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                 Welcome Back 
                "From the bottom of the
                income ladder, the prospect of the Republican revolution is
                chilling, especially because the gap between the rich and the
                poor has already widened significantly." 
                -- Los Angeles Times Washington reporters James
                Risen and Elizabeth Shogren, December 18 news story. 
                "Give you an opportunity to
                answer the criticism, says 'Dan Rather, if you believe what he
                has just told you [that conservatives are compassionate as
                well], you believe that rocks grow, that these', all of this in
                quotation marks, 'these are hard men who favor those in the
                country who have wealth and they are there to protect those
                people, they are not compassionate people.'" 
                -- Rather to Armey, December 1 Evening News. 
                "They (Republicans) say
                that none of this is going to increase the deficit even though
                the government will collect less in taxes, because it will
                stimulate the economy, because this also applies to things like
                stocks and bonds, it's not just houses. Most economists say that
                that's a lot of baloney. That it's not true." 
                -- NBC reporter Mike Jensen on the capital gains tax cut
                proposal, December 9 Today. 
                "The election returns start
                with a stark fact so disturbing that no one in the media wants
                to state it plainly: The U.S. House of Representatives is now to
                be led by a world-class demagogue, a talented reactionary in the
                vengeful tradition Gov. George Wallace and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
                Like Wallace before him, Newt Gingrich evokes the nation's
                boiling anxieties as a rancid populism of `us vs. them,' though
                he is too shrewd to make the racial resentments explicit. Like
                Joe McCarthy, Gingrich depicts his adversaries not simply as
                mistaken in their political views but as sick, traitorous people
                who are invidiously subverting the national character....We
                shall soon find out if there is a kinder, gentler Newt lurking
                beneath the rock. Somehow I doubt it. His hatred seems to be
                from the heart." 
                -- William Greider, producer of PBS Frontline
                shows and former Washington Post Assistant Managing
                Editor, in the December 29, 1994-January, 12, 1995 Rolling
                Stone. 
                  
                If Only He Could Be
                Speaker 
                "Mario Cuomo seems not so
                much a defeated warrior these days as he does a liberated
                philosopher; free to travel the world expressing political views
                built on practical experience." 
                -- CNN's Brian Jenkins in story on the man who lost his
                re-election bid, December 8 Inside Politics. 
                  
                What Isn't Reagan's
                Fault? 
                Reagan Buildup at CIA Spawned
                Current Woes Security Failures Followed Cold War Successes 
                -- Washington Post, December 29 
                  
                Great Analytical Minds
                Think Alike 
                "As a milepost, then, we
                offer 'How the Gingrich stole Christmas'... 
                For pianos and parsleys, peanuts
                and pajamas. 
                Why he'd even take kiddies away
                from their mammas. 
                The Gingrich said things that
                the Hoos [Democrats] thought were shocking. 
                He'd take back each present and
                empty each stocking." 
                -- Charles Osgood, December 11 Sunday Morning. 
                "Uncle Scrooge: `Tis the
                season to bash the poor. But is Newt Gingrich's America really
                that heartless?" 
                -- cover of December 19 Time. 
                "How the Gingrich Stole
                Christmas!" 
                -- cover of December 26, 1994/January 2, 1995 Newsweek. 
                  
                Gumbel's PBS Crusade 
                "The money we're talking
                about is negligible. Can we really say that a country that
                spends $250 billion on its military can't afford one-tenth of
                one percent of that for its culture?....What about the
                overriding issue here that if we accept that art and culture are
                expressions of a civilized society, the lasting expressions of
                that, why shouldn't government be involved? Why shouldn't it
                lend a hand?" 
                Right now the American taxpayer
                carries a lighter burden than most citizens in other
                industrialized nations who support their art to a greater extent
                than we do!" 
                -- "Questions" from Bryant Gumbel to David
                Keating of the National Taxpayers Union, December 8 Today. 
                  
                Ultimate Media Insult:
                Gingrich is the New Reagan 
                "In outlook, in
                prescription, and also in his penchant for shaving the truth by
                the clever manipulation of easily grasped images, Newt Gingrich
                is Reagan's true heir.....Like Rush, it doesn't seem to matter
                that a lot of what Newt says is mostly not true. Audiences love
                it -- as they loved Reagan -- even when they know that what
                they're hearing is often baseless. For many who applaud Gingrich
                and Limbaugh, the catchy rantings are acceptable caricatures of
                a caricature they already despise -- government. Falsity is
                forgiven because the target of Gingrich's critiques (like
                Limbaugh's and Reagan's) is deemed worthy of vituperative
                attack....Gingrich clearly sees his job as acquiring and holding
                power for as long as possible by any means necessary. Ronald
                Reagan is surely smiling." 
                -- Time's Michael Kramer, December 19. 
                  
                So Who Is Really Leading
                the Charge Against Cutting Spending? 
                "For the nation's hungry
                getting help is getting to be more difficult. Across America,
                many feeding programs are turning people away. One reason: a
                dramatic drop in federal food subsidies....Advocates worry that
                if Republicans make good on their threatened budget cuts
                whatever safety net exists for America's needy, won't exist
                anymore." 
                -- CBS reporter Randall Pinkston, December 19 Evening
                News. 
                "Churches and charities who
                deal with hunger lashed out against the Republican Contract with
                America, comparing it to something Ebeneezer Scrooge would have
                dreamed up....The problem of hunger in Atlanta is getting worse,
                not better, especially at the downtown Union Mission...Mission
                officials are worried that cutbacks in federal food programs
                will bring more hungry people to their door but without the
                money to feed them 
                -- Reporter Kenley Jones, December 21 Today. 
                  
                Reagan Revulsion 
                "Even those of us who felt
                we were doing a good job at explaining how his economic policies
                were not going to work used the pictures the White House was
                having us present. Ronald Reagan in a perfect tableau, a Norman
                Rockwell view of America, with all white faces in middle
                America, high school marching bands and balloons. It was a very
                patriotic view of an untroubled country." 
                -- NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell on A&E's Investigative
                Reports: Naked Washington, December 23. 
                Lesley Stahl: "Here's a guy
                who fooled most of the people most of the time....He was a
                person who didn't understand the issues at all, and we know that
                for a fact. And yet he presented himself as a strong, active
                person who's pushed around his wife. He presented himself as
                what he wasn't, and we bought it completely. Lock, stock, and
                barrel....But it's scary, because he led us off in the wrong
                direction." 
                Roger Ailes: "Well, that
                depends on your politics." 
                Stahl: "No. I mean, we're
                suffering, I don't think it is politics, we're suffering from
                the mistakes he led us off to continue doing despite the
                evidence that it wasn't working. I'm talking about the economic
                side." 
                -- Exchange on Straight Forward on the America's
                Talking channel, October 25. 
                "The country's politics
                took a radical right turn in '94. We can read all about it next
                year after Gingrich seals the $4.5 million deal to publish his
                book. We'll take in a chapter right after we drop the kids off
                at the orphanage. But then maybe we'd be better off if we forgot
                most of what happened in '94. Ronald Reagan has." 
                -- Boston Herald reporter J.M. Lawrence in story
                reviewing the past year, December 25. 
                  
                -- L.
                Brent Bozell III; Publisher 
                -- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors 
                -- James Forbes, Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski,
                Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts 
                -- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager; 
                -- Melissa Gordon, Intern 
    
  
				
				
				  
				
				
   
       			
  
 
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