2012 Presidential

Jon Huntsman wants you to know he rides a dirt bike. On real dirt! He's Salt of the Earth. Grease of the Garage. Dragster on the Dunes. Huntsman's runnin' and gunnin' for president. But underneath the Steve McQueen costumery, this made-for-cable-TV Moderate Speed Racer is a creaky old John McCain on Wheels. The former Utah Republican governor and Obama ambassador to China is the answer to an…

When Good Morning America's Robin Roberts conducted a softball interview with Barack Obama on Friday, she sought out questions from basketball stars. On Wednesday, however, George Stephanopoulos grilled Republican Jon Huntsman with queries taken straight from the White House's 2012 reelection team. Stephanopoulos played up the presidential candidate's promise for "a civil campaign" and an…

Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday accused Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) of being a socialist. "The Last Word" host, who has admitted on national television to himself being a socialist, did so by cherry-picking from an article published at the perilously liberal website "The Huffington Post" (video follows with commentary and full transcript at end of post):

On Tuesday night, NBC decided to highlight a series of stumbles by Republican presidential candidates, none of them all that significant (Romney having $100 bills in his wallet and Perry referring to Twitter as “tweeter”), before later in the newscast showing White House-produced video of a baby which stopped crying when handed to President Obama. “The White House would probably love for us to…

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on Tuesday badly mispronounced the last name of Constitutional lawyer and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. Rather deliciously, this occurred in a segment wherein the pompous, know-it-all host was once again mocking the intellectual capacity of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (video follows with partial transcript and…

More than any other Republican presidential prospect, Sarah Palin draws white-hot journalistic loathing. She’s too red-state, too gun-toting, too religious, and too unwilling to abort a disabled “fetus.” Even so, filmmaker Steve Bannon remains deeply optimistic his forthcoming Palin documentary “The Undefeated” will sway the media to see Palin in a different light. Bannon, a former Goldman…

As NewsBusters previously reported, Jon Stewart earlier this month did a segment on "The Daily Show" wherein he impersonated Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain using an Amos and Andy voice. On Tuesday's "Imus in the Morning," Fox News's Juan Williams said that if Sean Hannity had done that, "He'd be out there barking with the dogs after they threw him out" (video follows with…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has for months been bashing potential GOP presidential candidates for not getting into the race to challenge Barack Obama for the White House. Now that people are throwing their hats into the ring, the "Hardball" host has ripped virtually all of them including the not-yet-announced Texas governor Rick Perry who Matthews vociferously attacked as a phony and a puppet…

Trying to submerge its own network’s “under God” censorship into a greater narrative, Monday’s NBC Nightly News managed to combine into one disjointed story, pegged to “a tough slog” over the weekend “when it comes to the campaign to get along in our public discourse,” the NBC Sports decision to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance in its opening montage for the U.S. Open golf…

To be fair to the Associated Press's Charles Babington, he may not have written the headline applied to his early analysis ("Obama wants big 2012 campaign map, GOP wants small") of how the presidential electoral map looks. But what he wrote essentially fits the headline, but didn't provide any evidence that the Republican Party is only focusing on winning back the states lost by John McCain in…

With Jon Huntsman's presidential announcement on June 21, the former Utah governor joins a crowded field vying for the Republican nomination. But while MSNBC has put most GOP hopefuls through the ringer, Huntsman has been heralded by the network as Mr. Civility in an otherwise nutty Republican field. [Video below the fold]

If you compare the Carter malaise with the Obama debt doomsday machine, any GOP 2012 presidential candidate should sail to victory with greater facility than Ronald Reagan did in 1980. But will she or he? I am optimistic but also believe that in making his economic case, the Republican candidate will have different challenges because of the ongoing growth of our welfare state and the…

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest column for the Sunday Magazine tackled what the subhead called “Sarah Palin’s codependent relationship with the press (and vice versa).” In two contradictory paragraphs, Keller bluntly revealed the liberal media mindset of Palin loathing – then dismissed the idea of liberal media slant as almost entirely mythical. Keller also stated that "a…

A standing ovation and cries of “Run, Rick, Run” greeted Texas Gov. Rick Perry following his campaign-like speech to a gathering of conservatives in New Orleans on Saturday. Addressing the Republican Leadership Conference, Perry wasted no time in criticizing the Obama administration for believing that government is the answer to every need and is most qualified to make essential decisions for…