MRC's Worst of the Week: Media Ramp Up Anti-Tea Party Venom

September 23rd, 2010 11:15 AM

Six weeks before what could be a doomsday election for Democrats, the liberal media are taking every opportunity to belittle and discredit the Tea Party movement that’s fueling voter energy this year.

Media liberals with zero affection for the Republican establishment are suddenly acting like concerned parents. Ex-Clintonista George Stephanopoulos worried on ABC’s Good Morning America: “Is it a revolution that will bring the GOP to power, or a civil war that will bring them down?” Over on the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric fretfully wondered if “moderate Republicans are becoming an endangered species?”

On Saturday’s Good Morning America, co-host Dan Harris suggested “complacency” was the only risk facing “gleeful” Democrats: “When it comes to the rise of the Tea Party...some of these people have said such extreme things in the past, that they’re gonna be easier to beat. Is there complacency, potentially, setting in?

On Monday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Nancy Cordes sought to paint all of this year’s Tea Party candidates as kooks. “Christine O’Donnell’s witchcraft comments may have spooked some Republican leaders,” Cordes opined, “but her fellow Tea Party Senate candidates are living proof that unusual assertions are not necessarily campaign killers.”

Cordes regurgitated Democrats’ favorite anti-Tea Party talking points: “Take Kentucky’s Rand Paul, who questioned the historic Civil Rights Act but is still tied with the Democrat in a recent poll. Nevada’s Sharron Angle is neck and neck with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, even after she advocated an armed insurrection against the government....And Utah attorney Mike Lee is crushing his Democratic rival even though Lee favors dismantling Social Security and eliminating unemployment benefits, priorities he shares with Alaska’s Joe Miller.”

Ex-MSNBC pundit Craig Crawford, certainly no conservative, scolded the media’s biased approach on CNN’s Reliable Sources. “Sometimes we’re wrong when we listen too much to the Democratic message,” Crawford advised. “We’re playing into that Democratic message that these candidates are insane.”

Sadly, the evidence suggests too many supposedly objective reporters don’t mind being tools for the Democratic Party this election year.