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Okay, let me get this straight. Apparently, according to Politico's John Harris, running ads against Mitt Romney for things that are true, like the fact that he is out of touch with most Americans and their struggles and that his time at Bain Capital just reinforces that, is somehow "personal," but Romney running lying ads about President Obama supposedly gutting welfare work requirements, calling him a "food stamp president" and diving into birtherism is somehow either not "personal" or it's not even worth mentioning during this segment on The Chris Matthews Show.

Here's Harris responding to Matthews asking him about their recent article: Verdict is in: Obama levels more personal attacks.

MATTHEWS: You know I thought John that Bill Clinton gave a heck of a punching kind of speech. He had every one of the Republican points, punched back at them. And the question is, how negative are they going to get? You say they're running... in your recent piece at Politico, you say that the Obama campaign is running a personal assault on whether this guy Romney is even qualified to be president.

HARRIS: The essence of what Obama's doing is to say Mitt Romney is just at a personal level not credible as a potential president of the United States because of his personal values – too greedy – his personal experience is too disconnected from the concerns of average Americans.

I'm not trying to give a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to the Romney campaign. They too are running an intensely negative campaign. It's not based so much on Obama's personal characteristics, his values, or that he is somehow, in some sort of fundamentally way... fundamental way, corrupt. Where as, the Obama people are calling Romney a charlatan, suggesting that he might be a felon because of how he's handled the Bain issue as Stephanie Cutter did. That's aimed at tearing him down personally.

But I don't have any sympathy for Romney. That's what he did in the Republican... he did that to Santorum and he did it to Gingrich.

The Politico article does admit that there are a bunch of personal attacks that have been waged against President Obama from others on the right, but they ignore or lie about the fact that many of them have come directly from the Romney campaign and they also give Romney a pass for not doing more to refute those on the right who have been happy to push those lies or to stand up to the extremists in his own party.

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On this weekend's The Chris Matthews Show, while discussing whether the Obama campaign might attempt to use Mitt Romney's Mormonism against him during the presidential campaign and the trouble Romney has had openly discussing his faith, panel member S.E. Cupp had this explanation for why Romney's religion might not be a problem for him:

CUPP: Second, you know, G.K. Chesterton said that the test of any good religion is whether you can make fun of it or not. And, you know, Mormonism has really come into its own in pop culture, whether you're looking at The Book of Mormon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or Big Love. I mean, Mormonism, as uneasy as America may have been about it in the past, I think it's having a pretty good day this year in pop culture. Mormons are kind of everywhere. So I don't know that it's as impenetrable and clandestine as it used to be.

I used to think Matthews' show on the weekend couldn't get a whole lot worse with the typical group of beltway Villagers he has as regular guests. I was wrong. This is the second show where he's had Cupp on there. I'm failing to follow the logic here. So somehow, a Broadway musical and a show on a cable premium pay channel, HBO, are Mormons being “everywhere?” And if I'm not mistaken, I don't think the church was exactly thrilled to put it mildly about either of these productions.

Sorry, but I don't think either is going to have a thing to do with the average voter, or anyone else for that matter, potentially being more comfortable with Romney's religion. As the other guests on there did point out a little later in the discussion, the hatred of President Obama is the one thing that will allow the Evangelical voters out there to get over Romney's religion and vote for him in the general election after snubbing him during the primary races. It's not going to be because of what those “elitists” in New York or Hollywood are doing and because they've made a play and a cable series making fun of the Mormon Church.

I haven't seen the play, but I watched Big Love on HBO and it sure didn't make me feel any more comfortable about the Mormon Church and their history of polygamy. I'm sure Romney doesn't want to remind anyone of that since it's not that far back in his own family's history where polygamy was practiced as well.

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Politico on Thursday suspended their veteran White House correspondent after several conservative websites complained that he had observed that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appeared to be more comfortable when he's around white people.

During a Thursday discussion with MSNBC's Martin Bashir about why Romney was trailing President Barack Obama among minorities, Politico's Joe Williams, who is black, noted that the candidate was most relaxed and unscripted on Fox & Friends where the people were white like him.

"It’s very interesting that he does so many appearances on Fox & Friends," Williams pointed out. "And it’s unscripted. It’s the only time they let Mitt off the leash, so to speak."

He continued: "But it also points out a larger problem he’s got to solve if he wants to be successful come this fall: Romney is very, very comfortable, it seems, with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in some town hall settings, why he can’t relate to people other than that."

