Year: 2012

Newt Bites Fox, Fox Snarks Back

Jon Ponder

art-nydailynews-cry-baby-newtNewt 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:

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Santorum Does Full Etch-a-Sketch on Website, Scrubs Attacks on Romney

Jon Ponder

Shake, shake, shake:

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A page that declared Romney to be the “proud defender and author of “Obamneycare” has been replaced by an “Access denied” message.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.

What’s ‘Dumb’ for Republicans Is Apparently OK for Democrats

Buck Banks

You know essentially, you’ve taken on sort of the most sympathetic person in the candidate’s realm, the wife, who is taking care of the children, supporting the husband, doing everything she can because she loves him. Michelle Obama is a pretty terrific woman I have to say, and I think that attacking her is a dumb strategy on the Republican’s part.

— Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen, quoted by the Washington Examiner, on CNN on May 19, 2008. Last night, Rosen attacked Ann Romney on CNN saying she has “actually never worked a day in her life.”

Obama Likely the Last Democrat Candidate to Oppose Gay Marriage

Buck Banks

Sure, it would be a major development if [Obama] and his party were to officially endorse gay marriage this year. But look ahead to 2016, when the Democratic nomination will be open. It’s striking how many of the prospective candidates — Andrew Cuomo, Martin O’Malley, Deval Patrick, Sherrod Brown, Dan Malloy, Elizabeth Warren — are on-board with marriage equality. Their position is rapidly becoming the position that all aspiring national Democrats will be expected to take, and it’s virtually inconceivable that the ’16 platform won’t reflect this.

— Steve Kornacki, writing in Salon, noting this will likely be the last election where both presidential candidates oppose gay marriage.

New Pew Quiz Tests Your Political IQ

Buck Banks

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The Pew Research Center has a new short quiz that tests your political savvy.

Test your knowledge of the major political parties by taking our short 13-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with 1,000 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey conducted Mar. 29-Apr. 1, 2012 by the Pew Research Center.

I aced it, even though there are a couple of trick questions, and landed in the top 8 percent of quiz takers. About 33 percent missed one to three questions (tricks!) but a surprising 4 percent didn’t even get one out of 13 questions right.

Wait, why am I surprised? This is, after all, an idiocracy, right?

Take the quiz and tell us how you did in a comment — if you dare …