Liberal media: Blame conservatives no matter the outcome

During the months-long campaign, mainstream media outlets uniformly condemned the GOP's conservative message. The Media Research Center offers the following examples:

• ABC's Barbara Walters assailed the GOP for being "behind" on social issues.
• The Washington Post went on a mission to look for "right-wing nuts" who plan to buy more guns as a result of the Obama re-election.
• CNN's Anderson Cooper rhetorically questioned how the GOP will overcome party "extremes" to attract Latinos, while his cohort Piers Morgan trashed the tea party and the "extreme right" for being "intransigent" and pushing "archaic politics."
• On election night, NBC's Brian Williams opined that Rush Limbaugh was a liability for the GOP.

Rich Noyes, research director at the Media Research Center, points out that the mainstream media routinely asserts Democrats did not go liberal enough and Republicans were too far to the right.

Noyes

"Barack Obama did not move to the center to win this election; he galvanized his base over on the left," observes the MRC spokesman. "But somehow the advice is very different coming to Republicans -- that somehow they've got to jettison conservativism, start making compromises on all sorts of issue, [and] cave in on their principles."

MRC president Brent Bozell describes that philosophy as "a false conclusion that ignores the successful campaigns of conservatives Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush."

Noyes is hopeful Republicans are not listening to the media, as most typically do not have the GOP's best interest in mind. "Before the election, on November 1, CBS political director John Dickerson was writing a piece in Slate [arguing that] if Mitt Romney wins the election, it will be because he ignored conservatives," he notes.

"The media were ready with an analysis [that said] if Romney won, it's [because] he ran away from the conservative base; if he lost, it's because of the conservative base. They were ready to blame conservatives no matter what happened."

Noyes maintains the liberal media's rush to scare the GOP away from conservatism is a deliberate attempt to divide the party. And Bozell concludes: "[The liberal media] don't want Republicans to embrace conservative principles because conservative Republicans win."