On Monday’s Early Show, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell promoted the left-of-center talking point that Standard & Poor’s recent lowering of the U.S.’s credit rating is a “Tea Party downgrade.” O’Donnell played three sound bites of notable liberals using this line of attack, versus only one opposing from a center-right politician. She also spun Treasury Geithner’s decision to stay as “good news for the President.”
At the top of Saturday’s NBC Today, CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent John Harwood told co-host Lester Holt that the downgrade of U.S. debt provided President Obama with “a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal.”
Deriding the Tea Party: Terrorists “Strapped with Dynamite”
“There’s a nihilist caucus which is, ‘Listen, we want to burn the place down.’ I mean, they’re not, they’ve strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it. The Tea Party caucus wants this crisis, and do we want to do this again six months from now?”
— Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson on Inside Washington, July 29.
“If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, July 27.
“You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people….For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough.”
— New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, August 2.
Tea Party Budget Slashers = “Cannibals,” “Vampires” and “Zombies”
“Tea Party budget-slashers….were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in Alien flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.”
— New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, August 3 column.
Children Who Don’t “Understand” How Government Works [ELITISM]
“The question, I think, some people might be asking is, do you think that members of the Tea Party caucus know how to govern, or are they — do they understand that standing up for a cause is not the same as governing?”
— Co-host Ann Curry to Tom Brokaw on NBC’s Today, August 1.
“Some people say that the Republican Party has been held hostage by the Tea Party. One of our Facebook followers sent in an interesting analogy and said, ‘Why are Republicans allowing freshman congressmen to control this debate?’ and this person said, ‘It’s like letting the teenager in the family run the family budget.’ I mean, there’s some truth in that.”
— Moderator Bob Schieffer to GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation, July 31.
Obama Foes Are “Muggers,” “Kidnappers” and “Haters”
“Let me finish tonight with this bad experience we’ve all just been through. What we saw, what I saw at least, was one guy with a knife and the other trying to avoid being cut. It was a thug attacking a victim. It was a mugging. Now, the good news — relief is a better word, I suppose — is that the victim did get through it. The bad news is that the mugger got what he wanted. He got the wallet….The mugging continues, again and again and again. The people who perpetrated this assault on the President will come back to do it again.”
— Chris Matthews talking about the debt talks on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 2.
“Why did he [Obama] let this develop for six months, well, eight months since last December, this drum roll of the Republicans saying, ‘We’ve got the baby. You don’t get the baby back unless you pay us?’ Why do you let the other side have the baby, to use kidnapping terms?”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to the New Republic’s Jonathan Chait on Hardball, August 1.
“From day one, from second one, the goal of the Republican Party of the right, of corporate America, of the Tea Party, the whole shebang, has been eliminate this guy’s presidency. It’s been personal, it’s been about him, and it’s about hatred….‘We hate you, want to kill you (pause) politically.’”
— Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 3.
