During the 2008 campaign, the media never opened a debate in the Democrat primary by asking Hilary Clinton how missing documents from the Rose law firm showed up at the White House, or questioning her claim that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia. Nor did they ever open a debate questioning Obama about his his cocaine use in college, his missing transcripts and birth certificate, or his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

When Newt fired back at an obvious media ambush during the opening question of the GOP debate in South Carolina, the mainstream media ratcheted up their attacks. Was it a coincidence that ABC decided to air their ‘surprise’ interview with Newt’s ex-wife after the last debate—and only hours before the South Carolina primary? Was it a coincidence that John King cited the ABC smear story to open the debate? Newt was right to be outraged, and his surge in support after his fiery answer shows that many voters feel the same way.

One thing is clear—the mainstream media isn’t even pretending to be impartial anymore. Republican candidates are constantly attacked and forced to defend themselves against every innuendo, while Obama gets a free pass on every issue. The double standard is now so obvious and so extreme that the media isn’t even making a pretense of being objective anymore.

After Newt fired back at ABC and CNN with both guns blazing, Ann Curry once again tried to ambush Newt during a live interview on NBC Today. First, she accused him of being racist because he called Obama a “food stamp President.” She went on to quote a New York Times editorial that implied that Newt and all South Carolina Republicans are racist:

“By mixing falsehoods with racial condescension, Newt Gingrich brought a raucous presidential debate crowd to its feet on Monday night in South Carolina, further cheapening his reputation and that of the state Republican Party…

In South Carolina, where a Confederate flag still waves on the front lawn of the State Capitol largely because of the efforts of the state Republican Party, it remains good primary politics to stir up racial animosity and then link it to President Obama.” –The New York Times

Curry wrapped up by asking Newt “Are you intentionally playing the race card to win votes?” Once again, Newt smacked down the liberal media ambush with a clear, forceful and passionate response:

“Modern liberals are totally off the deep end. When conservatives care about the poor and conservatives offer ideas to help the poor and conservatives suggest that the poor would rather have a paycheck than a food stamp, the very liberals who have failed them—at places like The New York Times—promptly scream ‘racism’ because they have no defense for the failure of liberal institutions which have trapped poor children in bad schools, trapped them in bad neighborhoods, trapped them in crime-ridden situations. Liberal solutions have failed, and their only answer is to yell ‘racism’ and hide.”

In their attack on Newt, both Ann Curry and The New York Times failed to mention that the confederate flag isn’t flying over the South Carolina Capitol—it’s across from the Capitol over a memorial to Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. And the compromise to fly the flag over the Confederate War Memorial was brokered by a Democrat governor more than a decade ago. This is not a Newt issue, and it’s not new issue. Now the liberal media is trying to use it to dismiss Newt’s surge in South Carolina by painting the whole state as racist. In their eyes, that might somehow diminish Newt’s success by convincing the rest of the country to ignore South Carolina completely.

We all know the mainstream media is biased. Now it seems they’re trying desperately just to remain relevant. Meanwhile, the surge in support for Newt after his smackdown of the liberal media is showing what everyone else already knows. The mainstream media is a joke.