The Lil’est Cynic

by digby

David Shuster reported on Russ Feingold’s comments concerning the public option this morning and then turned to MSNBC’s new expert Capitol Hill analyst for his take on it:

Shuster: What sort of efforts are Harry Reid and his cohorts making toward Russ Feingold?

Lil’ Luke: (smirking) You remember last week or ten days ago that Mary Landrieu was able to get 300 million dollars for Hurricane Katrina down in Lousisiana? Expect Russ Feingold to possibly get something, a nice little present, an early Christmas present from Harry Reid here, possibly that could go to other members.

Obviously David, you know it’s politics. These Senators want what’s best for their home states, if they can hold up a major bill like this and get something in return, they just might do it.

But I think the people who are interesting to look at here are one, is Mr Feingold here, as you mentioned because he is the apotheosis of the progressive wing, but also folks like Blanche Lincoln, like Mary Landrieu, who are very fiscally conservative. If this is very expensive, they might not be on board. We also have to look at Mr Lieberman who has given a little bit of a hint that he might like this idea, but he is very much opposed to the trigger and some folks are looking at Olympia Snowe to possibly give the Democrats that buffer, that one vote buffer they could lose somebody. But she’s not signed on to this 100% at all either David so there’s still a lot of jockeying to be done.

It’s politics at its best, as we like to say at MSNBC.

Shuster: Thanks as always, (laughter) we’ll be watching the horse trading as it develops.

Lil Luke: Hahahahaha! Take care David.

It’s like a Darryl Hammond impression of his father, right down to the sage, all knowing attitude. Except he gets all mixed up and says ridiculous things like Feingold is looking for a handout (that’s not how he rolls at all) but that he is the “apotheosis” of the progressive wing.

And they have to stop him from making these ridiculous pronouncements like “as we all know David, that’s politics!” because he looks like the Campbell Soup Kid pretending to be Cokie Roberts. He acts like he’s been up on the hill since the Truman administration. I don’t mean to pick on the kid. He’s young and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But his string of irrelevant cliches are perilously close to Palin-level gibberish and it makes the more credible news people like Mitchell or Shuster look like complete fools when they respond to him like a real newsman.

This really is the worst example of nepotistic indulgence I’ve seen in a long time. They are actually trying to reincarnate Tim Russert in his callow, untried 20 something kid and it’s painful to watch. It was painful to listen to Russert Sr too, but at least his stale, world weary CW wasn’t coming out of the mouth of someone who looks like he just finished up a rousing game of beer pong.

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