WhatFinger


"Despite," or "Because of?"

Republican wins Montana special election after being charged with assaulting a reporter



You were supposed to care. Not just a little bit, either. You were really supposed to care. In fact, you were supposed to be so outraged after Republican Greg Gianforte body slammed a reporter that the Democrats would take a safe GOP district in a landslide. Apparently, you didn't care. Gianforte won his special election despite (or maybe because of) his ill-advised decision to flatten a member of the press.
Just 24 hours after being charged with assault for allegedly body-slamming a reporter in his Bozeman campaign office, Republican Greg Gianforte on Thursday defeated Democratic opponent Rob Quist to win the special election for the U.S. House seat in Montana. The race was thrust into the national spotlight in dramatic fashion on Wednesday night after Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs described being "body-slammed" by the GOP candidate, and a Fox News crew who witnessed the incident said the former technology and software executive "grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him." "I'm sick and tired of you guys," Gianforte said in audio of the event released by The Guardian. Jacobs told "Good Morning America" Thursday morning, "I went from being vertical one moment to being horizontal the next."
...And guess what? It wasn't even particularly close.

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"Normal" people just didn't particularly care about this story.

Democrats are running around complaining that, since a lot of ballots were cast during early voting, people were unfairly denied a chance to change their minds at the last minute. Unfortunately, that's exactly why they like - and constantly push for - early voting. They love the early vote if it goes their way. When something like this happens, suddenly they start screaming that they were railroaded. In this case, even if people had been allowed to change their votes, I doubt it would have mattered. As I wrote on Twitter two days ago, "normal" people just didn't particularly care about this story.

No one cares that a reporter got flattened, because no one respects the profession anymore

The reason? The press has absolutely no idea how despised it is. Was it right to attack this reporter? Obviously not. It was an asinine move and Dan did a good job of running down the reasons yesterday. But if the press thinks it has anything left in the national sympathy bank, it has another think coming. The media squandered its credibility during the Bush and Obama years. It waffled back and forth between sycophantic left-wing adoration and anti-Republican propaganda machine. Despite what its membership would have you believe, this didn't just wreck its image among conservatives. No one has any respect for it anymore - thus its sub-congressional approval rating. It spent somewhere between 8 and 24 years setting fire to any notion of "unbiased journalism" and engendered the people's scorn in the process. Now, it demands an almost religious level of reverence. Sorry, but you don't get it both ways. No one cares that a reporter got flattened, because no one respects the profession anymore.


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Robert Laurie’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain.com

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