Explaining Brian Ross’s Mistake

By Dennis Prager

 

James Holmes is a human earthquake. We are as ill-equipped to predict the eruptions of such human beings as we are to predict the eruptions of the earth.

But that doesn’t mean that nothing meaningful came out of the Aurora tragedy.
Something quite important did, though few Americans are aware of it because it has already entered the mainstream media’s memory hole.
On ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday morning, Brian Ross, chief investigative reporter for ABC News, announced to George Stephanopoulos and millions of viewers that there’s “a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado page on the Colorado Tea Party site,” which mentions Holmes “talking about joining the Tea Party last year.”
Ross acknowledged that “we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes, but it is Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.”
As the Baltimore Sun’s TV critic, David Zurawik, wrote: “So, why put it out there in the first place, if you don’t have it nailed down?”
While blaming ABC News and Brian Ross for besmirching reputations and irresponsible reporting, Mr. Zurawik doesn’t answer his question.
I will.
The news media — as there are almost no non-liberal mainstream news media, the term “news media” means liberal news media — believe they have a higher calling than reporting news.
In order to understand this, I offer this anecdote. A number of years ago I was asked to moderate a panel of judges that included a former, very liberal, California Supreme Court justice. At one point the justice said that his role as a judge was to fight inequality, poverty, and racism. I respectfully disagreed: If that is what he wanted to do professionally, he should have chosen another profession; his role as a judge is solely to administer justice in his courtroom.
People on the left think the way the judge did. The primary purpose of every profession, as they see it, is to increase what they call “social justice.”
Thus, the purpose of college teachers (and increasingly high-school and elementary teachers as well) is no longer merely to teach. It is to improve society by teaching students, for example, about global warming. And the purpose of history textbooks is not primarily to teach history, but to make female, gay, black, and Latino students feel good about themselves. (California just passed a law mandating that textbooks include stories of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people.)
And the purpose of the news media is not primarily to present news as impartially as possible. It is to improve society — which to liberals means, above all, fighting the Right.
So when Brian Ross linked the Aurora mass murderer to the Tea Party, in his mind, he was doing the right thing. Is there one person in America who believes that if Ross had discovered a James Holmes in Aurora active in the ACLU, he would have reported it?
There is an additional explanation.
In general, the Left believes the Right is evil. Not wrong, evil. And to Brian Ross and most of his colleagues at ABC News, the Tea Party is the current apotheosis of American evil.
If you think this is hyperbolic, former New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that when an anonymous individual threw a brick through a congressman’s window, this somehow proved that the Tea Party was engaged in a “small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.”
Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass,” is considered the opening act of the Holocaust. In November 1938, over the course of two days, tens of thousands of German Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps; scores of Jews were beaten to death; 267 synagogues were destroyed; and thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized — often by having their windows smashed, hence the term Kristallnacht.
No one at the New York Times criticized Rich for his comparison of the Tea Party to Nazi murderers. Why would they? Nearly everyone at the paper probably agreed with him. And defeating the Right is more important than moral or factual accuracy.
On the day after Jared Loughner killed six people and gravely injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others, in an almost perfect preview of Brian Ross, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that right-wing hate had provoked Loughner: “It’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence. Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the Right . . . .”
Lest the ABC News smear be forgotten, I thought it important to devote a column to it. But the truth is that, in varying degrees and in a variety of ways, it happens every day — in movies, in schools, in courtrooms, and, of course, in the news media.
— Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated columnist and radio talk-show host, is author of Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.

Tea Party Is the New Reality

By Senator Jim DeMint

Politicians who fail to recognize it are certain to become relics of the past.

