Cheney’s Pants Spontaneously Immolated
Edwards was excellent as I knew he would be. Articulate, engaging and smart. If anybody had the mistaken idea that they could Quayle this guy, he certainly proved them wrong tonight.
But I think Cheney may have set a record for how many times a candidate can outright, baldfacedly lie in an hour and a half on national television. And that’s saying something. He and Junior really are living in some sort of dreamworld where they apparently don’t have to worry that their every previous public statement is noted and available for the whole world to see. Here on planet earth we have google and lexis-nexis and we can dig up all the examples of when they said things they claim they didn’t say.
The most obvious is Dick’s continued insistence that he’s never said there was a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam. Fergawd’s sake. But the debate was riddled with an amazing array of outright lies by Cheney from small ones like “I’d never met him before tonight” to huge ones like suggesting that there has been a drop in suicide bombings in Israel because Saddam isn’t paying a bounty. This article captures a few, but there are many more that will be fleshed out over the next few days.
I predict that once the full scope of the lies Cheney told tonight are artfully dribbled out by the Democrats over the next couple of days, Cheney’s respectable “draw” will turn into a rout. This isn’t 2000 and the Democrats are not going to stand for this shit this time.
As for the whores, I have to give extra special kudos to Joe Scarborough for the biggest slurpy Cheney blowjobs of the night, although it was difficult to choose from among his colleagues. But apparently, somebody put a horses head in Joey’s bed after his little “mistake” in calling the debate for Kerry last week because he really went the extra mile tonight.
Eric Boehlert wonders if the entire MSNBC crew even saw the same debate as the rest of us did:
The Cheney group hug began before Edwards had even exited the debate stage in Cleveland, with NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell declaring, “Dick Cheney did awfully well in putting John Edwards in his place.” MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, who didn’t flinch in naming Sen. John Kerry the debate winner last week, declared, “There’s no doubt about it, Edwards got obliterated by Dick Cheney.” (Perhaps he was trying to appease his right-wing fans who, he later remarked, flayed him alive for giving the debate to Kerry last week.) Newsweek’s managing editor Jon Meachem chimed in that Edwards seemed like “Kerry-lite,” while host Matthews skewered Edwards in a strangely personal way, reminiscent of the way Matthews hounded President Bill Clinton throughout the impeachment process.
“I don’t think this well-rehearsed and well-briefed senator from North Carolina was ready for the assault,” said Matthews, who insisted, “Dick Cheney was loaded for bear tonight. He went looking for squirrel and he found squirrel” in the form of Edwards. He later suggested Edwards often looked stunned, as if he’d been “slapped” by Cheney’s devastating debating technique. Matthews also demanded to know if the “liberal press” would admit “Cheney won.”
Yet nowhere else on the television landscape — not even on Fox News — was Cheney crowned the winner. Most pundits saw the debate as an obvious draw:
— ABC News political director Mark Halperin told PBS’s Charlie Rose the debate was a “nonevent because it didn’t change the dynamic.”
— Surveying fellow journalists covering the debate, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, host of “Inside Politics,” reported, “Their opinion is this debate was close to a draw.” She added, “If Dick Cheney was hoping to put away John Edwards, he didn’t do that tonight.”
— David Gergen, who has counseled both Democratic and Republican administrations, agreed that the debate was a standoff, telling CNN’s Larry King that “it ran out of electricity about halfway through. It began to drag.”
— Fox News’ Bill Kristol said, “Cheney clearly won the first half on national security. I think Edwards won the second half” on domestic issues. Kristol argued the first half was more important.
— “I can imagine Democratic living rooms, cheering every time Edwards punched. And Republican living rooms when Cheney punched,” said ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “But I don’t think either candidate did much to sway voters on the fence.”
ABC News’ instant poll found more viewers thought Cheney won the debate, by a margin of 43 to 35. But as ABC anchor Peter Jennings noted, the poll was weighted heavily toward Republican respondents because the network found more Republicans watched the debate.
CBS ran a scientific survey of 200 uncommitted voters nationwide, which found Edwards won the debate by a clear margin, 41-29. The CBS survey found Cheney suffered a dramatic gender gap among women voters.
None of that seemed to matter inside the MSNBC echo chamber. Matthews and his crew had their story line — Cheney won big! — and they were sticking with it, with Matthews even wondering out loud if the choice of Edwards for V.P. “casts doubt on the judgment of John Kerry,” and whether Edwards may “not be ready to be vice president of the United States.”
Which again raises the question: What debate was Matthews watching, and what did Edwards ever do to him?
Well gosh, nobody could expect Tweety and crew to not call this debate for Cheney. They had some big time ass to kiss after last week. They just hate getting nasty e-mails from angry Republicans. (I wonder how they are going to like getting erudite e-mails from angry Democrats?)
The biggest loser was Gwen Ifil. What an unmitigated disaster. But then, that’s no surprise. She has single handedly turned the previously great Washington Week In Review into DiGrassi Junior High, so I wasn’t particularly optimistic that she could moderate a debate. And she was probably up late last night talking to Condi, her best friend, about Condi’s unrequited love affair with you know who, so she was probably exhausted.
I predict a slight uptick in the polls as the undecideds start to make their move now that both Kerry and Edwards have passed the leadership threshhold. Friday could put it away.
