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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-01-18

Reporter Decides To Inject Himself Into "News," Initiates Debate With Romney 

This is hilarious.

Several points:

First, I have said repeatedly that the candidate who shows a willingness to take on the press in a direct way will have earned a great deal of credibility within the base, and may, in one fell swoop, win my vote. I think it matters that Romney wasn't willing to just let this guy insert himself into the discussion unchallenged, and--since he did it in South Carolina--I'm curious to know both how widespread the coverage of this incident was and what effect it will have on Saturday's primary.

Second, can you IN A MILLION YEARS imagine a "professional journalist" behaving this way with either Bill or Hillary, or Obama, or Edwards? NO WAY! Mrs Clinton has yet, to my knowledge, been the least bit challenged by a "professional journalist" about her comments regarding the President asking OPEC to up its output, and yet that's a far bigger whopper than what Mitt Romney said. "Mrs Clinton, how do you justify your comments about the President being 'pathetic' for asking OPEC to up output, when your own husband made the exact same request through his Energy Secretary during his term, and the opened up the strategic oil reserves to help prop up the energy sector?" It would never happen.

Third, if there were ever a perfect caricature of the sort of self-congratulatory, snide, arrogant journalist, this guy is it! He looks just like the guy who we all knew in college--you know the one: he never went to actual class, but somehow stayed on campus enough to be able to pontificate from the commons of the student center for hours on end, day after day. At C.U., my buddy and I used to refer to him as the "fountain preacher", or something like that; a haircut, a shower, and few dozen Twinkies, and he could easily be Glen Johnson.

Fourth, kudos to Mitt Romney for handling this without losing his cool or getting derailed from his real answer. If this is as riled as Romney gets, that makes a very sharp--and flattering--contrast to John McCain.

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