure Donald Trump's concept is good for our country," but "we just had a slaughter." Concluded Brzezinski: "someone tell me something better than what Donald Trump is saying," adding sarcastically "and there's got to be something better because everybody has been sitting here for days, just lambasting him."
Daily Kos Writer: Cruz Suited to Lead ‘Christian Caliphate’ Which Would Regard Second Amendment As ‘Holy’
By Tom Johnson | December 7, 2015 | 9:34 PM EST In 2010, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas published his book American Taliban, which detailed his belief that “fundamentalist Muslims [are] basically hard-right Christians…American [religious conservatives] may be more constrained by American society and laws than their Middle Eastern counterparts, but…their goals are the same.” This past weekend, one current and one former Daily Kos writer carried on the tradition of lumping the two groups.
Daily Kos’s Susan Grigsby opined, “It is very difficult to find much space between the coming Christian caliphate, which reveres the Second Amendment as a holy text, and the one set up by [ISIS] in Syria and Iraq.” Washington Monthly blogger David Atkins, a frequent Daily Kos contributor until about a year ago, argued that “to most rational people there is very little dividing line between the agendas of conservative Muslim extremists and conservative Christian ones. Both groups are strongly in favor of weaponizing the public, both are devoted to the imposition of theocracy, and both are opposed to expanded rights for women and those of alternate sexual orientations."
Salon Pundit: Americans With ‘Violent Desires’ Might Get ‘Inspiration’ to Attack From ‘A Republican Presidential Debate’
By Tom Johnson | December 6, 2015 | 12:17 PM EST In a column posted last Monday, two days before the San Bernardino massacre, Heather Digby Parton warned of Americans with “violent desires” who might find “inspiration” to stage mass-casualty attacks not in jihadist propaganda, but in rhetoric used during “a Republican presidential debate.”
Parton linked the fatal shootings at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs to remarks by GOP presidential candidates and declared that those politicians “should have paused before they…exploited [the Planned Parenthood sting videos] for political gain. After all, gory illustrations of dismemberment and mutilation are the propaganda stock in trade of our most hated enemies. They are considered the gold standard for terrorist recruitment. You would think mainstream American politicians would think twice about going down that road…But they don’t.”
By Matthew Balan | December 5, 2015 | 12:35 AM EST
Friday's NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News both spotlighted the New York Daily News's latest anti-conservative front page, which denigrated Wayne LaPierre of the NRA as a "terrorist." CBS's Nancy Cordes touted how "the always-heated gun debate has gotten personal. The New York Daily News...called the head of the National Rifle Association a 'terrorist.'" NBC's Hallie Jackson played up the liberal newspaper's attack, as well as The New Yorker's "provocative" cover targeting gun owners.
By Matthew Balan | December 3, 2015 | 1:03 PM EST
Three CNN programs on Wednesday night and Thursday morning promoted the anti-prayer front page of the New York Daily News: "God Isn't Fixing This." Unsurprisingly, pro-gun control anchor Carol Costello quoted from the liberal newspaper's headline and sub-headline on Thursday's CNN Newsroom: "It's gotten a lot of buzz this morning...It reads, 'God Isn't Fixing This,' and slams [Ted] Cruz and other 2016 contenders as — quote, 'cowards who continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.'"
By Michael McKinney | December 2, 2015 | 3:38 PM EST
The View on Wednesday took issue at a recent video from Ted Cruz, in which he talks about encouraging staff using Star Wars voices. After the clip played, The View began a barrage of comedic jabs at Cruz’s expense. Michelle Collins began with “Did you see what a co-worker said?” Joy Behar interrupted Collins’ thought, saying “The bird flu is more popular than Ted Cruz.” Collins laughed at the bird flu joke, and continue her previous setup. “One co-worker said why do people take such an instant dislike of Ted Cruz? It just saves time.”
By Tim Graham | December 2, 2015 | 11:37 AM EST
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is crying “pants on fire” or something like it against Ted Cruz. The unsubtle headline is “Ted Cruz’s Four-Pinocchio claim that ‘the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats’.”
Cruz told radio host Hugh Hewitt there was a “simple and undeniable fact” that “the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.” Claiming this was a fact animated Kessler’s “fact” hunt, as he reported. So what are the “facts” at hand? Cruz’s staffers sent over the backup: