At the beginning of the Rachel Maddow show on Monday May 21st, Rachel compares the “off-message” statements made by republican surrogates for Mitt Romney to the comments made by Cory Booker. She uses the lack of the national media’s outrage over the republican statements as evidence that democrat Cory Booker is receiving out of proportion criticism. But to draw such a comparison would be to make a false equivalency. Cory Booker attacked the foundation of the Obama campaign-economic fairness-by describing criticism of Romney’s time at Bain Capital as a “distraction” and “nauseating”. None of the republican surrogates that Rachel used as examples attacked the foundation of Romney’s campaign. Mitt Romney has not made the foundation of his campaign how loveable he is, or how revolutionary he is. So the republican surrogates who claimed Mitt Romney is boring and not their top choice did not undermine the very arguments for which Mitt Romney basis his candidacy. Corey Booker’s attack’s on the Obama ads do.
Monday Night's Segment:
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A valid Republican comparison to what Corey Booker said is when Newt Gingrich criticized Romney’s time at Bain. And that did not go over quietly; Gingrich was admonished by his party. Gingrich was conveniently not mentioned at the beginning of the show. Though to be fair, Gingrich was not a surrogate for Mitt Romney at the time. The notion that Democrats are subject to over-reactions to off-message statements is not true. The reactions to both Cory Booker and Newt Gingrich had to do with the nature of their statements, which attacked the foundation for their respective party’s candidate's cases for being president.
Also, why was there not a single relevant question asked regarding Corey Booker’s statements when Rachel “interviewed” him on her show?
The following questions should have been asked during the interview:
1) Does Cory Booker have figures that substantiate his claim that Bain Capital had in totality, a positive net job creation? Last I heard, numbers cited by Romney and his campaign surrogates have not been substantiated.
2) Does Cory Booker view private equity as a driver for job creation in the American economy?
3) Why was Romney’s time at Bain Capitol a trivial distraction 24 hours ago, but now a legitimate topic deserving investigation?
4) Why did Cory Booker frame criticism of Romney’s job record at Bain Capital as a low blow personal attack by equating it with the Jeremiah Wright smear campaign?
5) How were Cory Booker’s statements taken out of context as he claims? What exactly DID he mean and what from his statements were misrepresented?
On Rachel’s show the next day on Tuesday, she equates Cory Booker’s statements with the statements that Romney surrogate John Sununu made yesterday. She attempts to use John’s Sununu’s gaffe blow-over as evidence of the unfair treatment involved in the 3 day coverage of Cory Booker’s comments.
John Sununu said,
"I think the Bain record as a whole is fair game"
Rachel is right to characterize this as a gaffe. But it doesn't hold up for her to say that Cory Booker's gaffe is
"the exact same kind of mistake that John Sununu made today, and made it on the exact same subject."
John Sununu failed at the task of diverting attention away from Bain by not rebuking criticism or even the mere mention of Bain when he classified it as “fair game”. Of course, what is fair can be left open to interpretation and be provided the benefit of the doubt. But with Cory Booker, nothing he said is ambiguous enough to dismiss.
Tuesday Night's Segment
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Cory Booker's attack was also unwarranted, because Obama did not launch a blanketed attack on private equity, he specifically criticized Romney’s business/jobs record at Bain. How the ads on Bain made Corey Booker on “a personal level”, “very uncomfortable”, is telling. So how are these examples the exact same thing as Rachel claims? They are not. The exact same thing would have been if Cory Booker, like John Sununu, drew attention to something his candidate would not have liked spotlighted. For example in Obama’s case, if Corey Booker said “criticism of the extension of the Bush tax cuts is fair game”. Or if he said “Obama has received large donations from private equity firms in the past”, but of course he wouldn’t say that, given his own donor portfolio.
New Romney Ad
The video above is a new ad by Romney featuring the democrats Corey Booker, Harold Ford, and Steven Ratner as tired of the Bain attacks. When looking at all these gaffs, Cory Booker did receive a lot more heat than fellow democrats Harold Ford or Steven Ratner did. That is understandable though. Harold Ford is not a campaign surrogate, and does not currently hold elected office. Steven Ratner is not a campaign surrogate either, and did not hold elected office. And oh yea, who is Steven Ratner again?
The Romney campaign does themselves a disservice by using Steven Ratner’s comments in their ad. In the Romney ad, Steven Ratner said he doesn’t think “Bain has anything to be embarrassed about”, he did not say Romney doesn’t have anything to be embarrassed about. For Romney to use that statement in an ad implies Bain=Romney, which is will just be bad news for him. Bain doesn’t claim to be a job creator, Romney does. Bain accomplished their primary objective, wealth creation. Romney conflating wealth creation and job creation could be his undoing.
The democratic examples show that being a democrat alone doesn’t cause a gaffe to become a national media controversy. And being Republican alone doesn’t protect from party criticism or national headlines, as seen when Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry went after Romney’s “vulture capitalism” at Bain. The politician or surrogate attacking the strongest case that their party can make for getting into the white house is grounds for national coverage. This is why Corey Booker, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry made national headlines for their respective comments.
Rachel Maddow is one of the best voices in cable news. She has excellent commentary, and a sharp insight that cuts through so much of the crap that clouds politics. And, I still think Cory Booker can be an incredibly effective politician and advocate for important progressive causes. But I was dismayed by Rachel drawing false equivalences between Cory Booker’s statements and those of John Huntsman, John Sununu, Marc Rubio, Tom Davis, Chris Christie, and more. None of those republicans she named cut down Romney’s central argument for why he should be president over the other guy. Which is Romney’s business know-how that can allegedly turn this economy around. False equivalences happen far too often in politics and in the news media. I am not advocating for Rachel to destroy Cory Booker on television, or even think his comments will do any real damage to the Obama campaign. But, I do not agree with how easily she dismisses the criticism targeted at him as sensationalistic overreaction.