Day: April 13, 2012
Gingrich Blasts Fox News
I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through. In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.
— Newt Gingrich, accusing the cable network of having been been behind Mitt Romney from the beginning of the Republican presidential fight.
Gingrich was an employee of Fox as recently as last year, but was suspended as he geared up for a presidential bid.
TV Newser has a response from Fox News: “This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN — that’s the kind of man he is.”
Romney Suffers from ‘Empathy Gap’
48%
Of voters say President Obama cares about people like them, 52% say he does not. That surpasses Mitt Romney’s scores: 38% say Romney cares about people like them, 63% he does not, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.
Newark Mayor a Hero
I didn’t feel bravery, I felt terror.
— Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on rescuing a woman from a burning house last night, pointing out, “I really didn’t think we were going to get out of there.”
Caught on Video: Sean Hannity’s Five-Second Flip-Flop on Teleprompter Use
Before his identity was uncovered and Fox News fired him, the “Fox Mole” provided a video to Gawker of an off-air, sotto voce pre-interview conversation between Mitt Romney and Sean Hannity in which they both criticized Pres. Obama’s use of teleprompters and then, literally within seconds, reversed themselves on the subject, with Hannity even agreeing that Romney’s dependence on teleprompters is “smart.”
In the video, Romney, a world-class champion flip-flopper, executes his 180-degree flip on teleprompters in a heart-stopping one-half of a second. It takes Hannity, the slow poke, just five seconds to completely reverse his opinion from being against teleprompters when the president uses them to being for them when Romney, the official presidential candidate of Fox News does — and 22 seconds after dissing the president, Hannity even tells Romney he is “smart” to use teleprompters because “they’re out to just eviscerate anybody who makes a mistake.” (The Gawker video is unembedable, but you can watch it by clicking here or the screenshot at the top.)
Here’s the transcript, which picks up at about 28 seconds into the video:
Newt Bites Fox, Fox Snarks Back
Newt Gingrich lashed out at his former employer, Fox News, in a private meeting with a handful of Delaware tea baggers this week:
“I think FOX has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting — to which RealClearPolitics was granted access — at Wesley College. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of FOX, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of FOX. That’s just a fact.
…“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point [who] said, ‘I want Romney,’ and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney,’ ” Gingrich said. “And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches FOX.”
Translation: “It was okay with me that Fox was a Republican Party propaganda channel — until they turned their propagandizing against me.”
A little later, Newt’s Cry Baby personality — the one that shut down the U.S. government in 1996 because mean ol’ Bill Clinton made him ride in the back of Air Force One — had something to say:
Santorum Does Full Etch-a-Sketch on Website, Scrubs Attacks on Romney
The Santorum campaign’s website has been wiped clean of all content directly critical of the now de-facto Republican nominee.
A page that declared Romney to be the “proud defender and author of “Obamneycare” has been replaced by an “Access denied” message. The same is true for a post with a video of Romney declaring that his only connection to the Republican Party was his registration.
Ditto for a page outlining an attack Santorum made against Romney for supporting the Wall Street bailout, another criticizing the former Massachusetts governor for his various flip-flops, yet another attacking Romney for his support of mandates, and a press release that accused Romney of being a Democrat.
Remember that time when Santorum accused Romney of “Taxachusetts economic policies”? The press release marking that moment is gone from the Santorum campaign website.
