Cavuto interviews "registered Democrat" who's also a conservative activist
August 11, 2009 5:13 pm ET by Oliver Willis
On the August 11th edition of Fox News' Your World With Neil Cavuto, Cavuto interviewed Edward Naile, who was protesting against the health care reform being discussed by President Obama in a New Hampshire town hall event. Fox's on-screen text simply identified Naile as a "Registered Democrat" and as a "Small Business Owner". Cavuto first introduced him as a "registered Democrat" and later described Naile as having "independent" thinking on the health care issue.
What neither Fox nor Cavuto noted was Naile's history of conservative activism.
In 2004 the Boston Globe identified Naile as the head of the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers, a group that opposed out of state students trying to register to vote in New Hampshire.
In 2000 AP identified Naile as a member of the Coalition, identifying the group as an "advocacy group for limited government and limited taxation".
Naile is listed as the co-host of "New Hampshire Taxpayer Radio", which is affiliated with the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers.
More recently Naile wrote a blog entry on NHInsider.com titled "Come And Get Yo Free Healthcare - Sucker".
On November 1, 2008 Naile wrote:
America needs to take a good four-year look at what the Liberal Left has offered up for President, and most of all, what the main stream media has unflinchingly protected and nourished since the decision to sell this communist standard-bearer of the Democrat Party as material qualified to be President of the United States.
That's Neil Cavuto's "independent".
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Everyone knows Democrats are always bitching about taxes and the size of government. And we always refer to our party as the Democrat Party, not the Democratic Party. And the obvious give away, to me anyway, was the refference to the President as a communist. My union loving family sits around the dinner table and refers to the president as THE COBAMMUNIST!! Tongue is firmly in cheek, jsut like Cavuto's producers who identified him as a registered Democrat.
We need more people like you, Ollie (may I call you Ollie?), people who get paid to write blogs about private citizens who give comments on shows seen by a fraction of a percent of the population.
See, when you add to a database, you sometimes add items that aren't the most important ever. This is because storage is cheap and data collection benefits from a large source.
It's always good to have these teaching moments. Unlike the media, some conservatives can learn.
If you have Kucinich as a guest and neither of you say anything liberal on the air, then there wasn't any liberal bias in that segment.
Hmmm.
Guess what guys? I'M A REGISTERED REPUBLICAN!!!
(What can I say? I used to vote Republican, back when I was young and naive.)
But no one who spends 10 seconds talking to me about the issues would come away thinking I'm conservative or that I'd vote republican.
So I don't care how people are registered, or what party the worked for 10-20 years ago (Brock, Matthews) I care HOW THEY VOTE, and WHERE THEY STAND ON ISSUES. THAT'S what defines you. That's waht makes you liberal or conservative, heck that's what really makes you a Democrat or a Republican, far more than your party registration. That's completely irrelevant.
You got it wrong yet again, eddiebear-lyliterate. The complaint is not that Naile was interviewed, it's that the interviewer led people to believe that Naile was an independent, or even an actual Democrat. In other words, the beef is not with Naile, but with Cavuto and Fox News.
This is not unusual after all this is NH where liberals sign up as Republicans all the time.
There was nothing erroneous about what Cavuto reported or about what Ed said.