"But when he comes on Fox & Friends, they’re like him. They’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company."

In a report on their website on Friday, Politico pointed to conservative websites Washington Free Beacon and Breitbart.com for flagging the remarks on MSNBC and tweets where Williams allegedly mocked Romney's wealth.

"Regrettably, an unacceptable number of Joe Williams's public statements on cable and Twitter have called into question his commitment to this responsibility," founders John Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote in a memo to Politico staff. "His comment about Governor Romney earlier today on MSNBC fell short of our standards for fairness and judgment in an especially unfortunate way."

"This appearance came in the context of other remarks on Twitter that, cumulatively, require us to make clear that our standards are serious, and so are the consequences for disregarding them. This is true for all POLITICO journalists, including an experienced and well-respected voice like Joe Williams."

"POLITICO journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias," they added.

According to The New York Times, Romney has appeared on Fox & Friends 21 times in the last year alone.

(h/t: Mediaite)

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It appears Gov. Rick Perry has decided to double down on his previous statements that Social Security was a "monstrous lie" and a "Ponzi scheme" for young people who are paying into the program now. Perry also went after Karl Rove who criticized Perry's remarks on Social Security as being "toxic."

When asked to respond to Perry's statements, Mitt Romney disagreed and although he said he agreed that the program had some funding problems, he felt the GOP should not be scaring seniors and that their nominee should be someone committed to saving the program rather than abolishing it.

I think Perry just did his best to make sure he's completely unelectable in the general election after his first debate. Even though Romney said he did not agree with Perry's statements on Social Security, he did not bother to remind him the program is projected to be fully solvent until 2037 and after that expected to pay out roughly seventy five percent of benefits, nor did he remind him of that the actual definition of a Ponzi scheme is.

HARRIS: Governor Perry, you said you wrote the book "Fed Up" to start a conversation. Congratulations. It's certainly done that in recent weeks.

In the book, you call Social Security the best example of a program that "violently tossed aside any respect for states' rights." We understand your position that it's got funding problems now. I'd like you to explain your view that Social Security was wrong right from the beginning.

PERRY: Well, I think any of us that want to go back and change 70 years of what's been going on in this country is probably going to have a difficult time. And rather than spending a lot of time talking about what those folks were doing back in the '30s and the '40s, it's a nice intellectual conversation, but the fact is we have got to be focussed on how we're going to change this program.

And people who are on Social Security today, men and women who are receiving those benefits today, are individuals at my age that are in line pretty quick to get them, they don't need to worry about anything. But I think the Republican candidates are talking about ways to transition this program, and it is a monstrous lie.

It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right.

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Looks like the Villagers are finally willing to admit that Sarah the grifter isn't running for anything other than trying to line her own pockets after the WTF moment on Fox News this week.

MATTHEWS: Wow… this brings us to our big question of the week, “Is Sarah Palin hurting Republican hopes of beating Obama?” Rick Stengel, just her whole manner, WTF, those people who use their Blackberries know what that means I guess.

STENGEL: You can’t say that on air right? Look, I think the White House, Democrats think that she’s hurting Republicans. They like the fact that there’s this kind of schism in the party. The thing that I find interesting about it and I don’t know if everybody agrees, its like, where’s her learning curve, right? I mean from the time she was nominated, the last couple of years you’d think she would become sort of more sophisticated about talking…

MATTHEWS: Do you think the curve is going the other way?

STENGEL: I don’t know. Maybe the people who like her don’t want her to have a learning curve. Maybe we are the only ones who do.

MATTHEWS: That is so smart.

MITCHELL: I don’t know if she’s hurting the Republican Party as a party. She’s hurting herself. She is really trivializing herself. She’s marginalizing herself. She’s not presidential and maybe it helps to sell books, but that hasn’t been the case actually in the last cycle. So I think she’s hurting herself and potentially other Republicans.

MATTHEWS: Does this square with running for president even? Does it square for being presidential, the doom comments that are sort of off color, the WTF, things like that.

COOPER: No it doesn’t, but I don’t think that this is necessarily about Sarah Palin being president. It’s much more about the Republican Party and what it does and I think, yes, to a certain extent. But I think the people who love Palin, love Palin and that’s not going to… you know… that’s not going to go away.

MATTHEWS: Bigger question, they put all these people up like Glenn Beck and her and Bachmann. They’re becoming sort of the spokes people, whether they like it… I think they do like it for their point of view. But does that hurt their chance of selling the American people that that point of view should rule the country?

