Furious conservatives have taken to blogs and Twitter on Thursday to vent their ire against what they allege is a conspiratorial dumping of twisted and manipulated negative attacks on Newt Gingrich.
The target of their fury: The Drudge Report.
For the last 48 hours, the conservative Web site led by Matt Drudge has become a virtual campaign arm for Mitt Romney, featuring huge, screaming headlines about Mr. Gingrich and his past.
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But in recent days, Mr. Drudge has used his valuable digital real estate for a frontal assault on Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy. For hours on Thursday, the site led with the headline: “INSIDER: GINGRICH REPEATEDLY INSULTED REAGAN.”
Another headline that was up for hours read: “NEWT 1988: ‘If Bush runs as continuation of Reaganism he will lose’…”
That headline linked to a carefully-cropped video that purported to show Mr. Gingrich saying that George H. W. Bush should run against the record of Ronald Reagan.
But as conservative supporters of Mr. Gingrich quickly pointed out, the complete video makes it clear that Mr. Gingrich was not criticizing Mr. Reagan’s record, but was rather suggesting that Mr. Bush — like any politician — should look to the future, not the past.
“Cherry-picked quotes, biased headlines and hyperlinks to Newt-hating op-eds in order to patch together an ugly and distorted mosaic of the former House speaker is not journalism,” Matt Barber, a blogger, wrote in a post titled “The Drudge Distort.” He continued, “It’s mercenary-style political prostitution.”