On the May 21 edition of All In, host Chris Hayes devoted time to bashing Republicans for lacking any advantage on wedge issues. Hayes took Jeb Bush’s comments – where he dismissed the idea that climate change is settled science – as a general example that Republicans are in a weak position on climate change, immigration, and gay marriage.
It seems that with the Virginia Republican primary victory of Tea Party candidate Dave Brat over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has proven to the liberal media that despite their exaggerated reporting, the Tea Party isn’t actually dead. When Chris Jansing asked if “the demise of the Tea Party was overstated,” McKay Coppins of Buzzfeed replied: "I think so."
Two weeks ago after the last round of GOP primaries, the liberal media hyped the results as the death knell of the Tea Party. While the political director of NPR, Ron Elving, called the conservative movement “impotent,” NBC’s Chuck Todd described how Democrats were “watching this Tea Party fade with disappointment.” [See below for video. Click here for MP3 audio]
On Friday, McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed detailed two major developments over the past decade or so that, according to some on the right, have hurt conservative book publishing: specialty imprints such as Threshold Editions have had the effect of relegating most righty books to a "niche" a la "science fiction or nutritional self-help guides," and this segregation has created economic pressure for those imprints to issue titles by "cable news and radio provocateurs" instead of "combative intellectuals" in the tradition of the late Allan Bloom.
Coppins presents the massive popularity of Bloom's 1987 work The Closing of the American Mind as the Big Bang for right-leaning books. He opines that it forced establishment publishers to realize "a potentially lucrative fact: Conservatives knew how to read."
Politico’s Dylan Byers reported “The Daily Beast is dropping Howard Kurtz, the veteran media critic who made headlines this week for his erroneous report about NBA star Jason Collins.” Kurtz erred in suggesting Collins hadn’t been forthcoming about his fiancee, even though he discussed her on both ABC and in the Sports Illustrated cover story that made “history.” Kurtz’s story was retracted on Thursday.
On top of Kurtz losing his $300,000-a-year Beast gig (which started in October of 2010), TV Newser reported “A source at CNN tells TVNewser that Kurtz’s current deal with the cable channel will likely be his last.” The New York Times had a source claiming it wasn't just a Collins thing:
Former Newsweek reporter McKay Coppins was caught on a hot mic trashing Mitt Romney at a live event on Tuesday. Moments before Romney's appearance Coppins, who currently works for BuzzFeed, predicted there was "a 40 percent chance that he says something stupid." At first it wasn't known who made the remark, reported by Huffington Post's Jon Ward, but Coppins actually came forward, on his Twitter account, to admit he was the one who made the liberal bias-revealing "snide comment."
The following are the relevant tweets from Ward and then Coppins. (Audio clip of Coppins' hot mic moment after the jump)
During the 1960 presidential campaign, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was attacked for his Catholic faith, then viewed by many as subversive and un-American. Anti-Mormon bigots are now targeting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his Mormon beliefs, which are now viewed by many “progressives” as a “transparent and recent fraud.” But in those 50 years, the role of the media has changed significantly.
A June 2012 study performed by American National Election Studies (ANES) found that 43 percent of liberals would be “less likely” to vote for a Mormon candidate for religious reasons. An essential point, given how often news outlets highlight Romney’s religion.
You have to give McKay Coppins credit. The Buzzfeed writer today managed to work in hints of anti-Mormon skepticism and the complaints of the gay rights lobby into his January 24 story -- "What's With Mitt's Mormon Money?" -- on Romney's tax records.
It's a liberal bias trifecta!
Liberals in the media frequently paint conservatives and Tea Party activists as pushing the GOP too far to the right to be electable in general elections. But the same complaint isn't repeated on an endless loop when it comes to leftist activists challenging more centrist Democratic incumbents in primary contests.
In fact, in some of those occasions, the media find a way to cast aspersions on Republicans.
Take, for instance, a June 22 story on Newsweek.com, the headline for which posed the question, "Will Utah Republicans Play Dirty Today?" Writer McKay Coppins explained how one Republican state lawmaker had suggested that the party faithful in the state's 2nd Congressional District should take advantage of the Democrats' open primary system to cast votes for Claudia Wright, a liberal insurgent challenging Rep. Jim Matheson (D), rather than weighing in on the GOP primary contest.
Although he noted that historically such tactical voting hasn't been successful and that state Republican officials have officially "denounced the plan," Coppins explained that the local media have become fixated on the notion and at least one radio host has described the crossover voting idea as "sleazy":