On the December 12, 2012 edition of “Hardball,” MSNBC’s veteran political analyst Chris Matthews tackled a subject that few reporters have dared to confront:

How much of the mainstream press has allowed itself to be co-opted by the Right.

His guests that night were David Corn, of Mother Jones, and Joan Walsh, political analyst for Salon.

JOAN WALSH, POLITICAL ANALYST FOR SALON.COM: Right. The false equivalence.

Well, yes. I mean, there’s this constant false equivalence that we’re always trying to fight here, Chris. And I think you do a good job of it, but it’s really ingrained in the Beltway culture…

…To say that they’re [Republicans and Democrats] both as radical, they’re both–you know, even in the debt ceiling debate or in the fiscal cliff negotiations, that neither side will give and they’re both being unreasonable, and really not drilling down.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes. I agree.

….Who can forget back in August, not a million years ago, when the Romney pollster, Neil Newhouse, said the following. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Yes.  I thought this…just showed their whole attitude towards reality, towards being vetted. It was sort of an arrogance that, We can say whatever we want to say.

And I think in years past–this is what’s changed–campaigns would not be so brazen. If they’re caught in a lie, they try to wiggle around it. They maybe feel some shame. But here was Neil Newhouse telling reporters–he said this at a breakfast meeting at the convention to a group of reporters…

CORN: … that, We don’t care what you say about our facts. We’re going to use them anywhere. Good example was what they said about Barack Obama changing welfare rules…so that people don’t have to work. And that’s what he was referring to…

MATTHEWS: You’ve got people like Michele Bachmann, who would say just casually that we should begin an investigation of members of Congress for their anti-American attitudes. That was followed up by Adam–Allen West, who’s just been defeated, Allen West saying there are 79 to 81 communists…

But nobody–you know, you would think that “The Nightly News” would come on….[or] The New York Times [would]–say,”Wait a minute. This is so frickin’ far out. This kind of claim goes back at least to Joe McCarthy.”

* * * * *

A major house organ of the Rightist press–The Washington Times–clearly has no intention of backing away from “frickin’ far out” charges against Democrats generally–and President Obama in particular.

On July 22, 2012, one of its columnists, Jeffrey T. Kuhner, authored a piece entitled: “President’s Socialist Takeover Must Be Stopped.”

From that editorial:

President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors.  The Democratic majority in Congress in in peril as Americans reject his agenda.  yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached.

COMMENTARY:  Of course!  Sending U.S. Navy SEALS to take out Osama bin Laden was certainly worthy of impeachment.  And so was taking out a traitorous American Al Qaeda recruiter–Anwar al-Awlaki–with a Predator drone.

Then there’s “Obamacare”: Ensuring that people other than millionaires get medical care is undoubtedly the most impeachable offense of all.

He is….assaulting the very pillars of traditional capitalism.

COMMENTARY: And what are these pillars? 

• Greed and selfishness: “I’ve got mine and the hell with you, Jack.” 
• Corporations shipping millions of jobs overseas, paying their foreign workers “coolie wages” and pocketing the profits themselves. 
• CEOs cheat their country out of the taxes they owe and–through their lobbyists in Congress–force the poor and middle class to take up the slack in taxes. 
• Meanwhile, millions of their formerly employed Americans struggle to survive. 

So it’s understandable why those CEOs should object to Obama’s demanding they live up to their legal and moral obligations to their country.

Obamacare’s most pernicious aspect is its federal funding of abortion.  Pro-lifers are now compelled to have their tax dollars used to subsidize insurance plans that allow for the murder of unborn children. This is more than state-sanctioned infanticide. It violates the conscience rights of religious citizens.

COMMENTARY: During the Vietnam war, millions of war-hating protesters objected to paying taxes which would finance the bombing and ravishing of a country that hadn’t attacked us.  But the IRS made no exceptions for them.

As for violating “the conscience rights of religious citizens”: When George W. Bush ordered the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, millions of Americans felt their consciences to be violated.  But the war continued. 

And for all of Kuhner’s rantings on the “murder of unborn children”: Right-wingers are notorious for caring about fetuses–until they come out of the womb.  But if the mother of that newborn baby can’t afford healthcare, food or shelter for her new arrival, that’s her tough luck.

Apparently, only Rightist Presidents are allowed to offend the consciences of others with impunity.

The “liberal” press continues to allow itself to be co-opted by the Right.

Consider the following from the December 12, 2012 episode of “Hardball With Chris Matthews”:

Chris Matthews

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  “Let Me Start” with this tonight. Did you get the impression during the presidential campaign that the press was trying too hard to be even- handed?

Did you think the people delivering the news were pushing what we call balance at the expense of the obvious facts?

