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Rachel Maddow talks to Steve Benen about the Republican infighting going on in the New York 23rd District's special election. As Steve noted yesterday:

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd continues to pick up endorsements from leading right-wing figures. Yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) bucked his party and threw his support to Hoffman. Reps. Tom Cole of Oklahoma and Dana Rohrabacher of California did the same thing.

Transcript from MSNBC.

MADDOW: This is Betsy Markey. She‘s the Democratic member of Congress representing Colorado‘s fourth district. Betsy Markey got elected to that seat last November when she defeated a three-term, very far-right Republican incumbent named Marilyn Musgrave.

Even Colorado‘s—even as Colorado was thought of as a pretty safe Republican territory, the incumbent Republican, Ms. Musgrave, just got clobbered by the Democrat in this race. She lost by 12 points, wasn‘t even close.

This race is ringing a bell for you maybe because it‘s the only House race from the last election that we were still covering a week after the election was over, because not only did Marilyn Musgrave make news for being a conservative Republican who got trounced in what was supposed to be a safe seat, on this show at least, Ms. Musgrave also made news because even a week after she lost, she still hadn‘t conceded the race, nor had she called to congratulate Betsy Markey who beat her.

We called Betsy Markey‘s office today and confirm that even now, almost a year after that election, Republican Marilyn Musgrave still hasn‘t conceded the race. It‘s possible she still thinks she‘s in Congress.

Well, today, in “The New York Times,” we learned that one of the things Marilyn Musgrave is up to now is campaigning in a New York congressional race that‘s attracted a whole host of ambitious conservatives to rail against the locally-chosen Republican in the race in favor of a more conservative candidate.

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Dick Cheney and his daughter have been on a literal media blitz calling for the release of memos they claim would prove torturing prisoners prevented future attacks on America. Former C&L'er Steve Benen joined Rachel Maddow to weigh in on Carl Levin's debunking of the tag team's talking points. As Steve notes in his blog at Washington Monthly:

But perhaps Levin's most newsworthy remarks referenced the classified materials Cheney believes document the alleged terror attacks prevented by torture.

"Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction."

It's worth emphasizing that Levin is, of course, privy to the same materials Cheney has been talking about.

His remarks are hardly surprising, but it's nevertheless helpful to hear Levin reject the most common claim Cheney has pushed for months now -- the documents in question don't say what Cheney thinks they say.

As Steve points out during the interview, if this is going to come down to who has more credibility with the public, it ain't gonna' be Dick Cheney.

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Rachel Maddow reminds us of Jeff Sessions extremely ugly racist past. Steve Benen weighs in on how poorly it speaks for Republicans to promote someone like Sessions to take Arlen Specter's place as their ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Maddow: In terms of him having this leadership role on the Judiciary Committee for the next year and a half, presumably Sessions will make that committee run very differently than having the senior Republican on that committee be Arlen Specter, right?

Benen: I think that's fair to say. You know obviously Specter was probably one of the most moderate members of the Senate. Certainly the most moderate Republican on that committee. Jeff Sessions for all the reasons we just talked about is much farther to the right and he'll be the public's face. You know we talked earlier in the show about the rebranding effort. It undermines the branding when you have someone with these deep and ugly racial problems from dating back a couple of decades and now he'll be helping, he'll be the public face of the Judiciary Committee, not only on judiciary, or judicial nominations but also on issues like civil rights laws that automatically go to the Judiciary Committee. So this is a problem for the party. It's a problem for the committee and I'm anxious to see how it turns out for them.

Maddow: I'm anxious to hear him explain yet again how the disgrace to his race comment was a joke. That will be great.

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

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Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

Ah...we knew him before he became a Villager.  Our buddy and former C&L contributor Steve Benen handicaps how the candidates and their respective economic messages are playing with the American people.  Needless to say, Benen rightly points out that McCain's flailing has hurt him in the presidential race. 

I heard George Will, who is not exactly a reflexive liberal, talk yesterday how this is something of a presidential test. And there's one candidate who's come across as steady, unflappable, calm, the kind of person you would want in a crisis and it's not John McCain, it's Barack Obama. I thnk to a certain extent we saw that with John McCain's constant changing of messages. It didn't necessarily convey a sense of confidence, or for that matter, a sense of competence.

Beyond being happy to see one of my colleagues on television, I think that Steve makes a point -- though I do wish he wasn't quite so charitable towards McCain -- with which I hope we can see the Obama campaign expound upon and moreover, really hammer home in the upcoming debates: this past week and McCain's response to the economic crisis has shown him to not only have a plan to lead the country out of its economic woes...it shows he doesn't even understand them in the first place.  That's not "ready from Day 1", that's not ready at all.

And that's a meme that will resonate with voters.

Transcripts below the fold

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