Coulter: Upside of Media Vetting GOP Candidates - We Don't End Up With President Voting Present as Economy Falls in Toilet

August 19th, 2011 10:57 AM

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media are working overtime examining the records of every GOP candidate for president.

"The bright side though is," conservative author Ann Coulter told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday, "we don't end up with a Republican president who is suddenly having an affair with an intern, or a Republican president who votes present for his entire term as the economy falls into the toilet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: He's only been a candidate for five days but Texas Governor Rick Perry already has the White House and the mainstream media in a frenzy. Now, asked about a comment that Governor Perry made on the campaign trail.

White House spokesman propaganda's Jay Carney told reporters, quote, "When you're president or you're running for president, well, you have to think about what you're saying." You know, like clinging to your guns and religion. Plus, this coming from an administration whose vice president just weeks ago reportedly called members of the Tea Party movement a bunch of terrorists. As for the Obama-mania media, well, they are doing some so-called vetting of Governor Perry. Now, "The New York Times" is running a front-page series of stories about the latest entrant into the GOP race.

And we check in at the "Washington Post" that political page today where most of the day, Governor Perry was the subject of all of the papers' top headlines, and this is strange because I just don't recall the liberal media looking that closely into then Senator Barack Obama's background when he was a candidate.

And joining me with reaction to all of this, the author of the brand new, "New York Times" best seller "Demonic," Satanic, sorry "Demonic," author and columnist, the one and only Ann Coulter is back. How are you, Coulter?

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, "DEMONIC": Fine, how are you, Sean?

HANNITY: I'm very good. All right. First of all, they want to kill Perry. They want to kill Romney, and so the media does all the bidding for the White House. They even edited NBC News as I'm sure you saw, you know, the comments that Perry made which were very innocuous, talking about, you know, the black cloud that's handling over the economy and the country. Is that how desperate this is going to get?

COULTER: No, that was amazing. That should have been played for comedy. The other exciting development is, it happens every few years, liberal New Yorkers have discovered evangelicals. So, we've got lots of paranoid articles. The new "Halliburton" is "dominionism" I guess based on the writings of some evangelical who lived 50 years ago and none of us have ever heard of. But he knew Francis Schaefer who evangelicals have heard of and like. And apparently, we evangelicals have a plot to take over the government, the media and Hollywood, and there are a plethora of utterly paranoid articles about this. you know, evangelicals are 40 percent of America. Maybe theses journalists, if they left the upper Westside once in a while, they would meet some

The attacks on Perry and Bachmann, I might add, are so thorough, it's astonishing. There was a New Yorker article on Bachmann that went back to her ancestors in 1861, in order to establish -- they didn't actually settle in Iowa, but near Iowa. What were Obama's relatives doing in 1861? You know, the media can't even walk into the Trinity United Church and get a video tape of Obama's minister. But they are going back to Michele Bachmann's relatives in 1861.

HANNITY: And Chris Matthews at NBC suggesting he better be squeaky clean. Let me give you a few headlines beyond saying that. Matthew's Rick Perry, Bull Connor with a smile. "New York Times," Perry's swaggering tone toward Bernanke may not play well outside of Texas. Obama to Rick Perry, you've got to be a little more careful about what you say. Clinging to guns and bibles. Confederate plates could be a touchy issue for Perry. Perry's colorful tongue takes national stage. And you're right, I'm looking, no vetting of Obama. Zero, I've never seen anybody in the political arena get away as much as this guy with as little scrutiny.

COULTER: Right. And just a little footnote here, Bull Connor was of course a Democrat, as were all the southern segregationists. But the silver lining to all this is, when we do elect a president - because the media will investigate back to our ancestors in 1861 for our candidates and investigate the relatives not only of the candidates. And look at how Karl Rove was investigated and ripped apart. Even advisers to Republicans will be investigated. The bright side though is, we don't end up with a Republican president who is suddenly having an affair with an intern, or a Republican president who votes present for his entire term as the economy falls into the toilet. You know, Democrats are always surprised when these scandals develop.

HANNITY: All right. Let me ask you this.

COULTER: Maybe if the media did five minutes of vetting of their candidates, the same level they will do to a Republican presidential adviser, it wouldn't be such a big surprise to them.

This is actually an excellent point.

We on the right complain about the extensive examination Republican candidates get from the liberal media, but in the end, this vetting process has an upside inasmuch as the public in theory are far better equipped to make an informed decision when they go to the polls on Election Day.

Aside from the falsehoods, inaccuracies, and seemingly obligatory charges of racism lobbed at GOPers, the press are really just doing their jobs in the early stages of this campaign season. Hopefully, this will yield a far better man - or woman - in the White House.

The problem is this same level of scrutiny is not applied to Democrat candidates.

Far from it, what we saw in 2008 was a media gushing and fawning over the junior senator from Illinois almost literally calling him the second coming of Christ while they totally ignored his obvious lack of experience and qualifications for the position as they withheld from the public his questionable ties to domestic terrorists, an America-hating reverend, and a corrupt real estate developer.

It therefore shouldn't be at all surprising the man they dishonestly and negligently enabled right into the Oval Office ended up being such an utter failure.

On the flipside, because Republican candidates for president actually go through a vetting process before Election Day, citizens can rest assured that the GOPer they're voting for more closely represents what's being advertised.

If only that were true for the Democrat on the ballot.