2012 Presidential

ABC News announced Thursday that Rick Kaplan, a long-time (FOB) Friend of Bill (Clinton) who used his high-level network news positions to protect his friend, will take the helm at ABC’s This Week and oversee all ABC News political coverage. “I’m delighted to report that Rick Kaplan is returning to ABC News as Executive Producer of This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” ABC News President Ben…

A frothing Chris Matthews on Thursday excoriated the "nasty," "shameless" Newt Gingrich for robbing "the political arena of joy and humanity." The Hardball host even compared the 2012 Republican presidential candidate to a famous horror movie villain: "I cannot believe there are young Republicans idealists out there, young people with hope who want our country to be good and have good…

The day after Newt Gingrich announced his candidacy for president, MSNBC's Martin Bashir took the opportunity to rail against the Republican contender for criticizing former President Bill Clinton's adulterous behavior while he was engaging in sexual transgressions of his own. On his eponymous program today, Bashir admonished the former House speaker's "hypocrisy" but failed to mention even…

CBS gave President Obama over 26 and a half minutes to answer 12 questions related to the economy during a town hall aired on Thursday's Early Show. Obama got six uninterrupted minutes to answer one question about Medicare during the hour-long event. Host Erica Hill wondered how the Democrat could "change the mind-set from things are tough to things are turning around" with the economy. Hill…

Teasing a story on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich entering the presidential race at the top of Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Meredith Vieira proclaimed: "Political hurdle. Newt Gingrich launches his run for the White House, but will his two divorces and an admitted affair during his time as House speaker hurt his chances of becoming president?" Later, fellow co-host Matt Lauer introduced…

Mike Barnicle has greeted Newt Gingrich's announcement of his presidential candidacy with a sneer, calling the former Speaker of the House "a delusional loser."  The former Kennedy-clan retainer and Boston Globe columnist seasoned his sneer with snobbery, launching an ignorant attack on Gingrich's educational background. Barnicle spewed his bile on today's Morning Joe. View video after…

Just barely a year after it derided the establishment media's obsession over oil-affected birds in the Gulf of Mexico while virtually ignoring the loss human life in awful floods in Tennessee (noted at the time at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Investors Business Daily's editorialists are calling out the press for oversaturating us with Obama-OBL victory lap coverage at the expense of informing…

Discussing how President Obama should craft his 2012 reelection campaign theme, MSNBC contributors Howard Fineman offered that President Obama made a "mistake" in his freshman year in office in saying voters should judge his term by his performance in office. Because the economy is recovering under Obama's stewardship, Fineman posited on the May 11 edition of "Hardball," Obama must run on a…

During a report on Tuesday's Nightly News, White House correspondent Chuck Todd was largely dismissive of the current crop of Republican candidates: "[Mitt Romney] skipped the first debate last week, leaving Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as the only major contender alongside a slew of long shots jockeying for attention." But when it came to President Obama, Todd declared: "One of the few…

Newt Gingrich: He’s no Mario Cuomo. New York Times political writer Matt Bai’s "Political Memo" Wednesday was pretty hostile to the battle-scared Republican leader considering a 2012 run for president: "Gingrich’s Run Reflects His Sense of History." Bai led off by asking "Whatever can Newt Gingrich be thinking?" given that he "has never been elected to anything outside his old Congressional…

New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes was with the president in El Paso, Texas, inspiring Latino voters for his 2012 reelection by pushing Congress to hack a "path to citizenship for illegal immigrants." It’s a long shot in a Republican-controlled Congress, on an issue Obama did not press when the Democrats had big majorities in the House and Senate, but those points were buried in her 1,100-…

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday hyped the best polling data available for President Obama, ignoring surveys finding much lower numbers. The co-anchor enthused, "And a new poll out just this morning shows President Obama with his highest approval rating in two years." "60 percent Of Americans, according to the AP, now think the President is doing a good job," he…

The chefs in the kitchens at AP-GfK, a joint effort of the Associated Press and GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, have been working overtime cooking up a scrumptious dish for fans of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. After tasting the output this morning, the AP's Liz Sidoti and Jennifer Agiesta could hardly contain their glee (also saved here for future reference…

The Al Sharpton radio show always gets even stranger when radical Syracuse professor Boyce Watkins is a guest. (Last year, he suggested Limbaugh listeners and Fox watchers easily become violent.) On Monday, Professor Watkins told Sharpton that Herman Cain should run for president like Colin Powell, and never mind that Powell actually endorsed Obama in 2008. If he's like a Tea Partier, then Cain…