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After playing a series of embarassing clips from Michele Bachmann, Phyllis Schlafly, Allen West, Sarah Palin, John Ratzenberger and others, the same bunch of assorted lunatics who show up at all these conservative conferences over and over again, this time at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference now on in DC, Martin Bashir asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele this rather pointed question...

MARTIN BASHIR: What does the GOP hope to accomplish by repeatedly appealing to the far right of the party while at the same time possibly alienating more mainstream republicans?

MICHAEL STEELE: [Deep breath and a sigh] Well, I think they need to....

...and Steele's voice trailed off as MSNBC's Karen Finney and Touré burst into howls of laughter.

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While discussing the news of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's recent weight loss surgery and whether it's an indication that he's going to run for president in 2016, Hardball's Chris Matthews once again let his mouth overrun his brain and called Krispy Kreme doughnuts "Christie Kremes."

Oops.

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Here's your quote of the day from Chris Matthews after Bob Shrum told him that the only reason Republicans got control of the House is because of gerrymandering:

MATTHEWS: I think the problem is the way the votes get counted. Democrats are just doing too damn well in the big cities. They're wasting votes. [...] They need a lot more than 51 percent of the population for them to carry it because they wasted the votes in the big cities.

Here's the problem with that. Even Republicans were bragging that gerrymandering is why they won the House. It was a strategy and they're proud of it.

And what's that word for when you lump as many of the other party's voters into the same district so that their votes won't count? I know it will come to me sooner or later.

From this Thursday's Hardball, former RNC Chairman and now unfortunately for anyone who watches the network, MSNBC contributor Michael Steele, decided to get into a spat with Chris Matthews over whether CPAC 2013 ought to be inviting the likes of birthers like Donald Trump to speak at the conference rather than those from the Republican party who might actually have a chance of winning a national election. Steele's response was basically to dismiss all of Trump's birther talk and attempt to paint it as ancient history.

That was so last month, don't you know. Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union which runs the event defended their choice of speakers as well, but I'm with Matthews on what we're likely to hear from The Donald when he takes the stage:

Matthews surmised CPAC’s theory was, “invite the noisemakers and snub the people who might actually lead you out of the wilderness.”

If you look at the scheduled speaking times, CPAC’s priorities are clear. Sen. Ted Cruz is allotted 33 minutes of speaking time, Sarah Palin has 16 minutes, and Donald Trump gets 14 minutes. Down at the bottom are Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan with 11 minutes a piece.

Matthews asked former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele if Trump’s conservative message at CPAC could be overshadowed by all of his birther talk about President Obama.

“I think that characterization can be put behind Donald Trump…Let’s see what the man says tomorrow,” said Steele, telling Matthews that no one’s talking about the birther issue “but you. You’re the only person bringing it up.”

“You know why?” Matthews said. “Because people who think that the president is an illegal immigrant shouldn’t be talking out loud almost anywhere.”

Cardenas said Trump was invited because he’s a “successful businessman” who can reflect on the realities of today’s economy. “I think he’ll be a positive influence on the youngsters here.”

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As Susie already noted here, Elizabeth Warren's first chance to ask questions as a member of the Senate Banking Committee and to take some of these SEC chairs to task for not prosecuting anyone on Wall Street for their behavior, apparently hurt some of the bankers' feelings. MSNBC's Chuck Todd used the occasion to play the Villagers' favorite false equivalency game and compare wingnut McCarthyite Sen. Ted Cruz to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Funny, how he sounds an awful lot like that anonymous Wall Street executive who was complaining about her.

And as Susie also pointed out, Warren telling the truth is not the same as Cruz' sorry display. What's really pathetic about Todd and and his cheap shot at Warren here is that even his colleague Chris Matthews went after Cruz and his attacks on Hagel for being the "new McCarthyism" in one of his segments on Hardball this Friday.

What I found humorous about the segment above is that even though Todd and his guests, Ruth Marcus and Michael Steele, did their best to be dismissive of Warren by even mentioning her in the same sentence as Cruz, you could also tell something else: They're scared to death of her.

Marcus admitted that maybe it was alright because Warren "was in her wheelhouse" (which I'd say is the understatement of the year), and they all had to admit that she'd be formidable if she decided to run for president -- -- although I find putting her in the same category as Marco Rubio is insulting as well.

There is no "Marco Rubio of the left," because the left doesn't need to prop up the few members of their party who are minorities to try to cover for their racist policies.

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After watching this segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews and former RNC Chairman Michael Steele (now one of MSNBC's regular contributors -- because heaven knows, Joe Scarborough isn't doing a good enough job polluting their the airways), all I can say is, shame on Steele for lying to their viewers about whether someone who was born in 1958 should still expect the government to be sending out their Social Security check -- and shame on Matthews for not calling him out on it.

Yes, there are some long term issues with the solvency of Social Security, but they could be solved pretty easily with measures liberals support, like raising the cap on the taxable income. Regardless of what anyone believes about how that issue should be resolved, it's just blatant fearmongering for someone who is Steele's age to pretend the program won't be there for him.

I still remember the days when Rachel Maddow was begging for an interview with this guy. That was back when he was head of the RNC and still had to be held accountable for the Republicans and their actions and policy positions. Now that he's one of their paid pundits, it seems he's free to spew as much unchallenged crap as he likes on the shows where he appears (and viewers are unfortunate enough to find him as a guest).

I'm not sure just which right wing political hack has taken "Uncle Pat" Buchanan's space (and the cot he was probably sleeping in so he could be ready for an interview at a moment's notice), but Steele certainly looks like he's in the running.

Transcript via MSNBC below the fold:

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Rachel Maddow took her viewers through the list of failures that we've seen from RNC Chair, Reince Priebus and asks the question, "What does it take to get fired at the RNC, other than winning elections, of course?"

