I've been going after MSNBC host Joe Scarborough a lot lately because that station is letting him run around unchecked for countless hours as an "objective journalist." I'm fine with "objective journalists" injecting a little bit of opinion here and there, but there isn't a moment when Scarborough is on camera that he isn't spinning stories for Mitt Romney. It's ridiculous and I can't think of any other news anchor on cable or network television that is allowed to feign the role of an unbiased reporter while incessantly pushing a campaign's narrative.
If MSNBC wants a pro-Romney point of view then they should get a neutral moderator and bring in talking heads from all sides. But having a Romney propagandist moderator defeats all efforts at neutrality. Add in MSNBC's go-to conservative talking head Pat Buchanan -- whose sister is a top adviser to the former Mass. governor -- and it might as well be a Romney campaign strategy session.
And I'm not the only one calling Scarborough and MSNBC on the spin overkill. On Thursday's Morning Joe, Scarborough spoke with Mike Huckabee (above video) and attempted to bait him into agreeing that the only reason John McCain was on his way to winning the GOP presidential nomination was that "there were three conservatives splitting the conservative vote." In his words, this gave McCain, "the moderate," room to sneak through. Scarborough also promoted the spin that "conservatives are coalescing around Romney."
Huckabee's candid response was that Romney was never a conservative until he decided he wanted to be president. And the punch line about Romney's "conservatism" was priceless: "Here's a man who didn't hit political puberty in the conservative ranks until 60 years old."
So, once again, is Scarborough really fair?
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