McCarthyism is the indefensible act of taking a political opponent’s reasonable position and intentionally twisting it with lies in order to turn it into something toxic. McCarthy is accused of equating liberalism with Communism in order to shut the left up. Today, the corrupt media is practicing the exact same McCarthyism against Romney in order to protect Obama.

I give you the opening of Jeff Zeleny (photo above) and Jim Rutenberg’s Sunday New York Times’ lead: [emphasis added throughout]

Mitt Romney is heading into his nominating convention with his advisers convinced he needs a more combative footing against President Obama in order to appeal to white, working-class voters and to persuade them that he is the best answer to their economic frustrations. …

Many of those voters are economically disaffected, and the Romney campaign has been trying to reach them with appeals built around an assertion that Mr. Obama is making it easier for welfare recipients to avoid work. The Romney campaign is airing an advertisement falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced” plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare beneficiaries, a message Mr. Romney’s aides said resonates with working-class voters who see government as doing nothing for them.

The moves reflect a campaign infused with a sharper edge and overtones of class and race.

There’s a lot to go over here, but let’s start with why Zeleny, Rutenberg and the Times are desperate to the point of openly using McCarthyism to bully and intimidate Romney with the wildly false charge that criticizing Obama’s un-Constitutional and unilateral decision to gut welfare reform is equal to racism.

Basically, it comes down to this: What Obama did to one of the most popular reforms of the last 25 years is indefensible, and soon-to-be GOP nominee Mitt Romney has done a superb job of calling Obama out on it. Moreover, as I write this, Romney is gaining on Obama in poll after poll and this is nothing more than Zeleny and Rutenberg’s despicable and desperate way of trying to shut down one of Romney’s most effective attacks.

What’s especially galling is that the only cynical, lying, race-baiting divider in this campaign is the man Zeleny and Rutenberg are embarrassing themselves to protect. It wasn’t Romney who lit a racial fire under Trayvon Martin’s corpse with LooksLikeMySon; it wasn’t Romney who declared the War on Women, panders to Hispanics by refusing to enforce our laws,  or ginned up the class warfare machine. So what McCarthyites Zeleny and Rutemberg are doing here is what you might call projection. Oh, and…

…chains, y’all?

Maybe McCarthyites Zeleny and Rutenberg should sit down and do some soul-searching of their own. Where I come from, when you hear the term “welfare” and automatically associate it with “black people,” you’re the one baring the naked backside of your bigotry.

It’s also pretty obvious that McCarthyites Zeleny and Rutenberg are doing exactly what they falsely accuse Romney of doing. In order to win reelection, it’s no secret that Obama must enjoy the record black turnout he did in 2008. This is what put him over the top in a number of swing states. Therefore, the Times’ Dynamic Race-Baiting Duo must know that smearing Romney as a racist is one way to help Obama do exactly that.

The last thing the McCarthites Zeleny and Rutenberg do here is practice the most corrupt kind of journalism by matter-of-factly inserting partisan opinion as fact:

The Romney campaign is airing an advertisement falsely charging that Mr. Obama has “quietly announced” plans to eliminate work and job training requirements for welfare beneficiaries[.]

Last week and at length, I explained how and why the media is spinning this issue in order to call the truth a lie, but it really comes down to this: In 1996 a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation was signed into law reforming a welfare system that for decades had been enslaving people to the government by giving them something for nothing. The backbone of this legislation was a work requirement for able-bodied welfare recipients, and over the years, the success of this reform has been proven time and again.

Barack Obama and many of those he put in charge of Health and Human Services are on record opposing this legislation, and earlier this year, Obama illegally altered this piece of legislation by allowing the state’s to waive the whole point of the bill — the work requirement.

Ever since Romney started hitting Obama on this, the lying, race-baiting, Obama-loving media can’t stop crybabying about how equating what Obama did with “quietly announcing a plan to eliminate the work requirement” is fair or accurate.

Let me explain for the corrupt-impaired:

If a bank security guard is on record opposing the bank hording money and then late one night leaves the safe and front door wide open with a sign that reads “free money,” is he “gutting” the bank?

According to race-baiting McCarthites like Zeleny and Rutenberg; no. After all, all the man charged with protecting the bank did was to open the door and say help yourself; he didn’t remove the money himself.

But this is exactly what Obama’s done: The man charged with enforcing our laws and required to respect the separation of powers abused his trust and authority to open the door to gutting welfare reform with a sign that says “help yourself.”

Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg can abuse the truth all they want and attempt to dress their cover up with all the McCarthyism and race-baiting they can hurl, but facts are still facts.

 

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC