During the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, liberal journalists showed just how desperate they were to defeat the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush.
Journalistic standards? Gone. Objectivity? Gone. Not even a pretense for fair and balanced reporting anywhere on the airwaves or in print.
There was the last-minute DUI scandal, forged memos used by Dan Rather to question Bush's National Guard service, the supposed stolen munitions in Iraq that were supposed to be the fault of the Bush administration's incompetence.
No longer denying their liberal bias, mainstream media anchors and reporters openly expressed their contempt for Bush and laid bare their adoration for the liberal Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry.
Out of power and out of sorts, with the 2006 congressional election cycle upon us, the media is back to smear campaigns against Republicans.
The highest profile race for Congress this year is the battle that is taking place to fill the vacant 50th congressional seat in California. The seat has traditionally been a bedrock Republican seat, but now that stands in jeopardy.
Why is this race so important?
The contest features an extremely liberal anti-war Democrat, named Francine Busby. Busby is an abortion militant who has campaigned with Howard Dean and who favors amnesty for illegal immigrants. She's taken to the streets to protest the war against terrorism and been a frequent guest on the liberal scandal-plagued network, Air America.
Her most generous backers are with MoveOn.org who have already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Busby's campaign and now they are busing in volunteers from around the nation to stump for her campaign.
On the other side is a conservative Republican hero named Howard Kaloogian, who has been a conservative leader for the key causes of our time.
I know Howard very well. I've worked with him in the trenches to lead the historic recall of the corrupt Democrat Gov. Gray Davis.
Howard and I also teamed up to launch the nation's largest grass-roots pro-troop organization, Move America Forward. Under Howard's leadership, MAF has been the leading voice standing up to Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy and the "Blame America First" crowd.
Howard Kaloogian and I have worked endlessly to fight the corruption and anti-Americanism at the United Nations and we were proud to support the nomination of the pro-American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
A pretty impressive resume
Formerly the Assistant Republican Leader in the California State Assembly, Howard Kaloogian has been endorsed by flat tax advocate Steve Forbes and the leading anti-tax organizations, the National Tax Limitation Committee PAC and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association PAC.
A friend of Congressman Tom Tancredo, Kaloogian has also been endorsed by the co-founder of the national Minuteman organization, USA Border Alert and the author of Proposition 187 (which denied taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens until a liberal judge ruled it 'unconstitutional.')
Howard's support in the conservative community runs deep – Phyllis Schlafly, Dr. James Dobson, Alan Keyes – they've all endorsed Kaloogian.
You can understand why so many conservatives support Howard and why the liberal news media is determined to destroy him.
This week, Newsweek (followed up by the usual suspects at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, NBC and hundreds of other media outlets) launched a blitz attack on Howard Kaloogian and a trip he took to Iraq in July 2005 to show support for our troops.
On the "Voices of Soldiers" tour, Kaloogian, myself and a delegation of other radio talk-show hosts went to Iraq to allow the heroic men and women of our armed forces the opportunity to speak to the nation about how things were going in Iraq, and the progress they were making.
Kaloogian's congressional campaign website included pictures from that trip, a testament to how very proud Howard is of the work we did and the outstanding job being done by our troops in Iraq.
Well, this week the news media, tipped off by liberal bloggers, suddenly took interest in the trip and one photograph on Kaloogian's website labeled Baghdad, Iraq. The photograph, in reality, was of Istanbul, Turkey (where some of our delegation had a layover on our way back to the United States).
It was an innocent mistake, and once it was realized, Howard had the problem immediately fixed.
Well the liberal media turned it into an international firestorm calling Howard a "liar" who tried to pass off "fake" photographs.
"California Republican Nailed by Bloggers" screamed the headline at Newsweek. I wonder, has Newsweek ever written a story about a Democrat where they used the word "nailed" in a headline. And over what? Identifying a picture on a website with the wrong city?
Wait one minute
The irony became especially rich when conservative bloggers discovered that Newsweek was engaging in complete hypocrisy. The conservative pajama-clad Internet activists over at FreeRepublic.com had their own fun reporting the story of "Newsweek Nailed by Conservative Republicans" based on the fact that Newsweek made their own mistake in reporting Kaloogian as a sitting congressman. He isn't – at least not yet.
In their condemnation of Kaloogian's website error, they made their own mistake. Hypocrisy? I think so!
Two things come to mind.
One, is this the best the liberal media can do to smear a conservative hero in his race for Congress?
Two, isn't it time for all of us to step up to the plate and ensure that the media's efforts backfire? I hope that all of my readers will take this opportunity to make a contribution to Howard Kaloogian's campaign. I've made a generous contribution and hope you will, too.
What's particularly disgusting about all of this is that a fine, honorable and honest man is being blasted by the mainstream media. And why? Because he's a conservative and now he's surging in the polls.
It's time for conservatives to fight back. Do it now before the anti-war, anti-American crowd sucks all the oxygen out of this race.
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