Top 5 Hypocritical Attacks From the Liberal Mainstream Media Against Mitt Romney

The media’s infatuation with President Barack Obama is nothing new. Since he first declared his candidacy for the White House in 2007, the mainstream media was in the tank for him on Day 1. In one of those rare moments where the show actually takes a shot at the left (for every ten they take at the right), Saturday Night Live did an excellent job parodying the media’s school girl crush over Obama:

Sadly, that hasn’t changed since 2008. The liberal media’s doing everything they can to help him win re-election in 2012. I expected that.

But the attacks the liberal media has been throwing against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney borderline on absurdity. With so little material to work with against him, whatever ammunition they’ve come up with reeks of hypocrisy and desperation. Here are the top five examples:

1. His Wealth:

I never thought I’d live to see a day where guy’s own personal success and achievement of the American dream would be used against him, but here we are. The liberal media constantly runs segments speculating if Romney’s wealth puts him “out of touch” with the average American (as if the progressive elites of the New York news media, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C. have any idea what’s “in touch” with mainstream America).

Romney’s net worth is about $250 million, though the way every late night comedy show and satirical news program constantly jokes about it, you’d think it would be closer to $250 billion. Well I hate to break it to the left but their favorite president ever happens to be in the 1% too, with a net worth of $10 million. “Yeah, but he’s not super wealthy like Romney,” right?

Here’s my question: where was all this concern of a wealthy candidate being “out of touch” with America in 2004? Remember when Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), with a net worth of about $240 million, was challenging President George W. Bush (net worth $26 million)? I sure don’t remember hearing all these non-stop cracks about Kerry’s yacht or his five mansions. Maybe it’s because of the fact that Kerry didn’t earn his wealth like Romney did, he just married into it. Or more likely because he happens to have a (D) next to his name, so it’s cool.

2. Comments out of Context:

Back when Romney was delivering a speech on why people should have the option to pick and choose their medical insurance and get rid of plans that don’t meet their needs, he stated, “I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.” Liberal media headline: “Mitt Romney: I Like to Fire People!”

Or how about when Romney was doing an interview on CNN and said, “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90-95% of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.” Liberal media headline: “Mitt Romney Doesn’t Care About Poor (Black) People!”

Yet when President Obama during a campaign speech says, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” and the right pounces – what’s the liberal media headline there? “An Obama Quote Taken Out of Context, Yet Again.” Oh the hypocrisy. I mean could they be trying any harder to help him?

3. Flip-flopping vs. Evolving:

The liberal media loves to claim that Romney “flip-flopped” on health care reform since he supported the individual mandate on a state-wide level but not on a federal level (though I’m not sure exactly how saying states should have the power to enact their own health care reforms is supposed to be a flip-flop).

But as Jesse Merkel and I wrote last month, President Obama campaigned in 2009 that his health care law’s tax was not a tax. Of course, he then said in 2010 that his administration would defend it as a tax. And how could we forget during the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare how Solicitor General Don Verrilli said it was a tax, and that it was not a tax.

President Obama also went ahead and executive ordered a halt to deportations for younger illegal immigrants that were brought here as children, despite the fact that he has claimed only one year prior that he could not do it legally, and would not try to. But now it’s an election year and he needs votes. All of a sudden, “it’s the right thing to do.”

And of course, President Obama had been for gay marriage in 1996, then against it when he started running for office in the 2000s, then for it again in 2012. But that’s not flip-flopping. He “evolved” his stance. And the liberal media gushed.

4. Job Creation:

With the economy and jobs being front and center in this election, Romney’s ironclad economic record looks way better than anything Obama ever did in his less than one term in the Senate (of which he spent most of that time campaigning). So the only manipulable stat the liberal media has to play with is that “Massachusetts was 48th out of 50 in job creation” during Romney’s last year as governor.

What they don’t bother to tell you is that Romney had lowered Massachusetts’ unemployment rate all the way down to 4.7% by the time he left office. How much more could he have lowered it when the historic record low that state has ever seen was 4%? More importantly, how come the liberal media doesn’t scrutinize this president’s job creation record as thoroughly as Romney’s? We’ve now had 42 straight months of federal unemployment north of 8% since this administration took over, the longest stretch in history. How many would rather take 4.7% any day?

Not to mention the fact that as Governor, Romney cut spending by $1.6 billion, balanced a budget without raising taxes, and turned a $3 billion deficit into a $700 million surplus which gave his state a credit rating upgrade – basically the exact opposite of everything Obama has produced as President.

5. Lack of Transparency:

The biggest distraction of them all is this constant cry for Romney to release ten years’ worth of tax returns, and that by not doing so means he’s “not being honest with the American public.” I can’t think of a bigger example of hypocrisy and desperation. First of all, what are we supposed to find out that we don’t already know? That he’s rich?

Second, if the liberal media’s going to criticize lack of transparency like it’s the Watergate scandal, how come they don’t draw any attention to the fact that Obama hasn’t released any of his personal records from his college transcripts to the list of legal clients he had when he was practicing law?

More importantly, how about the fact that Obama stopped the federal investigation into Fast & Furious dead in its tracks by exercising “executive privilege” to prevent Attorney General Eric Holder from having to hand over internal Justice Department documents on the federal firearms sting operation that allowed weapons to reach Mexican drug cartels. A federal agent died because of this botched operation, yet the liberal media has completely dropped this from the news wire and instead focuses on Romney’s tax returns as if that’s the greater threat to our national security.

The truth is the liberal media was going to tear apart the Republican nominee no matter who it was. They were hoping for a social conservative lightning rod like Rick Santorum, who’s chock-full of polarizing statements like, “Children whose fathers were locked in prison would be better off than children raised by a lesbian couple.” Or even a Newt Gingrich, who comes with a long history of baggage including extramarital affairs and other political scandals.

But no, they got “boring old” Mitt Romney, who has a picture perfect family and superb economic record. All that leaves to attack is his success, claiming he got it by being a “vampire capitalist,” “corporate raider,” and “outsourcer-in-chief,” despite every investigative effort from FactCheck.org to The Washington Post proving all these allegations to be patently false. Too bad Romney doesn’t send a thrill up their leg the way Obama does.