…. That the Democrats in this election were like Democrats going back to Jack Kennedy, but the Republicans were far to the right of anything we’ve seen from that party ever?

….So tonight we’re going to nail it. We go to the truth, and why was it the truth that dared not be reported in the mainstream media. Joining me now for a brutal autopsy is Joan Walsh of Salon and David Corn of Mother Jones, neither of whom can be charged with hiding what’s wrong with the right.

Here’s what Norm Ornstein, I guy I really respect, of AEI, the American Enterprise Institute, told the HuffingtonPost about the broadcast networks.

Quote, “I can’t recall a campaign where I’ve seen more lying going on, and it wasn’t symmetric, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the Republican campaign was just far more over the top. It’s the great unreported big story of American politics. If voters are going to be able to hold accountable political figures, they’ve got to know what’s going on.

“And if the story that you’re telling repeatedly is that they’re all to blame–they’re all equally to blame, then you’re really doing a disservice to voters and not doing what journalism is supposed to do.”

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM: Right.

MATTHEWS: And never caught that in the main news stories. Your thoughts about coverage. I hate to be a media critic, but we’re into it right now.

Today’s “lamestream media,” as Sarah Palin likes to refer to the press, are often accused of liberal bias.

But the Right has more often gotten a free ride due to media cowardice or indifference in reporting the truth about its lies and slanders.

Consider the case of Wisconsin U.S. Senator “Tail Gunner” Joseph R. McCarthy, the spiritual Godfather of today’s Republican party.

Joseph R. McCarthy

According to David Halberstam, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Best and the Brightest:  With the help of a compliant or even willing press,  McCarthy successfully exploited America’s postwar fears and uncertainties.

And the reason: After four lackluster years in office, McCarthy desperately needed an issue to ensure his re-election.  He saw rising fears of Communism as his ticket to not only that but vastly increased power.

“Around the country he flew,” wrote Halberstam, “reckless and audacious, stopping long enough to make a new charge…a good newsworthy press conference at the airport, hail-fellow well met with the reporters….

“The emptiness of the charge never [caught] up with him, the American press [was] exploited in its false sense of objectivity (if a high official said something, then it was news, if not fact, and the role of the reporter was to print it straight without commenting, without assailing the credibility of the incredulous, that was objectivity).”

McCarthy was always on the attack, always looking for new targets.  His charges didn’t stick–they couldn’t being utterly false.

But they left a lasting legacy of poison: “Where there was smoke, there must be fire.  He wouldn’t be saying those things if there wasn’t something to it” wrote Halberstam of how most Americans reacted during the “golden age” many now think of as the 1950s.

Not being content with small-fry targets, McCarthy accused high-ranking officials of the Truman administration of being Communists or at least Communist sympathizers.

Among these: Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense (and later of State) George C. Marshall, the man considered by military historians as the “architect of victory” for American forces in World War II.

And how did the Republican party react?  With elation.

“The real strength of McCarthy was not his own force or brilliance,” wrote Halberstam.  “It was the acquiescence of those who should have known better….The press was willfully exploited by him; very few stood and fought.”

Halberstam pointedly observed that the famous “See It Now” anti-McCarthy broadcast by legendary newscaster Edward R. Murrow happened in 1954–four years after McCarthy began his Red-baiting career.

The Democrats refused to confront and refute his false charges.  And the Republicans were thrilled at the huge voter turnouts his charges were arousing–to vote Republican.

“When he had gone too far, then [Republicans] would turn on him, which they did.”

“Going to far” in this case meant “that he had begun to attack the Republicans themselves”–such as no less a figure than President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself.

Meanwhile, “the more he assaulted the Democrats, the better for [Republicans].  The Democrats were on the defensive, and the Republicans were the beneficiaries.”  An observer compared McCarthy to being “a pig in a minefield for [Republicans].”

McCarthy was by no means the only Republican to rise to influence by playing on Americans’ fears of the Red Menace.  Another was California U.S. Senator Richard M. Nixon, who claimed to be a “moderate” between McCarthy and more “respectable” Republicans.

Eventually McCarthy destroyed himself: He accused the top leadership of the U.S. Army of being a cabal of Communist traitors.

The televised “Army-McCarthy hearings” finally revealed him as the bully and liar he had always been, and his credibility vanished overnight.  His Senate colleagues at last found the courage to censure him.

While he was allowed to keep his seat, he was shunned–by reporters who had rushed to cover his every press conference and by Republicans who had fought to have their picture taken with him.

Increasingly taking to alcohol, he fell into depression and had to be hospitalized at Bethesda Naval Hospital, ultimately dying of alcoholism in 1957.

