Monday, March 28, 2011

Fox News Attacks Non-Palin Potential GOP Hopefuls...

Earlier this month, Fox News suspended contributors Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich until they declare whether or not they are going to run for president, but oddly the cable station did not release Sarah Palin of her duties despite Palin offering the same vague comments regarding a presidential run.  I had written on March 2nd that Fox News may have been implicitly backing a Sarah Palin candidacy by kicking Santorum and Gingrich off the airwaves -  it was also no secret that Palin did not get along with the other two.
Over the past several months, Palin has publicly played with the idea of running for president - in an interview with Barbara Walters, Palin said she was "looking at the lay of the land now, and ... trying to figure that out, if it's a good thing for the country, for the discourse, for my family, if it's a good thing," and that she would beat President Obama in a 2012 match-up.

It is also a known fact that Palin has been at odds with both Gingrich and Santorum. According to New York Magazine, Sarah Palin "despises" Newt Gingrich, citing an email Palin sent to an aide after a canceled speaking engagement. Palin had also been at a war of words with Santorum - after he had commented on her motherhood, Palin responded by calling him a "knuckle-dragging Neanderthal."

It is also no secret that both Palin and Fox News are highly revered by the tea parties, and as we have seen in the past, Fox News has no problem skewing the news to benefit both, so why all of a sudden would Fox News embrace corporate policy and suspend Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, when there is equal amount of evidence that Sarah Palin is planning a run next year?
It now seems that Fox News has made its latest assault against Palin's foes, with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace interrogating Newt Gingrich over his hypocrisy regarding the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Elspeth Reeve wrote the following for The National Journal:
Did Newt Gingrich feel even a tiny twinge of guilt when he was working so hard to impeach President Clinton over his affair with an intern while Gingrich himself was cheating on his wife with a congressional aide? No. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked the former House speaker and presidential candidate, "Isn’t that hypocrisy?" Gingrich countered that in 1998, he was taking a principled stand in defense of the deposition.

“Obviously, it’s complex and, obviously, I wasn’t doing things to be proud of. ... I had been in depositions. I had been in situations where you had to swear to tell the truth." Clinton, by contrast, had perjured himself by denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

But Wallace didn't let Gingrich get off easy, following-up: “I’m going to ask you man to man: Did you ever think to yourself, ‘I’m living in a really glass house. Maybe I shouldn’t be throwing stones?’" Gingrich said would have resigned if he thought he were unable to do his job. Wallace then aired a clip of Gingrich explaining his affairs in a way that implied he cheated on his wife because he loved his country so much. The Republican had had a decade to come up with a good response to the question, Wallace said, “and in all honesty there were a lot of people who thought the answer was kind of lame.”
In the tight-knit realm of Fox News where every little story, down to the precise verbage, is calculated and controlled by the News Corp. executives, Wallace's questioning of Gingrich is no mistake.  Palin will still get the soft balls lobbed at her but be sure that others will get tougher-than-usual questions from the propaganda channel.

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