The MSM's Vulnerability To Matthews Syndrome. The Cure Is A Focus On Facts, Like 8.3% Unemployment

The MSM's Vulnerability To Matthews Syndrome. The Cure Is A Focus On Facts, Like 8.3% Unemployment

 by: Hugh Hewitt   

No, that isn't Mitt Romney training for conversation with Chris Matthews, but it could have been. And not just Matthews.

A second day of media-on-media obsession about media-on-media obsession would be destabilizing of more than a few talking heads in the way it already took Matthews away to the land of the lost, so the good news is that we will pour thousands of delegates into the Tampa mix today and, hopefully, some sunshine. MSM spirits will drop, of course, as the GOP convention gets around to talking about the smoking ruins of the president's tenure, but all will be well by 11 PM Eastern and the conclusion of Chris Christie's speech.

The New Jersey governor gave a warm-up of sorts at the California delegation's breakfast yesterday, and he is in fine, fighting form, and exactly the sort of opening speaker the convention will enjoy and which the national news media needs to remind them that this is an election they are covering, not a soap opera. So many of the pundits have dissolved into Dr. Phil doing politics that it is hard to keep in mind that the unemployment rate of 8/3% is the defining fact of 2012.

Here's a game for today's viewing: Count the number of times you hear "8.3%" spoken by a talking head. Were a Republican in the White House, that 8.3% number would be a permanent.embedded feature of your television screen. Not so with the Manhattan-Beltway media elite blocking for their favorite president ever. Isaac has provided yet another excuse for the MSM to try and talk about anything other than the absolute failure of the Obama agenda, passed by a super-majority of Democrats between 2009 and 2010: The stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank. Expect the arrival of the speakers to help return focus and a bit of balance to the national airwaves today. Ann Romney will charm the national audience, and then Chris Christie will bring the hammer to do the work of reminding a national audience: It doesn't have to be this way. The country can grow. The deficit can be tackled. There can be a second American century.

 

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/52eb2a3d-7f78-4723-bbf6-d48923a79a4c