President Eisenhower, commenting upon McCarthy’s fall from grace, reportedly said that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”

Many Democrats sighed with relief, believing that the worst was now over.  But it wasn’t.

Republicans had learned that Red-baiting was politically profitable.  Their fear- and slander-mongering had put Eisenhower in the White House for eight years and elected and re-elected scores of Republicans to the House and Senate.

It had also put the Democrats on the defensive–especially on matters of foreign policy.  The false right-wing charge that President Harry S. Truman had “lost China” would haunt the Democratic party for decades to come.

America had not “lost China.”

Generalissimo Chaing Kai-Shek lost out in a duel for power with Mao tse Tung.  Americans, powerless to change the outcome, could only watch as spectators.

As a result, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson felt they must commit U.S. forces to a backward and insignificant country called Vietnam–to forestall the Republican charge: “Who lost Vietnam?”

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

–John 8:32

The 2012 Presidential and Congressional races produced virtually round-the-clock press coverage.  Millions of words–in both print and electronic media–described countless angles of those campaigns.

And yet the mainstream media bungled the most important story of the election season.

That’s the verdict of political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, who have been tracking Congress since 1978.

Click here: Dan Froomkin: How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign

A noted congressional scholar, Mann writes and speaks widely on American politics and policymaking.  His areas of specialty include campaigns, elections, campaign finance reform and the effectiveness of Congress.

His most recent book, co-authored with Norman Ornstein, is It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.

Ornstein is a longtime observer of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call called “Congress Inside Out” and is an election eve analyst for CBS News.

According to Mann and Ornstein: GOP leaders have become “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

“I can’t recall a campaign where I’ve seen more lying going on,” said Ornstein.  While Democrats didn’t always adhere to the truth, “it seemed pretty clear to me that the Republican campaign was just far more over the top.”

Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney blatantly lied his way throughout the campaign.  Among his more noteworthy falsehoods:

• Romney claimed that his tax plan wouldn’t reduce tax rates for the wealthy. Not only would it have done so, but that’s why so many billionaires were supporting him.
• Romney initially opposed President Barack Obama’s bailout of General Motors. But when that resurrected the American auto industry, Romney claimed that he had always been for the bailout.
• Near the end of the campaign, Romney said that Jeep was shipping jobs to China. The truth was that it was not–-and Jeep gave widespread publicity to that lie.
• Romney repeatedly accused President Obama of “waving the white flag of surrender.”  In fact, Obama–not George W. Bush–was the President who got Osama bin Laden–and who has taken out far more Al Qaeda leaders through drone attacks.

Summing up Romney’s attitude toward the truth: ”We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” said Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.

Mitt Romney

But the Republican party offered its own share of blatant lies as well, such as:

• Federal spending doesn’t create jobs.
• Obama has burdened business with an unprecedented level of new regulation. (Actually, Bush issued more final rules in his first three years than Obama did over the same length of time.)
• Democrats deliberately seek to make people dependent on government benefits as a means of winning votes.
• Reducing taxes on the rich could create jobs and lower the deficit.
• Any new program or regulation amounts to a “government takeover” of some aspect of the economy. Examples: The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and the Consumer Financial Protection Board.

For voters to hold political figures accountable, said Ornstein, they must know the truth about those figures.

“If the story that you’re telling repeatedly is that they’re all to blame–they’re all equally to blame–then you’re really doing a disservice  to voters, and not doing what journalism is supposed to do.”

By accusing both parties of waging “politics as usual” and thus creating “gridlock,” the media avoids the charge of taking partisan sides.

Their editors and producers were “concerned about their professional standing and vulnerability to charges of partisan bias,” Mann said.

For Mann, the revelatory moment came with what he called “the debt-ceiling hostage-taking.” The Republicans would “do or say anything” to hurt Obama, even if it harmed the country and betrayed core Republican values.

But this is not the first or only time the Right has lied and smeared its way into power.

David Halberstam, the late Pulitzer-Prize-winning winning New York Times reporter, has chronicled past Republican lies and smears–and the refusal of the mainstream media to address and refute them.

In his 1973 bestseller, The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam described the step-by-step decision-making process that led to the catastrophic Vietnam war.

A major reason why Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon felt obligated to send thousands of U.S. servicemen to Vietnam lay in their fear of right-wing blackmail.

Foremost among those blackmailers was Wisconsin U.S. Senator “Tail Gunner” Joseph R. McCarthy.  On February 9, 1950, he flew into Wheeling, West Virginia, to begin his career as of slander and fear-mongering.

“I have here in my hand a list of 205 [persons] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department,” charged McCarthy.

And, then as now, a compliant media–routinely accused by its right-wing critics of being “pro-liberal”–allowed those lies and slanders to go uncorrected.