Schieffer Warns Viewers DeMint is ‘South Carolina’s Very Conservative Senator’

CBS’s Bob Schieffer decided his viewers needed a special warning about how far out of the mainstream an upcoming guest dwells, plugging at the top of Sunday’s Face the Nation how he’d have as guests Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich – and then: “for context on how it’s going, we’ll bring in South Carolina’s very conservative Senator, Jim DeMint.”

Schieffer normally introduces guests with just their title, such as “ranking member of x committee” or “chairman” of the party. Last summer, however, in also bringing in “context,” he applied ideological tags but avoided identifying his guests as “very” liberal or conservative. On his August 7 program, Schieffer announced how “for context we’ll check in with key players on the left and right – Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic Committee and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.”

A few weeks earlier, on June 5, he used a similar formulation: “We’ll hear from both sides today – from the left, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; and from the right, Republican Governor Haley Barbour.”

So DeMint is “very conservative,” but neither Dean nor Pelosi, amongst his most liberal guests, are “very liberal.”

Back to this Sunday, January 15, Schieffer refrained from any additional ideological labeling, later in his show introducing the South Carolina Senator: “Now for his take on how it’s going, joining us from Greenville, South Carolina, Senator Jim DeMint who is the author of the new book, Now Or Never, and is a leader in the Tea Party movement.”