THE 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES are showing early signs of another banner year for the Tea Party. The candidacies of Republican insurgents such as Richard Mourdock, Josh Mandel, Deb Fischer, Ted Cruz, and Mark Neumann follow the spirit of Senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Pat Toomey, and Rand Paul—who each defeated establishment forces in their 2010 senatorial races. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who enacted ambitious reforms of public-sector unions in his state, trounced his recall opponent by a seven-point margin.
In just a few short years, the Tea Party has evolved from small, disparate groups scattered all around the country into a full-fledged movement with considerable influence. Tea Party candidates are no passing fad; they are trailblazers of a new, lasting political reality.
For too long, politicians got away with proclaiming the value of fiscal responsibility on the campaign trail without ever acting on it once they were in Washington. But thanks to the Internet, that’s no longer an option. Activists around the country have ready access to politicians’ voting records, speeches, and statements with just a few clicks of a mouse. It’s nearly impossible to mislead voters these days. That’s why it’s no longer acceptable for candidates to simply mouth conservative rhetoric. Their records must back it up. For that reason, many longtime incumbents, whose walk didn’t match their talk, had to go. They couldn’t pass muster in an age of transparency.
The pundit class often laments the lack of bipartisanship in Washington and wistfully recalls the good old days when Republicans and Democrats would work together to bring home the bacon and plunge our nation deeper into debt. Times have changed. Jay Cost made an astute observation in his essay “The Politics of Loss” in National Affairs. He said that the stunning economic growth in the postwar era “liberated policy makers from having to make any hard choices. The people could have guns, butter, and low taxes—all thanks to a private economy that seemed to grow regardless of what government did.”
Today, however, the private economy is pinned under the jackboot of big government. There’s no more room for compromise. When Republicans and Democrats worked together in the past, the result was almost always a bigger, more expensive government. As a result, government now controls our health care, our energy, our education, our transportation, our mortgages, our banks, and countless other things. The debt is now bigger than our gross domestic product.
It’s time for toughness. Merely raising the subject of eliminating a single government program provokes ridicule and anger from any number of constituencies. Those who speak frankly and honestly about the decisions that must be made to save our entitlement programs can expect to be labeled in the crudest terms by the Democrat Party and its assorted special-interest groups.
But anyone who looks at the numbers can see that the real radicals are the ones running Washington right now. The creation of our $15 trillion debt is the single most extreme action ever undertaken by the U.S. government. Thankfully, we know what the answers are. Republicans have offered numerous ways to shrink the budget, empower states, reduce the tax burden on Americans, and provide the certainty needed for the economy to flourish once again.
The Tea Party has provided a much-needed infusion of accountability to ensure that the GOP champions the values that have made our nation prosperous. The genius of the Tea Party is that it is not a single group that may one day be corrupted. Its allegiance lies with the Constitution and our founding principles, not with a person or party.
With the Tea Party’s backing, Republicans should have the temerity to offer voters a clear and bold choice between the Republican and Democrat agendas. It’s not a question of left or right, or red or blue. It’s a matter of whether this country succeeds or fails.
That’s why I’m laser focused on retaking the Senate with Tea Party candidates who are committed to repealing Obamacare, balancing the budget, securing our border, stopping the bailouts, and enacting pro-growth, freedom-based policies that will get Americans back to work.
This is the new reality. Politicians who fail to recognize it are certain to become relics of the past.
Our nation’s survival depends on it.

About the Author

Jim DeMint is a U.S. senator from South Carolina.

Proof! Establishment media 'controlled' by Politicians

Exclusive: Joseph Farah scorches 'journalists' who are 'selling their ethical, moral souls'

by Joseph Farah

 

There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment’s ultra-controlled, government-managed “press” – and I use that last word loosely indeed.
The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I’ve been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I’ve waited for naught.
What this shocking story reveals is that even I – one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine – underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called “mainstream press.”
It shows that most – not some – members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, “correction” and approval before it reaches the American people!
Even “progressive” WND columnist Ellen Ratner agrees – media under a spell!
Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I’m exaggerating:

• “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.”

• “They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”

• “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.”

• “Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.”

• “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House – almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.”

• “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”

• “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat’ or a ‘Republican strategist.’”

• “Those [reporters] who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. ‘It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal.”

• “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.”

I could go on and on. I urge you to read the entire story. This may be the most important story broken by the New York Times in years.
What it means is this: When Americans read these reports – whether in newspapers, wire services or on the Internet – they are not really reading news stories at all. They are reading approved, pre-packaged press releases from the government and politicians. But, even worse, they are not labeled as such. They are labeled as actual news.
That’s how low the national press establishment has descended. And, when you read the story in its full context, you will understand that the concerns expressed about this practice by those submitting themselves to it are not ethical concerns. They are not concerns for the truth. They are concerns about their own convenience and for the loss of “color” in their stories.
Let me state what I hope is obvious to all reading this column: This sort of willing capitulation to government censorship was not the norm five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago. This is a new phenomenon – chilling and alarming to an old-timer like me who would never agree to submit his copy for approval to politicians.
These so-called journalists are selling their ethical and moral souls for access to politicians. And this practice raises expectations by politicians that they can routinely manipulate the press to their advantage. That makes the job of real journalists – independent reporters faithful to their craft – even more difficult, because they will be shut out from access.
It reminds me of the fact that, just last week, WND was denied credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention. Why do you suppose what has become one of the largest and most influential news agencies in the country would be denied access to the convention floor? Simply because the Democrats know we won’t play by their rules of control like the members of the establishment press club.
All I can say about these people I once considered “colleagues” is that I am so ashamed of them. I am mortified. They are humiliating themselves and a vital institution for any free society.
It seems the biggest threat to the American tradition of a free and independent press is not government coercion. It’s the willing submission of the press to being handled and managed by government and politicians.

