Corrected from earlier*: On the May 16 Kudlow Report program on Fox Business Network, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell hit the nail on the head, predicting that the media would quickly shift into the "Move On!" mode as they would start attacking Republicans as scandal-obsessed. The same evening on Fox News Channel's Hannity, Bozell noted how former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather was already using the Clinton scandal playbook and grousing that Republicans need to "move on."
Sure enough, a week later when the Media Research Center returned to Hannity for another "Media Mash" segment [watch the video embed below the page break], he had plenty of fresh material from the networks to illustrate how the liberal media are doing precisely that. After watching a montage of journalists complaining that Republicans may be guilty of "overreach" with their dogged pursuit of the IRS investigation, Bozell reminded guest host Eric Bolling that "this is the old game plan, which is":
if you have to report something, report it for a couple days and then immediately hit that speed where you say, we're overreaching. It's gone too far it's time to move on.
That is where the MoveOn.org organization came from.
Think about this, Eric, think about all of the alphabet soup of Clinton scandals: Whitewater, the Rose Hill law firm, foreign fundraising, the FBI files, all of those different scandals. What did they all have in common? We never got to bottom of a single one because the media were saying move on, move one, we're done with that story. They're trying it again now.
At that point, Bolling posited a what-if scenario in which it were a Republican president at the helm and the IRS targeting liberal groups. "I got two words for you. Richard Nixon, that's what would happen, Bozell argued, adding, "This is exactly what Richard Nixon was accused of doing and they didn't let up until they got every bloody, guilty party in this. This is exactly what would have happened."
*I previously said Bozell made his prediction on Hannity. It was on the May 16 Kudlow Report. I apologize for the error.
