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Bill O'Reilly opened The Factor talking about the new Rasmussen poll that says that people would vote for teabaggers over republicans. Tea Party Tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican. In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

This is really bad news for Republicans/conservatives. Bill Kristol loves right-wing populism just as long as they can be controlled, but now the problem is that the conservative elites can't control them.

The teabaggers must be driving Kristol's Straussian beliefs crazy. A good mob is a controlled mob that is led by conservative elites who are the only people truly qualified to lead society. Gingrich knows not to take his findings too far because teabaggers are already mad at him, so he immediately praises the teabagger Queen, Sarah Palin. BillO tries to say that Palin is as inexperienced as Obama. Sure, Bill, whatever you say. But back to Newt.

Gingrich:.. I think Going Rouge could in fact take Palin to a third party, the challenge is historically third parties are protests. They're not a path to power. And as you pointed out the first effect of a third party in 2012 would be the re-election of Obama and would be the survival of Pelosi as Speaker of the House, you now, maybe in perpetuity.

O'Reilly: I don't think so, I think Pelosi maybe booted out of there next November, that's how bad things are.

Gingrich: but she might, she wouldn't be if you had enough third party candidates (garbled) splitting the opposition.

O'Reilly: The earliest a third party could be viable is in 2012.

Newt is going to have a really tough time trying to convince the teabaggers to join up with the GOP establishment because they want to control it. When conservatives reached out to the black helicopter/militia crowd, they put their possible comeback in the hands of insane people. Take that, Bill Kristol!

Here's how Bill Kristol views the teabaggers, via pg 46 from the "Gang of Five."

Only elitist, brilliant men like Bill Kristol are allowed to lead people. Real Americans are but sheep to be herded and controlled to do what their elitist elders tell them to do. What a horrible and disgusting philosophy to live by, but that's Kristol and his crew for you.

You can pick up Nina Easton's book here: Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendacy

All day long MSNBC has had on one pundit after another using the election in NY-23 as their springboard to make the case that the Dems are weak. There hasn't been a Democrat elected in that seat for more years than I've been alive, but that doesn't seem to enter into the equation.

The real story, though, is the fighting going on within the GOP. Rudy Giuliani was on with Chuck Todd and saying that the GOP will never win national elections if they never win in NY and California and so there needs to be a more inclusive Republican party. NY-23 didn't pan out that way for Rudy and he had to figure a way to lighten the blow. He said that Scozzafava was really a liberal and implied that he told Newt not to back her. He said the GOP needs moderates in the party, but they have to be 80% with them on issues and 20% against.

Of course Chuck Todd either couldn't be bothered to check Scozzafava's voting record and history on issues or decided to give Rudy the floor with no opposition because Scozzafava is not 80% liberal and 20% conservative, as Giuliani claimed.

The reality is this: When people say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, you should take their advice. The “cover” on Scozzafava was that she was this progressive Republican because she was backed by the WFP, supported a woman’s right to choose and has been a supporter of marriage equality. But the “book” tells the whole story (as it usually does). Scozzafava has a few positions that are more liberal (on abortion and marriage equality) but most of her positions are, at best, moderate-to-conservative. More often than not, however, she is a conservative.

This race is interesting to watch just to see the Villagers scurry around and try to make it a national story, but at least they could take the time and get their facts straight.

Duncan writes:

Tip Of The Spear

I'm not sure if the teabaggers will have much success in purifying their party, but it'll be interesting to see how the Villagers will react. My guess is they'll portray them as just folks exercising their patriotic duties, unlike those dirty fucking hippie traitors who ran a primary against the greatest man in America, Joe Lieberman.

The cable shows are covering these races as if the outcome will determine if Obama should step down as the president.

And very predictably, as the results come in, Doug Hoffman is claiming that ACORN is stealing the election.

At a short press availability in his campaign office here, NY-23 Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman said that a GOTV volunteer’s tires had been slashed, and all but blamed Democrats for the dirty trick. “There are reports that they’re bringing in the troops and they’re bringing in ACORN,” said Hoffman. “I think the Democrats are doing anything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd district.”
--
Update: Anton Troianovski of the Wall Street Journal followed up with the Plattsburgh police on this, and was told that the volunteer actually damaged his tire on a broken bottle. I asked Hoffman campaign manager Dan Tripp about this–he said he had no comment because the campaign had not heard this yet.

They will blame ACORN for everything. Digby sees this through the prism of her brilliance.

I just hope that all the major networks and newspapers assign a special reporter to look into these accusations by the teabaggers' darling. Certainly Fox will be running with them and everyone knows that the mainstream press has been remiss by failing to follow up on such important Fox investigations.

It's actually a smart move. Since Fox has intimidated the pants off of the other news organizations, they will bend over backwards to be "fair and balanced" thus lending credence to the ACORN meme.

I just hope they don't end up accidentally arresting Hoffman's African American staffer in their zeal to reveal the ACORNs in the woodpile.

Raw Story: Senior official in Bush domestic propaganda program remains Obama's Pentagon spokesman

The Political Carnival: Generals: Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney are scaremongering

The Existentialist Cowboy: Huge corporations and foreign nations take a proprietary interest in the government of the United States because they own it.