Finally, he's socking it to Obama.

Three Big Cheers for Mitt

By Andrew B. Wilson

Earlier this week, I gave Mitt Romney "two cheers" for going to the NAACP convention and delivering a speech lauding free enterprise. What the speech was missing was a strong condemnation of the monstrously wrong-headed set of policies espoused by Barack Obama -- and cheered by the NAACP and most others on the left.
Now it is time to give Romney that third cheer. His speech in Irwin, Pennsylvania, was stunning. Speaking without a teleprompter, and glancing down only occasionally at his notes or text, Romney socked it to the president as someone who wanted to "crush economic liberty" and "make Americans feel ashamed of success."
Obama laid himself open to this devastating onslaught with his remarks in Roanoke, Virginia, a few days earlier, saying that nobody built his own business… because, as he suggested, no one could do it without the helping hand of government in building roads, bridges, and the like.
Here are a few passages from Romney's thunderous rejoinder:

Romney: The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft? You go down the list. To say something like that is not just foolishness, it's insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America . . .
Audience: (wild applause)
Romney: and it's wrong!
Romney: I don't think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the president said is both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something I have said from the beginning of this campaign, that this election is to a great extent about the soul of America. Do we believe America is great because of government, or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and their future?
Audience: (thunderous applause)

Romney went from there to talking about how Obama had stood the American dream of building a better future for one's self and one's family on its head:

I'm convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success. I want Americans to welcome success and encourage people to reach as high as they can -- and, in some cases, to build enterprises. I don't want government to take credit for what the individuals of America have accomplished. Whether they work in government or the private sector, it's the people of America who make America the unique nation, the exceptional nation that it is . . .

Romney proceeded to outline a five-point plan for restoring American exceptionalism. This includes:
1) Pressing ahead with development of oil, gas, and coal reserves here in the United States. Romney recounted how the Obama administration wanted no fracking, no off-shore drilling, and no coal. Said Romney: "These things cost jobs and they've got to stop."
2) Expanding trade with other nations. Here he pointed out that European, Asian, and Latin American nations had concluded dozens of free trade agreements over the past three and a half years. The score under Obama's presidency: Zero.
3) Moving toward a balanced budget. He pointed out that the enormous debt burden used to finance runaway government spending under Obama had been a major factor in slowing economic growth.
4) Expanding choice in our schools. He pointedly observed: "Kids first, and unions behind them."
5) Restoring economic freedom in a major way. Said Romney: "Our economy is driven by people pursuing their ideas and dreams. It's not driven by government. And what the president is doing is crushing economic freedom."
And those were not the only highlights. Romney also noted how the Obama administration had a shameful record of rewarding businesses that have provided campaign contributions with loans and loan guarantees.
And he scoffed (just as Bastiat did in my article) at the notion that governments created wealth whenever they built a road or bridge or other public project. Who paid for that road or bridge? Romney asked (as Bastiat did before him). It is the taxpayer -- whether as an individual or as a business. Should the taxpayer pay twice for the same road or bridge?
We have a president who has no experience in the world of commerce and who has no use for business or free enterprise. He has never met a payroll or earned a profit -- and he seems to think that anyone who tries to do those things is most likely to be out to cheat his customers and to treat his employees with contempt. As Romney has said, he has "the most anti-business, anti-investment, anti-jobs administration I've ever seen."
If there is one thing that this nation cannot afford -- a bigger calamity even than our $15 trillion national debt -- it is four more years of Barack Obama.
Let's hope that Mitt Romney continues to make that point loud and clear.

About the Author

Andrew B. Wilson, a frequent contributor to The American Spectator, writes from St. Louis.

Are the Polls Skewed Toward Obama?

by Jay Cost

July 20, 2012 6:00 AM

A topic that inevitably receives a lot of focus during election season is the partisan spread of the major media polls. Conservatives regularly complain that the polls are tilted against their side, and thus favor the Democrats.

They have a point.

To be sure, we can conclude that without accusing any pollster of malfeasance. In this essay, Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post correctly notes that the problem gets down to using registered voter polls. These tend to oversample Democrats.  The argument in support of them is that, while a likely voter screen would draw a larger Republican sample, it would create more variability as pollsters would be guessing unduly at the final party turnout.

