Over the past week, two good friends of mine have been raked over the coals by the left because they are conservatives. Both have recently taken on new challenges and the left can’t stand to see these two outspoken conservatives succeed. The left-wing noise machine will say anything to destroy the reputations of good people.
Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative web site Red State, had the misfortune of being hired as a contributor to CNN. Erick is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity’s show.
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, dared to start a group Liberty Central dedicated to promoting liberty and freedom. This new group is associated with the Tea Party movement by providing “an online community for visitors to preserve freedom and reaffirm the core founding principles.”
How dare they.
Both Erickson and Thomas are people dedicated to forwarding the conservative cause and that is why they are under attack, Erick for some things he has written in the past and Ginni because she is the wife of a Supreme Court Justice. They have been slandered by the left-wing hate machine in the past week because they are both moving up in the conservative movement.
I know them both well, because I worked with Ginni at the Heritage Foundation when she was Director of Executive Branch Relations and I am a contributor to Red State. I have spent significant time with both and can vouch for their strong moral foundation and dedication to the cause.
I have known Erick for a few years and am proud to consider him a good friend. He not the bombastic right-wing extremist that many on the left would like you to think. Eric is a thoughtful, soft-spoken intelligent conservative activist. He is way more mild-mannered than his edgy public persona.
Clearly the leftist smear machine wants to scare CNN into kicking Erickson to the curb. A fury of innuendo motivated by rage has been unleashed upon Erickson, because leftists want CNN to not give Erickson the opportunity to express his views. They fear the quick wit of this well known conservative blogger. Media Matters for America wrote on March 16, 2010 that:
CNN announced that RedState.com editor Erick Erickson will join the channel as a political commentator, stating that he is “a perfect fit” for the new show John King, USA. Erickson’s long history of incendiary, sexist, and racially charged statements includes asking when voters would “march down” and “beat” lawmakers “to a bloody pulp” and referring to former Supreme Court Justice David Souter as a “goat f**king child molester.
Read that paragraph and you would wonder how the man described isn’t imprisoned for being a violent, misogynistic racist. The shortcoming on the part of the George Soros-funded Media Matters is that they lie and stretch the facts to fit their own narrative.
Media Matters accuses Erickson of using racially charged commentary in this piece. “Racially charged” is the functional equivalent of them flat out calling Erick a racist. Erickson is innocent of those over the top and borderline slanderous charges.
Where is Media Matters’s smoking gun? On August 13, 2009, Erickson wrote a blog post titled Obama Brownshirts Try to Silence Glenn Beck. Evidently, in these left-wingers’ eyes the following statement is unacceptable “racially charged commentary” —
A while back, Glenn Beck called Barack Obama a “racist.” Given all the terrorists, thugs, and racists Barack Obama has chosen as close personal friends (see e.g. Rev. Wright), it’s not a stretch to say it. In fact, Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, the… self-declared communist, Van Jones, has direct ties to the organization that’s trying to shut down Glenn Beck. Jones’s group has hired a big Hollywood PR firm and they are pressuring Glenn’s advertisers to stop advertising. If not, they’ll lead a boycott.
Media Matter’s logic is tortured. Beck criticized an African-American President for his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. According to USA Today, Reverend Wright made national news for calling the United States “the No. 1 killer in the world.” He accused the government of having “started the AIDS virus.” After 9/11, he said, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” And he said, “God d— America,” for “killing innocent people.” Media Matters also critiqued Beck for his attacks on Van Jones. So, the Media Matters charges racial problems because Erickson criticized an African-American for associating with extremists. Media Matters should be ashamed of itself — but, of course, with a convicted insider trader like Soros for a role model, it never will be.
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Next up, Talking Points Memo’s “report” titled Meet CNN’s Newest Contributor: The Guy Who Called Souter A Goat-F*cker. That was the headline. Do we need to see anymore? Erickson has appologized for the Souter comment repeatedly, yet both TPM and Media Matters chose not to qualify the statement with Erickson’s repeated appologies for that Tweet gone wrong. These lefties act and imply as if he is standing by that comment. Now this is a so-called news outlet dedicated to making believe that they are a news distributor. Talking Points Memo claims to be “one of the most innovative political news organizations in the country.” They allege in a March 17, 2010 post that Erickson is “prone to making extreme and sometimes misogynistic public comments.” According to TPM, his hatred of women is proven by the following “last month, he told “ugly” “feminazis” to “return to their kitchens.”
On its face, it sounds as if they are saying that this is a “misogynistic public comment.” Erickson’s “ugly” example is a Tweet where he defended Tim Tebow’s mom for promoting a pro-life message during an ad during the Super Bowl. Erickson wrote on Twitter:
Thus ends the credibility of all pro-abortion groups. Thanks Mrs. Tebow for that. Ugly feminists return to their kitchens.
I would argue that Erickson was trying to make a point. The hate that was directed at Tim Tebow and his mom was “ugly.” He was making the point that the ugly views and hate directed at the Tebow family were out of bounds.
Ginni Thomas received even more scorn for daring to start a conservative group. Clearly the left used Ginni to stage a proxy fight against her husband. Two writers for the Daily Kos who write under a pseudonym used a story from the Los Angeles Times to attack Mrs. Thomas. First of all, the Times put this nugget in its report:
Virginia Thomas’s biography on the site says she “is a fan of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham and other talk radio hosts,” and that she is “intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully.
What is wrong with that? Ginni and millions of other Americans like Rush. I like Rush and think the world of Mark Levin. I am more than intrigued by Beck and think he is one of the great independent thinkers on cable news today. The L.A. Times‘s view — that Ginni’s respect for Rush et al. is a negative and proves that she is doing something wrong — is evidence that the Times writer who penned this story, Kathleen Hennessey, was out to do some harm to Ginni and to Liberty Central.
Bare Left writes for the Daily Kos that the Tea Parties are scary because:
… the alarming difference today is that the Republican Party – the party most responsible for ‘gaming the tax system’ and crafting laws and tax codes that help themselves and their wealthy pals – is the party trying to win over the hearts and minds of this modern anti-tax, anti-government movement.
Evil Republicans are trying to win over anti-government voters. Of course this leads one to the conclusion that those damn Tea Partiers, and anybody who would try to organize them, must be with them and their “wealthy pals.” More from Bare Left:
Have we gone completely insane as a society? Who are we trying to protect? And from what? Who is the government actually working for? Now we have news that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is starting her own organization, Liberty Central, Inc. The organization describes itself as catering to the “citizen activists” of the “tea party” movement and dedicated to “furthering the core principles of the founding fathers.
Erick Erickson and Ginni Thomas are two hard-working and honorable conservatives who do not deserve this treatment. I am confident that they will shrug off these attacks as the rants of the far-left crazies and not serious charges. Cheers to Erickson for his new CNN gig and cheers to Ginni for Liberty Central.
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