Dusty Trice: Why did the MN GOP have a change of heart on Ron Paul? The good doctor says: "They want my money."

Billablog: A threat to all we hold dear

Mad Kane’s Political Madness: Newt's bilingual newspeak

South Florida Lawyers: Did you know that if you graduated summa from Princeton and were EIC of the Yale Law Review, that makes you "intellectually mediocre"?  On race, SCOTUSblog examines the record and says it's "absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking."

Liberal Values: Top "no sh*t" story:  Cheney lied about torture saving lives

The Agonist: Pakistani Ambassador Haqqani is telling the BBC that The Pakistani government is going all in against the Taliban

rubber hose: That Obama isn't backing down on the Israeli settlement issue is surprising, but what's really surprising is that key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team's message to Netanyahu.

onegoodmove: Some great links...

Booman and Papamoka could both use a little help...

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Gen. Petraeus joined FOX News and Martha MacCallum today and gave a blockbuster interview, but probably not the one Fox expected. Once again, he called for the responsible closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also said that mistakes were made after 9/11 and that the Army Field Manual is all that we need to use to interrogate prisoners. In addition, he said that we have to have faith in our judicial system and we should try the Khalid Sheikh Muhammads in a court of law.

Martha tried to give him the ticking time bomb scenario to justify torture and he really didn't bite. He did say maybe an Executive Order could be appropriate, but that it really wasn't necessary. Petraeus repudiated pretty much most of what Limbaugh Republicans and the Rove/Newt/Cheney Party have been saying.
(rush transcript)

MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, it's not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there's no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.

MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.

Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don't think we should be afraid of our values we're fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we're doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.

MacCallum: So you're confident that they will never go free.

Gen. Petraeus: I hope that's the case.

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)

Gen. Petraeus: ....T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them -- those techniques work, that's our experience in this business.

MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

Wow, there was a lot in that interview. I couldn't transcribe it all. He admits that we violated the Geneva Convention. Is he saying that the Bush/Cheney administration failed our "value system" in their leadership in the two wars and how America responded to the 9/11 attacks?

He obviously is against torture. He is also saying to let the chips fall where they may in prosecuting these detainees and use our legal system to try terror suspects. Martha didn't go into the military commissions, but if they come here, just let them stand trial. All the conservatives and Republicans anointed Gen. Petraeus as the true leader of the wars when George Bush decided he didn't want to take the heat on the war any longer.

Remember when to question him was sacrilegious? Will they now disavow what he is telling them today?

After the interview, the other Fox host predictably tried to intimate that Petraeus was working for Obama now so, ya know, he's in the tank for him. Whatever happened to listening to the generals on the ground being critical to our "victory" in Iraq? He said that our values as a country do change in a time of war -- a scary notion -- so Bush is just all right. Don't they ever give up with their Bush-hero worshiping?

How long will it take Rush Limbaugh to lash out at the General? What about Newt and Rove?

"Change him to a nun, he's still a Newt." Open thread below.

Mercury Rising: Do many small wars add up to a very large one?

field negro: Hey Texas, when are you going to start that little secession thing? The rest of us are getting impatient

Economist's View: The serious conflict in modern conservatism

They gave us a republic: Roxana Saberi Free

Our friend Alicia Morgan of Last Left Turn Before Hooterville has been asked to sing at Marcy Winograd's campaign kickoff event today in Los Angeles.  Winograd is taking on Jane Harman for the CA-36 seat.

The Teabagger King attacked President Obama because he actually shook hands with Hugo Chavez and tried to make into an international ordeal except only his teabagging compatriots bought into his lies. ABC News did a little digging and found this on Newt's own website.

On NBC's "Today" show this morning, Gingrich criticized what he called a "weakness" in the emerging Obama foreign policy, saying that the pictures of Obama and Chavez will be used to demonstrate that Obama is "friends" with an anti-American regime.


Asked specifically about whether there's a value to having a diplomatic relationship with an enemy, like the US did with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, Gingrich said:

"We didn't rush over, smile and greet Russian dictators. We understood who they were. I'm not against him talking to Chavez. But I think you ought to talk to Chavez in a cold and distant way."

But Gingrich sounded a bit different about the potential political value of laughter when talking about his political idol, Ronald Reagan.

As recounted in a recent interview highlighted on Gingrich's own Web site, Gingrich fondly recalled the way that Reagan shared jokes with Mikhail Gorbachev.


In the interview, Gingrich refers to a favorite picture with himself and the late president: "One of the most memorable [moments] is actually a picture hanging on the wall of my family room. The two of us are on Air Force One. We're both in shirtsleeves. We both have our arms crossed and we're laughing. We're laughing because Reagan has told another joke. Reagan collected jokes, particularly about the Soviet Union."


Gingrich recalled a joke about "the man who tells a reporter, 'I have as much freedom in the Soviet Union as I have in Washington.' The reporter says, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Well, I can get up in front of the Kremlin and I can say that Ronald Reagan is doing a terrible job. And I can get in front of the White House and say Ronald Reagan is doing a terrible job. See, I'm totally free.' . . . . Reagan told those stories to Gorbachev."

You almost have to admire the lies he's willing to tell just to get his teabagger party all hot and bothered.