U.S. News ' Barone smears, “MoveOn.org folks were cheering when they heard of Reagan's death”

During a June 8 Hudson Institute "Panel Discussion: Iraq and Its Impact on the U.S. Elections," Michael Barone -- U.S. News & World Report senior writer and FOX News Channel political contributor -- claimed, "[T]he MoveOn.org folks were cheering when they heard of [former President Ronald] Reagan's death."

Barone also echoed conservative commentary on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, as well as commentary on former Vice President Al Gore and commentary on progressive financier, philanthropist, and political activist George Soros. Barone called the Abu Ghraib prison abuses a “very minor issue” and referred to “the deranged tones that we've heard from Al Gore and George Soros.”

The panel discussion, which was broadcast on C-SPAN 2, featured panelist Stanley Greenberg (chairman and CEO of Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research) and was moderated by Lawrence F. Kaplan (Hudson Institute senior fellow and New Republic senior editor).

Barone on MoveOn.org:

GREENBERG: [Referring to a recent study his polling firm conducted] He [Reagan] was actually still, before his death, still polarizing. That is, the Republicans were overwhelmingly, you know, favorable [toward Reagan], independents were in the middle, and Democrats were still negative.

BARONE: Yeah, well, the MoveOn.org folks were cheering when they heard of Reagan's death.

GREENBERG: No.

BARONE: Yes they were.

GREENBERG: That's utterly tasteless.

KAPLAN: Let's try to keep the tone civil.

BARONE: Well, it's tasteless of them [MoveOn.org].

Barone on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses:

BARONE: What we've been watching is a media war against George W. Bush: All bad news, all the time, from most of our media. We've had three weeks of loving coverage of the very minor issue of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses by a media that had no interest whatsoever is covering Saddam Hussein's prison abuses, which of course were much worse.

Barone on Gore and Soros:

BARONE: Then there are the smaller half of the Democratic coalition, which wants out now [of Iraq], which, you know, wears “Bush Lied” T-shirts, and which speaks, in what I would say are the deranged tones that we've heard from Al Gore and George Soros, in recent weeks, which are very different from the quite measured, and I would say responsible tones that we've heard from John Kerry.

Barone is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (Free Press, 1990); The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery Publishing, 2001); and, most recently, Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future (Crown Forum, 2004).