Qualified
When Kentucky Democratic Senate nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes refused to answer a local newspaper board's irrelevant gotcha question about whether or not she voted for President Obama, Meet the Press hairpiece Chuck Todd declared it has "disqualified" Grimes from becoming senator. Which, with all the sincerity and integrity one expects from a leading Beltway mouthpiece, he then tried to explain away as merely being his interpretation of what Kentucky voters might think. Leading Beltway pieces of work being noted for their skills at objectively and dispassionately channeling the mindsets of voters in rural states.
But when Todd had the opportunity to talk to Iowa Republican Senate nominee Joni Ernst, who has refused to answer any questions at all from her local newspaper boards, refusing even to meet with them, Todd not only didn't try to channel the mindsets of her local voters, and certainly didn't mention what such refusals said about her qualifications to be senator, he even bought into her extreme right-wing framing on the "Personhood Amendment" Ernst so dishonestly supports.
In a profile of Iowa Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Joni Ernst, NBC host Chuck Todd asserted over the weekend that a so-called "personhood" amendment that she supported would protect "unborn human beings."
On Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, Todd visited Iowa and noted that the winner of the race would likely decide control of the U.S. Senate.
"Ernst hopes to benefit from the fact that her first name isn't congressman," Todd explained. "But what could be holding her back—in what is clearly an anti-Washington year—is some of her very conservative positions, including something called personhood which in some cases would grant all unborn human beings with equal protections."
One could say that Chuck Todd's double standard on Ernst and Grimes and his buying into the extremist linguistic framing of the most virulent opponents of choice disqualifies him from hosting what once was a respected political television program. Sadly, in today's political TV environment, one guesses that Todd's standards and practices make him exactly qualified.
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