ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is our featured Mainstream Media screamer for helping keep alive the false belief that one-time presidential candidate and race-baiter Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was a Republican, not a proud Democrat.
Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat, was on ABC’s This Week Sunday when he identified the long-time segregationist Wallace, twice a Democratic candidate for president, as a Republican: “We do have the worst Republican nominee since George Wallace.”
Wallace was never a Republican and never won the nomination of either major party, though he was the candidate in 1968 of the American Independent Party. He ran in the Democratic presidential primaries in both 1972 and 1976.
Without offering a correction, host Stephanopoulos moved on to a question to another guest, Republican Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma who did inform the audience that Wallace was a Democrat.
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: “How embarrassing. Apparently so deluded by the media regularly characterizing Republicans as racists, Ellison just presumed a notorious segregationist must be Republican. And Stephanopoulos didn’t even recognize such a false presumption that glosses over more than a century of the Democratic Party’s history. Groupthink in action.”
Rating: Four out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
