Campaigns & Elections

Less than 24-hours after former Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) was indicted on 14 charges including conspiracy and fraud, all three network morning shows immediately identified McDonnell as a Republican. While McDonnell’s potential crimes are serious, the media failed to uphold the same party ID standard when it involved a scandal plagued Democratic governor. NBC led their January 22 coverage…

On Friday, as I noted on Saturday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told public radio's Susan Arbetter that "extreme conservatives" – that is, people who are pro-life, understand the clear meaning of the Second Amendment, or wish to keep marriage as it has traditionally been defined – "have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are." Note well that Cuomo's remarks…

This is a "Can't Make This Up" item on two levels. The more obvious of the two is an incredibly tone-deaf statement issued by Texas Democratic guberatorial candidate Wendy Davis, whose Republican opponent is paraplegic Greg Abbott, that "I am proud of what I’ve been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn’t walked a day…

Wow, I'd better get this post done quickly, because Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has been tweeting up a storm and has posted "an open letter" at her web site. If I blink, I might miss a half-dozen more tweets. Davis apparently thinks that if she accuses Republican candidate Greg Abbott and his campaign of being behind the Sunday Dallas Morning News story which poked…

On Tuesday, Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas noted a new Quinnipiac survey finding that only 35 percent of Americans believe that New Jersey governor Chris Christie would make a good president -- down from 49 percent in November -- and that Christie trails Hillary Clinton by eight points in a hypothetical presidential contest (he led her by one point in November and December…

To be fair, it started with the original story broken at the Dallas Morning News, where Wayne Slater's substantive story about Wendy Davis's problems with the truth was headlined "As Wendy Davis touts life story in race for governor, key facts blurred." "Blurred" is clearly a popular word with an establishment press which is determined to try to make this problem with Davis's basic…

MSNBC darling Wendy Davis is in some hot water over inaccuracies surrounding her personal biography. According to the Dallas Morning News's Wayne Slater -- no conservative he, by the way --  despite Ms. Davis’s own claims, she was 21, not 19 when she was divorced and living in a trailer as a single mother. Despite the glaring factual inconsistencies in Ms. Davis’s own biography, on January 21…

"Mwa ha ha ha ha!" You can almost hear the mad scientist laugh bellowing from Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky in the teaser for his January 21 story, "How Bad Does the GOP Need Chris Christie? Really Bad." "Without the scandal-engulfed New Jersey governor, Republicans don’t have a candidate who could even come close to the votes needed to win the presidency in 2016," promises the subheader to…

MRC president Brent Bozell appeared near the top of “The Kelly File” on Fox News Channel Monday night to discuss the liberal media’s sudden ardor for Dawn Zimmer, the Democratic mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, who claimed Gov. Christie was handing out federal superstorm-Sandy subsidies in a corrupt and politicized way. Kelly noted she would not answer questions from Fox News. Kelly pointed out…

All three networks on Tuesday morning continued to pile on Chris Christie, offering gloating coverage about how his “glory days” have gone terribly wrong.  After recounting everything that has gone awry for the Republican, Good Morning America's Jim Avila imagined, “You can almost see at the inauguration today, Governor Christie raising his right hand and shaking his head at the same time. “ […

The administration of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tried to hit back at the press on Sunday for supposedly misunderstanding his Friday morning statement to Susan Arbetter on the public radio show "Capitol Pressroom" that "extreme conservatives ... have no place in New York." As I noted on Saturday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Governor made it clear that "extreme conservatives" include…

NBC has latched onto the Chris Christie bridge scandal like a leech, so it was no surprise to see a report on the controversy within the first ten minutes of Saturday’s Today show. What was surprising, and dismaying, was that NBC followed up its report with reaction from Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It would be hard to find a less impartial analyst on this matter than the chairwoman of the…

In an online piece teased on the Time.com landing page as "Christie Dodged 'Bully' Bullet," Time’s Mark Halperin hyped his “EXCLUSIVE: Christie Rival Called Him ‘Bully’ In Unaired Ad.” At issue in the January 20 piece is how State Sen. Barbara Buono produced an unaired anti-Christie ad in which the Democratic nominee for governor asserted that, “she clearly saw the very traits in Christie…

A small but vocal band of critics has forced an actress to bow out of a stage production purely because of her political views. It's a brand of McCarthyistic bullying that the national media would (rightly) condemn if the politics of principals in the controversy reversed. But don't hold your breath for a firestorm of outrage in the case of Maria Conchita Alonso, a conservative/libertarian…