Who knows what long-term effects we'll see from the so-called Affordable Care Act, unless and until it dies a well-deserved demise, but at least one repercussion has become obvious -- borderline hysteria among liberals in media.
An example of this could be heard on Thom Hartmann's radio show yesterday when he was complaining about the conservative group FreedomWorks' opposition to Obamacare. (Audio after the jump)
On Monday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell seemed unsure about the extent of Tea Party's political influence. During an interview of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, O'Donnell first indicated that the movement was a potent force: "I want to ask you...about how powerful the Tea Party is. Is the Tea Party holding back House Republicans and Speaker Boehner from agreeing to additional revenues?"
The anchor later hinted the Tea Party's power was on the wane: "FreedomWorks spent $40 million in the last election, and you had less than one-in-four of a winning record on the candidates you backed. Was it the organization, or is the Tea Party weakened?"
It's common knowledge that members of Congress have been sleeping in their offices for decades.
Despite this, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday repeatedly called Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut.) a "tax criminal" for doing so (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Monday that MSNBC's Chris Matthews "seems to be slipping out of touch with reality."
On Tuesday, the "Hardball" host proved Armey's point by calling Sarah Palin "a cuckoo clock" and Newt Gingrich "a mortal enemy to our civilization" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Is Chris Matthews going crazy? He has really gone off the rails of late attacking, more viciously than usual, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and comparing the Tea Party movement to Egypt's Islamofascist group the Muslim Brotherhood.
While we at NewsBusters are more likely to ascribe these knee-jerk attacks to Matthews's intense partisanship, others have their own theories. FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey, for one, thinks Matthews might be losing it. "I'm kind of sad for Chris," Armey "Fox and Friends" host Brian Kilmeade on Monday. "[H]e just seems to be slipping out of touch with reality" (video and transcript below the break).
Liberal internet publisher Arianna Huffington on Sunday went on ABC's "This Week" to spout some of her typical left-wing nonsense about the significance of the previous day's Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally in Washington as well as what a Republican victory on Election Day means.
Fortunately, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and ABC's Cokie Roberts were there to refute her inanities (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):
The PBS NewsHour tried to balance a conservative Republican with a liberal Democrat when it interviewed (on two different Thursdays) Dick Armey and Arianna Huffington. Left-wingers complained to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler that NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff failed to press Armey about the Tea Party's funding from corporate billionaires. The far-left media monitors at FAIR wanted Woodruff to bash Armey as a hypocrite who benefits from government entitlements, like Bill Moyers did.
Getler's response was jaw-dropping. He claimed that PBS had failed to achieve balance, since Armey is conservative and Arianna Huffington is a centrist "and her widely viewed website strike me, as a reader, as an equal-opportunity critic. Armey is not. There are plenty of sharp, critical assessments of the Democratic Party and administration on her site." Doesn't it matter that those critics are banging away that Obama isn't socialist enough?
Worse yet, Getler said this should be "remedied" by bringing on another leftist, author Will Bunch of Media Matters for America, because Arianna was clearly not left-wing enough or critical enough of the Tea Party. Getler lamented that PBS has lost left-wing shows like Now and Bill Moyers Journal that are "not in the safe comfortable center."
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Freedomworks Chair Dick Armey addressed a widening gap within the GOP. Armey sees the dividing line between those who do and do not support Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future."
David Gregory on Sunday finally got an answer to his question about extending the Bush tax cuts, but it certainly wasn't what he was expecting.
For those that have been watching "Meet the Press" this month, the host has been grilling his conservative guests about this issue ever since former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told him on August 1 that tax cuts don't pay for themselves.
Having badgered Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about this earlier in the program with no success, Gregory broached the subject with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey in a subsequent segment.
With a hanging curveball coming into his wheelhouse, Armey whacked a long drive that still hasn't landed (video follows with transcript and commentary):
February 2009 was a pretty dark time for the conservative movement. The arguably most liberal president in the history of the United States has been sworn in to office just weeks early. The Congress had solid Democratic majorities in both chambers. And there were overtures that only way to save the nation from suffering the worst of a downtrodden economy was through an avalanche of costly legislation that would create huge budget deficits and ever-expanding bureaucracy.
But in the midst of that dark spell, CNBC's Rick Santelli lit the spark that ignited the conservative pushback. On CNBC's Feb. 19, 2009 "Squawk Box," Santelli called for a "tea party" in Lake Michigan to protest the idea the Obama administration was preparing to enact a massive housing bailout to reward people who took part in risky behavior by purchasing a home they couldn't afford.
According to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, now the chairman of FreedomWorks, often portrayed as a Tea Party villain by the American left, Santelli really is a father of the movement. Armey, along with Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, credit Santelli in an Aug. 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed and more extensively in their book "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto." And on CNBC's Aug. 19 "Squawk Box," Armey explained the importance of Santelli.
NBC's Matt Lauer, invited on former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Freedom Works' Matt Kibbe to discuss the Ground Zero mosque controversy and claimed that since the group behind the mosque existed in Manhattan before the World Trade Center attack, questioned: "So because of 9/11, do they have to move further away? Do they have to go elsewhere?" Armey, who was on with Kibbe to promote their new book Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, responded to the Today show co-anchor "that because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do" and pointed out to Lauer that those behind the mosque should be more "responsive to the concerns that are being raised."
The following is the full interview with Armey and Kibbe as it was aired on the August 17 Today show:
Two of the Tea Party leaders interviewed in the Chris Matthews-narrated documentary are asking supporters to write, call and fax the offices of Dawn and its parent company Proctor and Gamble and request that they cease giving advertising dollars to Matthews' "Hardball" program on MSNBC. FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey and Kitchen Table Patriots member Ana Puig jointly called the documentary a "propaganda piece" and urged Tea Party groups around the country to boycott Dawn products.
"The program ‘Rise of the New Right' was low-ball journalism at its worst," said the Kitchen Table Patriots in a statement released today. "Chris Matthews and his Hardball program slandered the Tea Party movement, and misled the American people by distorting facts about the Tea Party movement, its motivations and its history." (Videos at the bottom of post.)