Earlier this week, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly got the ball rolling, lashing out at DailyKos, which he called “one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer,” and JetBlue, for its sponsorship role in the YearlyKos convention. (The airline, in response to O’Reilly’s complaints, has since pulled its support.)
This morning, Bill Kristol joined in on the fun.
Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol attacked the Democratic presidential candidates for their decision to attend the YearlyKos blogger convention. He held it up as evidence that the presidential candidates have “gone left.”
“Every Democratic presidential nominee is going to the DailyKos convention,” said Kristol. “That’s the left-wing blogger who was not respectable three or four years ago. The Howard Dean kind of sponsor. Now the whole party is going to pay court to him and to left wing blogs.”
TP highlighted some Kristol’s factual errors, but I was also struck by the general attitude from Kristol and O’Reilly that Democratic political figures should distance themselves from those the GOP establishment finds intemperate.
I suspect they haven’t thought this one through — high-profile Republicans have no qualms about maintaining close professional ties to some of the most vitriolic voices in our public discourse.
Consider some of the “mainstream” personalities the president chose to hang out with shortly before the 2006 elections.
* Sean Hannity (“[M]aking sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the [House] speaker” is “worth … dying for“)
* Neal Boortz (Islam is a “deadly virus“)
* Laura Ingraham (Sens. Biden and Boxer are “on the side of” Kim Jong-Il)
* Mike Gallagher (Gore and Hitler “brilliantly put together side by side” in campaign video) [He later called on the government to “round up” several left-leaning voices, including Keith Olbermann, label them “traitors,” and have them sent to “detention camps.”]
Rush Limbaugh, shortly after he publicly mocked a man for having Parkinson’s, was invited to the White House. Ann Coulter still draws support from Republican presidential candidates. In 2001, just 48 hours after 9/11, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said Americans were to blame for the attacks and said the nation “deserved” the terrorism, but that didn’t stop Republican presidential hopefuls from reaching out to them for support.
And now Democratic candidates are supposed to avoid YearlyKos because Fox News dug up a handful of hot-headed remarks from anonymous commenters? Please.