HARRIS: Good for business for them but not good for the Republican Party. She’s not going to hurt the Republican Party long term Chris, because she’s not going to run. So the great 2011 preoccupation but by the fall I think it will be more a more serious race and she won’t be in it.

MATTHEWS: Will the people on the right accept that?

HARRIS: I think they will.

MATTHEWS: The disappearance of their heroes.

HARRIS: Look even among the Republican Party in polls they show that almost a majority don’t want her to run for president and think she’s not qualified.

MATTHEWS: Well said.

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I always find it interesting to see how some of these so called journalists react when they're asked questions that don't fall into their scripted talking points of the week. C-SPAN aired Politico's weekly "Turn the Table" Sunday show preview which featured David Gregory, Candy Crowley, Bob Schieffer and Christiane Amanpour. A woman who identified herself as someone who works in alternative media asked the panel these questions.

Q: One, the Tea Party, are they Republicans? Because, have I seen where they have been placed on the ballot as a separate party like the Green Party or the Communist Party; is the Tea Party Republican? And a question to all of you in the media that I've not heard mentioned at all, the two largest embassies that have been built in the world in Iraq and Haiti, I've not heard any of the media, in terms of mainstream media talk about those at all. That's a lot of government and money.

David Gregory dismissed the size of our massive embassy in Iraq and simply said that if she was concerned about that the bigger issue is how much money we're spending on the "wars" and that the embassy was "just a symbol of that" and the concerns should go well beyond those buildings. While I don't necessarily disagree with that it doesn't excuse the lack of coverage over the waste and other problems involved in building the embassy in Iraq, the costs, and what it means in terms of our endless military occupations.

Gregory and the other panelists then said this about the so called "Tea Party":

GREGORY: I think the Tea Party's goal in life is to rehabilitate the Republican Party, so yes, they're part of the Republican Party.

SCHIEFFER: And they ran as Republicans. I mean they ran in the Republican primaries and I think one of the things that there was a sigh of relief for Republicans is they did not try to run as independents.

HARRIS: Yeah, Bob implicit in that question and I think is a pretty valid point is it seemed like many of the Tea Party activists, the people most motivated in this election care a lot more about their ideological agenda than they do the Republican brand. In many cases it seemed to me that they were as contemptuous of Republicans and sort of Washington political professionals as they were Democratic political pros.

SCHIEFFER: But they ran as Republicans.

HARRIS: Right.

SCHIEFFER: I mean they ran in Republican primaries and they were elected as Republicans.

HARRIS: Right...right... right.

SCHIEFFER: Yes, they want to change the Republican Party.

AMANPOUR: Jim DeMint said, and maybe he said it to you "We'd rather have people with principle" than just any Republican.

CROWLEY: Well it was something like that. Thirty true believers and sixty are Arlen Specters.

That's more of an admission out of any of them than you normally get on the air where they're more than happy to help the Republicans out by participating in their re-branding effort and pretending that the "Tea Party" is not just the far right wing of the Republican Party and ignoring their corporate backers like the Koch brothers.

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David Shuster talks to John Harris about the interview Dick Cheney gave to his pals over at Politico.

From Think Progress:

The reality is that it is the policies that Cheney has fought so hard for over the years that have made America less safe. His scare tactics are nothing more than an attempt to salvage his own conscience.

And Steve Benen notes:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was a national disgrace and an embarrassment to himself while in office, but he's not quite done engaging in some of the cheapest, most offensive, least honest demagoguery imaginable.

Previous national leaders, once they leave office, usually maintain some sense of decorum, refraining from attacking their successors. Cheney waited just two weeks before accusing the Obama administration of coddling terrorists and putting American lives at risk. Classy.

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From Face the Nation Nov. 9, 2008. Following his interview with Raum Emanuel Bob Schieffer talks to David Brooks and John Harris about what Obama does once elected and Brooks says that he took away from Emanuel's interview that the Democrats are going to try to move too quickly and get everything done at once and that it will "freak people out" if he does that. Harris reminds him that would not happen even if he wanted it to with the make up of the Congress. So again we have more of this don't dare to possibly do what the people elected you to do, or at least don't try to do it too quickly or you'll be punished for it. I'm sure with Republicans determined to obstruct before Obama is even sworn in that won't be a problem.

What's really astounding about this segment though is that Brooks then goes on to say that the Republican party has no belief system, it's a circular firing squad and adds that the conservative movement has failed because it hasn't addressed the problems of today.