Here's more Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog -- Priebus won't be punished for failure:

In the 2010 midterms, Republicans made enormous gains, winning back the U.S. House, shrinking the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, winning a majority of the nation's gubernatorial offices, and adding hundreds of state legislative seats. In response, the party promptly fired its Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele.

If Republicans dismiss the RNC chief after a successful year, it stands to reason that Reince Priebus is in big trouble after an awful year, right? Wrong.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday that he will seek another two-year term for his current job and says he has far more support than he needs to keep it.

In an e-mail to supporters, Priebus said he has commitments from 130 of 168 members. He only needs the support of a majority of members -- 85.

In a message to RNC members, Priebus not only said he's "running to continue on as your Chairman," he added that he's already secured the support of "over 130 RNC Members," which should discourage any potential rivals.

I for one would just be happy to never see either Michael Steele or Reince Priebus on my television set again, but unfortunately, I don't think there's much chance of that happening with either of them any time soon.

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From this Wednesday evening's coverage of the Republican National Convention on MSNBC, Chris Matthews talks to Lawrence O'Donnell, Michael Steele and Howard Fineman following Paul Ryan's speech to get their opinion of it. Both Lawrence O'Donnell and Howard Fineman heap praise on Ryan's political skills and O'Donnell proclaims that the fact checking on Ryan's lie filled speech won't matter to swing voters.

The analysis from all of them was basically that facts don't matter if people like what they hear and don't know the difference on whether they're being lied to or not and that the Democrats had better get busy with rebutting this stuff. While I agree with them as far as low information voters and whether it's even possible to get through to them and that the Democrats do indeed need to rebut this stuff, here's my beef.

Isn't that exactly O'Donnell and Fineman's job to be pointing out the lies along with the rest of their cohorts in the media? Aren't they supposed to be a backstop against the politicians being allowed to just lie to us constantly and the voters not knowing the difference? I think it's an indictment on what's left of our fourth estate that they didn't even consider the possibility that if we had enough "fact checkers," and accurate ones and not those that are too often making a mockery of that term, but if we had enough push back from a media that did its job instead of always playing the Fox "fair and balanced" game, maybe we wouldn't have so many low information voters and so many swing voters who are easily duped by the likes of Ryan.

What killed me is they did spend some time fact checking a few of Ryan's lies during the segment, but I left some of that out of the clip for the sake of brevity, but basically they were pointing out Ryan's lies and at the very same time claiming that it was somehow a useless endeavor. If anyone wants to check out a very long list of the better part of Ryan's lies during his speech, you can find those at Think Progress' live blog from this Wednesday: ThinkProgress Live Blogs The Republican National Convention. The list is so long, it's staggering.

Ryan and Romney should not be given a pass by our media for lying. The entire Romney campaign has been based on one lie after another, as Steve Benen has taken the time to document in his series, the latest of which you can read here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXI. They've gotten away with it so far. The question is whether they're going to be allowed to continue to do so through the rest of the campaign. I'd say the answer is yes after listening to O'Donnell and Fineman pretend their hands are collectively tied to do anything to stop it. Instead they played the same "fair and balanced" game we see on Fox where they bother to point out the lies and for "balance" Michael Steele sits there and muddies the waters with bulls**t.

And this from that so-called "liberal" network, which is not liberal but the right wingers will constantly pretend it is, MSNBC.

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While discussing Florida's history of voter suppression on this Sunday's Up w/Chris Hayes, former RNC chair Michael Steele did his best to try to pretend that one, Republicans really don't want to keep people from voting and two, that there's no racism involved with what they're doing across the country with purging these voting rolls.

Thankfully we had Chris Hayes, Ari Berman and Bob Herbert there to counter Steele's arguments with some of those pesky things called "facts." Steele also did his best to try to downplay whether what's going on in Florida would make any difference in swinging an election or not. As Berman reminded him, since he's apparently chosen to ignore our very recent history, the number of people purged from the voting rolls when Bush had the state handed to him back in 2000 was twenty two times Bush's margin of victory there.

I turned this show on this morning and saw Steele on there and was really hoping he didn't remain as a guest for the entire show. So naturally he was the only one on there that didn't leave the set for the entire two hours. And this is the sort of nonsense we were treated to the entire time he was on.

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This is the type of segment on Chris Matthews' show Hardball that makes me want to just throw something at the television set. It seems Karl Rove's PAC, Crossroads GPS has a new lie filled attack ad out and the best we got with any acknowledgment of that fact in the clip above, was Cynthia Tucker calling it "a good ad" and admitting there are "a couple of lies" in it, but hey, that's just politics.

Well, that's fine and good that yes, we know politicians and people like Karl Rove tell lies, but isn't the job of reporters to let the viewers know what those lies are and why they're not true? Instead we have Matthews showing the ad and Tucker and former RNC head Michael Steele discussing which voters it's supposed to influence, and a discussion on the fact that we don't know where the money is coming from to run the ad and who is donating to these Super PACs.

I'm all for getting the money out of politics and full disclosure on these ads as all of them said they were in the segment above, but I would have appreciated a conversation about the fact that the ad doesn't just have "a couple of lies." It's packed full of them, not to mention the irony of Karl Rove not being willing to stick his name on the ad, so the unfortunate television viewers who happen to watch it will know that Rove is the one responsible for these ads blaming Obama for not cleaning up the mess his old boss left us, regardless of who's donating to his PAC.

We got a lot more honest assessment of the ad from Steve Benen today over at The Maddow Blog: The best lies money can buy:

The New York Times seems quite impressed with the latest attack ad from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, which is poised to blanket the airwaves in swing states. The Times calls it "deeply researched," "delicately worded," and "low key."

The paper neglected to mention another phrase: misleading to an offensive degree.

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