Hardball is an impostor of 'hard news' for the lowest common denominator. (For more of Matthews' dumbassery, see The correct answer would be, "How the hell should I know?" here.)
The big news story was that John Edwards' wife Elizabeth called in to the show to challenge Coulter on her repeated attacks on Edwards' husband. Kind of a lost cause, really. Ann Coulter without the attacks is just a skinny little mental lightweight -- she'd have nothing. Like Matthews' obsession with triviality, Coulter's aggressive idiocy is what passes for 'analysis.' Coulter blew Edwards off and Matthews played along.
But what caught my eye was a story on all this at Editor & Publisher. It seems Ann was on a different program pushing a different sort of insanity the day before. The blurb was toward the end of the piece.
"I do sort of get the sense now that there is -- you know -- people reaching across the partisan divide, the country is unified," she told Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America. "Bush really is a uniter because we're all just waiting for this nincompoop to be gone. I think we all finally are on the same page on that."
While she praised Bush's handling of the war, she admitted that "his domestic policy has been an embarrassment."
She said the war is "the one thing I think Bush has done well. He's like another president in that way -- FDR. I think he's been magnificent on the war, and on domestic policy has been an embarrassment."
Hell, why stop short? Bush is Lincoln on Iraq, he's freakin' Washington. At least she's willing to call him a 'nincompoop' -- but I'm guessing that she's speaking for the racist idiots who think the death penalty is too good for illegal aliens. After all, Bush's immigration plan the only 'domestic policy' the nutjobs have a problem with.
It's looking more and more like Ann Coulter's going to be the last passenger to accept the fact that the Titanic is sinking. Someone needs to tell her that Iraq was so five minutes ago. All the cool kids are heading for the lifeboats.
New York Times:
After offering a bleak assessment of the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said today that he was urging lawmakers and President Bush to change course quickly to protect a further erosion of America's standing in the world.
"We're heading into a very partisan era," Mr. Lugar said in an interview today, following a speech he delivered on the Senate floor on Monday night in which he called on the administration to rethink its Iraq strategy. "The president has the opportunity now to bring about a bipartisan foreign policy. I don't think he'll have that option very long."
"In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved," Lugar told the Senate. "Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term."
Losing Lugar on Iraq is a bad sign for Bush's war. A solid conservative and former presidential candidate, Lugar has been a reliable pro-war vote. And he's not the only one jumping ship.
Associated Press:
Sen. George Voinovich said Tuesday the U.S. should begin pulling troops out of Iraq, joining Richard Lugar as the second Republican lawmaker in as many days to suggest President Bush's war strategy is failing.
He said the Iraqi people must become more involved and "I don't think they'll get it until they know we're leaving."
It's been clear -- to me, at least -- that Bush's 'surge' was never meant to end the war, but to continue it. Call it 'Operation Run Out the Clock.' The idea is to have some other president take the blame for losing the war in Iraq. The problem with this plan, however, is that once Bush is out, there are going to be one hell of a lot of Republicans left holding the bag.
Obviously, they're not all that happy with that prospect. So they're leaking away in drips and drabs. Public support for the war is getting really thin -- latest polling shows 67% opposed -- and that sort of a mess is going to stain. Even if Bush is out of office, these guys are still going to be there. Where the president's plans call for him to be unaccountable for the failure of the war, these guys in the Senate won't be. Bush is throwing his own supporters under the bus. They know it and they don't like it.
So Chris Matthews and Good Morning America can get Ann Coulter to put lipstick on this pig, but the people who have real input here are bailing. They don't want to get stuck with this and they know that's exactly what Bush plans on doing to them.
Like I say, the only people who still listen to Coulter are jabbering mental patients and there just aren't enough of those left to make much of a difference.
--Wisco
Technorati tags: politics; media; Chris Matthews; propaganda; Bush lost Richard Lugar and George Voinovich on the Iraq war, but he still has Ann Coulter -- as if she matters...
