How the Media's Shielding Obama From Crony Capitalism Charges

According to a number of independent fact-checkers — who are not usually kind to Republican candidates challenging Barack Obama — the President and his campaign have been running around the country and running a $100 million worth of ads lying about Mitt Romney’s business record. As a result, the Romney campaign decided to go on offense Monday and hit Obama with a charge he’s quite vulnerable on, crony capitalism.

And because the media knows Obama is vulnerable here, they are not only scared to death the charges might get the traction and attention they deserve, they are doing everything in their power to ensure those charges are snuffed in the crib.

The perfect example of what the media’s doing to protect Obama from these charges occurred this morning on MSNBC when the RNC’s Tim Miller met Thomas Roberts:

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Because it’s openly liberal, normally I don’t concern myself with MSNBC. But this specific segment perfectly captures what all of the media’s been shamelessly up to since Monday.

As you can see in the clip, Tim Miller is bringing up compelling and troubling examples of stimulus money that went to Obama’s campaign contributors and then went overseas. But what does Thomas Roberts choose to focus on? Romney’s wise decision to not tell the hostile media who his campaign bundlers are.  

Undaunted, Miller then brings up yet another troubling example of Obama’s crony capitalism, Steve Westley. But in the face of this, Roberts only goes right back to the Obama talking points about Romney disclosing his bundlers.

Then Miller gets even more specific about the hundreds of millions of our dollars Westley received… and Roberts goes right back to the Obama talking points.

Then Miller brings up Fisker, a company that took our money overseas… and Roberts only wants to know about the bundlers.  

To sum this madness up: The corrupt media thinks Romney revealing his bundlers is a more important issue than the billions of taxpayer dollars Obama’s fundraisers and cronies have already received.

Well, not really. What this really is about is the media protecting Obama by journOlisting legitimate criticism and a potentially damaging line of inquiry into a boomerang attack on Romney.

What MSNBC did in that clip is the exact same thing I witnessed NBC News and Dave Weigel do on Monday. It’s also what I heard on a conference call the RNC held about Steve Westley yesterday. Faced with very damaging information about Obama and Westly, when it was time to ask questions, except for a couple, all the so-called journalists wanted to know about was Mitt Romney’s tax returns.  

Bottom line: No matter how much evidence the Romney campaign hands the corrupt media, the corrupt media will refuse to report or look into Obama money men grabbing billions of taxpayer dollars through the failed stimulus and elsewhere.  

Why?  Because…

…potentially it’s too damaging to Obama — a game changer.

As far as Romney naming his bundlers, he’s not required to do so by law and would be nuts to do so anyway. In a thuggish environment where the President of the United States openly targets Romney supporters and Politico does oppo-research on them, Romney has to protect his bundlers from embarrassment and harassment. He has no choice.

You should be able to raise money in this country without Obama and Maggie Haberman working overtime to intimidate you.

And when bigtime donors to the President of the United States receive billions of tax dollars, the media should at least be slightly curious about such a thing.

But we don’t live in a just world. We live in a world with a dishonest President who does everything The Chicago Way and a corrupt media who long ago sold their souls in their quest to protect him.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC