Three quotes below from what is usually considered the left side of the media. It’s almost like a talking point order dished up by some media overlords.
A bit light for a diary, I admit, but a little long for a comment. And I'm sorry I can't stick around, duty calls and I wanted to point this out before I get distracted.
Transcriptions mine, as accurate as I could make them under the limited time.
To the extent that it could be a caution to the Obama camp to make damn certain not to stumble like Romney just did, some of this may be good a good thing. But I personally don’t think this was the intent, and it certainly isn’t the effect it has in the minds of a lot of listeners, there the effect is to smear the Obama campaign with the crimes actually committed by Mitt Romney:
Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post:
"That said, it’s clear that Romney and Obama are trying to make a political point here." -Chris Cilliza
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And this bit of “Invaluable perspective” and preposterous ramble from Andrea Mitchell, near the end of Rachel Maddow’s six minute bit here:
But there is also something in the air here, a… a minute does not pass where either campaign, both campaigns... does... is not putting out a press release, on something or another.
It’s not just the social media it’s, you know, old fashioned press releases, and it’s combatitive and it’s bang bang push shove, on one side the other side, both guilty of this, and this is a serious business and this is not the stuff of combative political press releases.
And I can’t recall Rachell, uh … I don’t think you can, another time when the united states was under fire, literally, where a presidential candidate from either party put out a press release.” The normal response would be to do nothing or say we have one president at a time there will be plenty of time latter on to respond.
Link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr
(not%20provided)&_utmv=5875948.|8=Earned%20By=cable%7Cmsnbc%20tv%7Crachel%20maddow%20show%7Crachel%20maddow%20show=1^12=Landing%20Content=Original=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=maddowblog.msnbc.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Earned%20to%20Original=1&_utmk=213655184
And here is Mark Haleperin, “Senior Political Analyst” for Time Magazine, and also Sr. Analyst at MSNBC according to his identification banner on Hardball:
[...] And there is one issue, at least one factual issue that I’m sure caught there eye which is the release of a statement by the embassy in Egypt, in Cairo, there is a question about how that statement got put out. It is not the best worded statement possible the people in the embassy might have had their own immediate reasons for putting it out but but in that part of the world there IS a management question, from the State Department that needs to be looked into is how do statements get released on twitter and elsewhere that could cause a political problem…
[…]
But I will say… as I said at the beginning, there is a legitimate things to look at here. But for Mitt Romney in the heat of it without the facts to start to raise issues like this, again I think it’s misguided and I think you’ll, you see in the campaign on both sides, even when things are done in haste, an unwillingness to back down. Again I’ll say on both sides, because there’s a kind of a macho and testosterone infused uh uh impulse to once you’ve staked out a position in this race to not back down one iota.
Link: Hardball for 09/12/2012, it’s the very first segment, Halperin starts after the 9:30 mark:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...