Jennifer Rubin, Mitt Romney’s top media shill

Jennifer Rubin, Mitt Romney’s top media shill

The Romney campaign's communications office has its own platform at the Washington Post, thanks to Jennifer Rubin

By Alex Pareene

Reading Jennifer Rubin in 2012 makes me almost nostalgic for the days when Jennifer Rubin’s writing was almost solely devoted to bloodthirsty vitriol against Arabs and any Americans who dared say a kind thing about Palestinians. Because the new Jennifer Rubin is something even lower than a reactionary columnist: Now she’s just a shill. A boring shill.

In Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post currently employs a semi-official Mitt Romney spokesperson. There’s not another prominent media figure who is more shameless about acting solely in the best interests of a presidential campaign. Bill Kristol is at this point a more intellectually honest commentator than Rubin has become.

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“As for Jerusalem, it really is time to stop promising something that the U.S. can’t and shouldn’t deliver unilaterally,” she wrote, in direct opposition to everything she’d ever written on the subject before. Romney has now, of course, come around again: He has made the pledge to move the embassy, and Rubin, predictably, has returned to her initial position.

She also regularly uses her blog as a space for the Romney campaign to push back against stories her own newspaper prints that she and Romney don’t like. When the Post refused to retract its story on Bain Capital and outsourcing (or as Rubin puts it, “purported outsourcing”), Rubin just printed a full statement from the campaign detailing its complaints. Then she added: “If accurate, it is a devastating rebuttal.” And she concluded by praising a recent Romney campaign hire.

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http://www.salon.com/2012/08/02/jennifer_rubin_mitt_romneys_top_media_shill/

As Romney Runs Away From Palestinian ‘Culture’ Line, Right Embraces It

Benjy Sarlin

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In one awkward example, Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin praised the candidate’s speech as proof that Romney was not the “calculating” politician his critics alleged, and in fact “blunt and thoughtful,” giving the Palestinians a dose of hard truth about the importance of capitalism.

“If this is the Romney we’re going to see during the balance of the campaign Obama is in deep trouble,” Rubin wrote. “This Romney is unapologetic.”

Almost immediately after her post went up, Romney told FOX News that he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy” and that “I certainly don’t intend to address that during my campaign.”

Former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, meanwhile, took to Twitter after Romney’s Jersualem speech to condemn Palestinians for everything from homophobia to support for terrorism, claiming that Romney’s initial remarks were not a “gaffe.”

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http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/mitt-romney-palestine-israel-culture-gdp-providence.php