Media Super-PAC

GOP presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, called the main stream media a "Democratic Super-PAC." He is correct in that characterization, and nothing proves it more than the recent media attacks on his lack of wealth and his decade-old (and relatively trivial) credit card problems and other financial struggles. One of Hillary Clinton's best media allies, The New York Times, featured a front page story entitled: "Marco Rubio Confronts New Scrutiny Over Use of Party Credit Card"  in which he used an RNC credit card for personal use. He claims it was a mistake, reimbursed the expenditures, and moved on. The NYT implied that Rubio's "lack of bookkeeping skills" and other financial challenges (he is NOT a wealthy man, something unusual for a modern politician) somehow disqualify him as a candidate.

Stephen Kruiser comments on the media's new focus on Rubio's lack of wealth and the minor problems it has caused for him:

In 2011 and 2012, the media rarely went more than a day without talking about Mitt Romney’s houses, and whether a man who owned more than one could relate to the average American. This, by the way, was a familiar complaint of theirs about McCain in 2008 as well.

Now, Marco Rubio is being scrutinized for financially struggling at times.

The press bias towards Democrats is never more obvious than in the way it treats the wealth of candidates from the two major parties during an election cycle. John McCain’s marriage to a wealthy woman was fair game in 2008 but John Kerry’s habit of finding wealthy women to marry wasn’t really discussed in 2004.

Hillary Clinton practically bathes in cash and hasn’t had a conversation with a member of the American middle class in thirty years, but she gets to pretend to be an “aw shucks” champion of the working folk.

We hear a lot about Donald Trump’s inherited wealth, but whenever one of the endless Kennedy trust fund spawn runs for office all we hear about is whatever charity work he or she did to distract the public from the raging cocaine habit.

The Democrats are wealthy. Really wealthy. If the media can’t be honest about this, every Republican they single out regarding money should make a loud point about their neglect of the other party’s candidates.

In a recent post entitled Mute and Sightless, I outlined a series of serious issues concerning Hillary Clinton's association with the Clinton Foundation, State Department influence peddling, and other unethical and possibly criminal wrong-doing. The NYT is generally "mute and sightless" on those issues, but has decided that a front page story on Rubio's credit card is somehow more important than an investigative report on pay-for-play corporate donations, exorbitant speaking fees tied to State Department favors, and the like. After all, Rubio's credit card expenditures in the low thousands of dollars range are infinitely more compelling that illicit donation to the Clinton Foundation of tens of millions of dollars and speaking fees connected to favors from Hillary Clinton of well over $40 million. Aren't they?

Here's the thing. The Dems correctly believe that they can operative with relative impunity because their media Super-PAC will look the other way. They're right.

That may be very good for the Dems, but it's very bad for the country when corruption and influence peddling are ignored by a mute and sightless media.

UPDATE:
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Kim Strassel expands on the Rubio "scandal" that the media is so, so curious about:

The press for its part is more interested in presenting Mr. Rubio’s financial history as some evidence of scandal. The New York Times has devoted near novel-length inches to the non-news (this was all covered in Mr. Rubio’s Senate race in 2010) that as a Florida legislator he used a Republican Party charge card for personal purchases.

And? The card was used primarily for political expenses—which were covered by the party. Mr. Rubio occasionally used it for a personal expense, which he then paid for each month by writing a check to the card company. No one is suggesting that the party paid a dime toward Mr. Rubio’s expenses, or that the candidate was a dime short in promptly paying back his personal charges. If this is a scandal, we’ve found a cure for insomnia.

At the same time, CNN is has gone back 50 years to Ben Carson's teenage years to uncover "dishonesty" is his characterization of his young life. Odd that the same CNN refused to go back to Barack Obama's teenage years in 2008 to determine whether his books accurately depicted his youth. The LA Times, during that same time period, refused outright to release a video of Obama's speech at a pro-Palestinian event, covering for Obama, the presidential candidate. Both the LAT and NYT, among dozens of other outlets, refused to investigate Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers in any depth and tried as hard a possible to minimize the infamous Reverend Wright relationship.

Meanwhile, not a single media outlet, other than FoxNews, seems curious enough to interview the relatives of those killed at Benghazi—people who independently say that Hillary Clinton lied to their faces about the cause of the attack.

Meanwhile, not a single media outlet, other than FoxNews, seems curious enough to investigate Bernie Sander's early years. Sanders, an unreconstructed socialist, has some pretty extreme ideas about taxation, capitalism, and other fundamental economic issues. Yet, the media Super-Pac seems completely incurious.

Curiosity when GOP candidates are involved, and complete lack thereof when Dem candidates are to be considered. In the media, it's a sure sign of blatant bias.