Newt Gingrich Florida Primary Results 2012: The Candidate Who Refuses to Operate Within Reality

...From the beginning to the end of Gingrich's election night party, the campaign and its supporters seemed to be operating outside of realities, denying the importance of this large state's primary contest and insisting that victory was going to be theirs as soon as voters opened their eyes and truly saw Florida winner Mitt Romney as a "Massachusetts moderate." Gingrich, in fact, never even congratulated Romney on his win.

I'm a fan of Terkel's work, but this genre of punditry is unfortunate. At the moment (Real Clear Politics, 2/1/12), Gingrich is the top choice of Republican voters nationwide, according to surveys by Gallup, NBC/Wall Street Journal and Rassmussen. True, Romney has major advantages in terms of fundraising, organization and party support.  But if Gingrich chooses to believe that being the candidate more Republican voters want makes him the candidate most likely to be nominated, that hardly makes him delusional.

Even if he were well behind in the polls, but still wanted to give voters a chance to hear his message and decide whether or not he deserved their support--is that really a reason to ridicule him? More than 90 percent of the nation's voters have yet to have a chance to take part in the nominating process; it's a little early to mock anyone for not having the same foresight as the political pundits who know the results are already a foregone conclusion.

I'm delighted to announce the launch of Global Motherhood, a new section within HuffPost Impact dedicated to the health and well being of mothers and babies around the world, and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.

It goes without saying that it's a bad idea in general to have a corporation in the health industry sponsoring health coverage; the potential for conflict of interest is obvious. But given that these kinds of special sections are typically created to meet an advertiser's need--an impression strengthened by the fact that the second paragraph of Huffington's announcement focuses on Johnson & Johnson's efforts to "use technology to improve the lives of mothers and babies"--one has to ask, why this section for this advertiser?

You don't have to dig very far back into the Huffington Post archives to get a clue. On November 1, HuffPost Parents posted this AP report:

The piece described a boycott launched against the Johnson & Johnson by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which "has unsuccessfully been urging the world's largest healthcare company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals--dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde--from Johnson's Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products."

After Johnson & Johnson reached an agreement with the campaign to phase out the chemicals in the U.S. market, HuffPost Healthy Living (12/28/11) ran this post by Samuel Epstein, an expert on cancer at the University of Illinois School of Public Health:

Epstein's post pointed out the geographically limited nature of the company's agreement and the fact that its shampoo contains a third chemical, nitrosamine, that is also a potential cancer risk.

To be sure, as Jezebel (1/20/12) pointed out, there are numerous health concerns with Johnson & Johnson products--from birth control patches to insulin pumps, from the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to Tylenol and Motrin. But if your news outlet reveals that a product might be giving kids' cancer and then the makers of that product offer you a sponsorship deal, it's a good bet that they aren't doing so because they're grateful to you for keeping them on their toes.

The 60-second Romney ad quoted Obama as saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

It sounds like Obama is talking about his own chances in 2012. But it's actually a clip of Obama mocking his 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), for not wanting to talk about the economy in the final stretch of that election. McCain's response to the collapse of the financial sector in the fall of 2008 is widely cited as a contributing factor to his loss.

That's a pretty astounding bit of deception. It's good that Ward is doing this, because when I read about the Romney ad in this morning's New York Times, I saw a headline that read, "Romney Heats Up Campaign in New Hampshire With an Ad Attacking Obama."

The Times' Ashley Parker wrote that the Romney campaign was heading into "a more combative phase," and that the commercial represented "a step up in the intensity of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination."

The ad actually projects strength, according to the paper:

By focusing his message on the president, Mr. Romney is trying to show Republicans that he can take on Mr. Obama aggressively, an attribute that conservatives are seeking in a nominee.

To be fair, Parker does have a piece on the Times website today that discusses the ad's inaccuracy. We'll see if there's something in the paper tomorrow.

But for some reporters the inaccuracy of the ad doesn't amount to much. At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake's piece explains the context of the quote, but then seems determined to argue that it's not going to matter:

And how many of Romney’s supporters or other Republicans are going to be truly offended by the use of an out-of-context quote in an ad? We're wagering not many. In fact, Romney's willingness to take Obama on so directly--no matter the means of doing so--will likely accrue to his benefit among GOP primary voters who want a fighter next fall.

It's also worth noting that a lack of context in a campaign ad is nothing new. Just last week, in fact, GOP candidates including Romney mischaracterized Obama’s quote about how America had been "lazy" about attracting foreign investment, by suggesting that Obama was calling all Americans "lazy." (Texas Gov. Rick Perry even ran an ad based on this premise.) And the furor over that lasted all of two seconds.

Going from a political press that doesn't care about factchecking candidates to one that believes factchecking doesn't really matter is not exactly progress. Or is this just the rule that's applied to Republican presidential candidates?

UPDATE: It's worth noting that ABC's Jake Tapper slammed the ad on Twitter, and did a report on World News saying that the ad is "so out of context it's false."

It used to be more common to see people criticize this media/politics revolving door.  Journalists who jump over the supposed divide between the supposed watchdogs and the powerful institutions they're watching do little to dispel the sense that the Beltway is one big cocktail party. (Read "Party Like a Beltway Insider Journalist!"--FAIR Blog, 4/26/10--for some sense of the terrain.)

Which brings me to Howard Fineman's piece about Carney in Huffington Post (1/27/11). Which starts out with this:

Among his other attributes, Jay Carney is a cool dancer. I know that because I saw him and his wife, Claire Shipman, getting down on the tented dance floor of a fancy Georgetown wedding years ago. Jay Carney, who went to Yale and was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is--besides being smart, savvy, loyal and well-connected with the right sort--suave.