That is a fair point in some respects, although there is a cost associated with either choice. Using registered voter polls might cut down on variability, but they also create statistical bias. That is, the polls tend to oversample Democrats in a systematic fashion. And because partisan support is so strong – with 90 percent of Republicans supporting GOP candidates and 90 percent of Democrats supporting Democratic candidates – you regularly see the Democratic candidates’ margins overstated in polls of registered voters.

Let’s see if we can quantify this a little bit. To begin, we need to know the historical partisan tendencies of the electorate. For that, we can turn to the exit polls going back to 1972.

As we can see, the GOP position suffered enormously because of the Watergate scandal in 1974. Republican identification among voters plummeted 10 points, not to rebound fully until Ronald Reagan basically rebranded the party in 1984.

Ever since then, we have seen both parties pull a relatively constant range of support. This actually pushes back against Blumenthal’s point that there is an undue amount of guesswork in terms of modeling the electorate. In fact, for five elections in a row – from 1984 to 2004 – the GOP fell within a very narrow, 5-point band between 34 percent and 39 percent. Meanwhile, the Democratic band was even narrower, from 37 percent to 40 percent.

Of course, 2008 seems to have broken the pattern. But what was really happening that cycle? The conventional wisdom among proponents of the “emerging Democratic majority” thesis is that this was the general election when the demographic power of the Democratic party was finally realized. But in fact we see the Democratic party still falling in that narrow range of 37-40 percent. The real drop-off comes with the GOP, and the “independent” category was the greatest beneficiary. What I suspect happened is that many marginal Republicans stopped identifying themselves as such in 2008, and instead called themselves independents. This argument is supported by the fact that Barack Obama only won the independent vote in 2008 by 8 points, which compares quite negatively to the 18-point blowout among independents that Democrats scored in 2008. This suggests that a lot of true Republicans were “hiding” in that category four years ago.

Thus, I do not see a substantial shift in the partisan balance within the electorate in 2008, at least not on net. Certainly, Barack Obama attracted a much larger number of the non-white public to the polls (especially African Americans), and he also drew a larger share of this vote than prior Democrats. But these gains were countered by significant declines in Democratic support among whites. Obama lost the white vote by 12 points; while in 1996 (an equally good year for Democrats) Bill Clinton lost it by just 3 points.

I also do not see much reason to alter substantially our expectations in terms of partisan turnout – certainly not in a cycle where most polls suggest an enthusiasm gap that favors the Republican party. The quarter-century trend (1984 through 2008) has seen an average Democratic turnout edge of 3 points, 39 percent Democratic to 36 percent Republican. I’d expect something roughly similar this time around.

This gives us a basis to compare the recent polls of registered voters. How do they stack up to this historical trend of D+3?

The clear answer is: they skew Democratic. In fact, every recent registered voter poll with party spreads I could identify had a Democratic advantage that exceeded the quarter-century trend. And the average of all these polls together is 35 percent Democratic to 29.5 percent Republican, or D +5.5

Importantly, these polls show Obama with an average lead over Mitt Romney of 3.5 points. But if they have a 2.5-point Democratic oversample, then what we are really talking about is perhaps a 1-point Obama lead.

Incidentally, this puts these polls much more in line with the Rasmussen poll, which has consistently found a toss-up race. Right now, Rasmussen – a poll of likely voters – sees an R+1.4 advantage in party identification. That is entirely defensible, in my opinion, given the weakness in the economy.

A final point: Presidential job approval polls are usually reported among all adults, aged 18 or over. These tend to have an even larger skew toward the Democrats than registered voter polls. For instance, the CBS News / New York Times poll had a D+6 spread among registered voters, but a D+7 spread among all adults. This means that the job approval numbers are probably overstating Obama’s position by an even larger margin. So, the CBS News / New York Times poll had Obama’s net approval at -2, suggesting that among the electorate it’s perhaps around -6. I’d link this back to my consistent argument that presidents rarely win a share of the electorate larger than their job approval to justify my sustained bearishness on Obama’s reelection prospects. I suspect that the Rasmussen poll on job approval is closest to the electorate’s true feelings, and that regularly shows a net disapproval around -5 points, a very bad position for any incumbent.

Here’s my bottom line. It is very difficult to model the turnout for a presidential election this far away from November. There are a lot of tough choices that pollsters must make, and it is not fair to single any pollster out for the decisions it ultimately goes with. Nevertheless, we can and should still be smart consumers of political polling. We need to keep the historical spread between the two sides in mind, and be cautious of polls that show a relatively wide Democratic advantage over the GOP. They are probably underestimating the GOP's electoral strength. 

Jay Cost is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, available now wherever books are sold.