DOWNLOADS: (199)

PLAYS: (1793)

Embed

President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd on Sunday lashed out at Congress for moving so quickly to fund air traffic controllers because lawmakers were personally "about to get delayed at the airports," while they couldn't pass background checks to protect children from mass shootings.

During a panel discussion on ABC's This Week, Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile noted that Congress had rushed through a bill to avert air traffic controller furloughs caused by automatic budget cuts in the so-called sequester, but ignored the pain the cuts were causing less-wealthy Americans.

"This sequester will have real impact on real people in real time, not just members of Congress, but people that work for the park service, medical research as the NIH begin to make those cuts, it's impacting Meals on Wheels, kids who are in kindergarten," Brazile explained. "So I really do think that Congress needs to take a second look at this."

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, however, called the air traffic controller bill "a real victory for fiscal conservatism" because Congress moved funds around, instead of undoing any budget cuts.

"Doesn't that mean the politically weakest are going to bear the biggest burden?" ABC host George Stephanopolous wondered.

"Not necessarily," Gingrich insisted. "It may mean the most corrupt are going to bear the biggest burden. It may mean the dumbest are going to bear the biggest burden. When you look at a $4 trillion government, you can find lots of really stupid things to quit paying for."

But Dowd found it "amazing" that the bitterly partisan Congress could only find a way to work together when they personally faced the possibility of spending some additional time on the tarmac.

"The only way they're bipartisan is to do something for themselves," he quipped. "It's amazing the speed at which they did that. We have this horrible shooting where all these children die in Connecticut, we can't pass gun control legislation. But oh by the way, you're about to get delayed at the airport through some small budget cuts -- which I still don't understand why we make policy the way we make policy. Everybody knows there's a fiscal crisis in this country, everybody knows we don't have the revenue to meet the expenses in this country, somebody has to bear pain, but we act in Washington like nobody has to bear any pain. So as soon as anybody bears any pain, we're going to take it back from them."

"I think many members of Congress have bought into a myth that doesn't exist anymore," he added. "I think most of what's gong on in gun control is there's not this huge vehement group of people saying I'm going to defeat you if you vote for background checks, I'm going to defeat you if you vote for high-capacity magazines... What there is, though, is a group of folks in Washington that are scared of their shadow on this issue, both some Democrats and a lot of Republicans."

"The myth doesn't exist anymore, but they're afraid to go launch themselves through it and do something about it."

DOWNLOADS: (216)

PLAYS: (2532)

Embed

Former Bush adviser turned ABC contributor, Matthew Dowd was asked to weigh in during the panel segment on This Week on some the speeches at this years Conservative Political Action Conference, and didn't hold back with continuing his criticism of the decision to invite Sarah Palin to speak at the event.

Two weeks prior, Dowd complained that Palin "wasn't competent enough for Fox News" and "diminishes" CPAC. While I'd agree with him on the former, given the list of the other wingnuts who were invited to speak there as well, there wasn't much left to "diminish." Republicans have been pandering to the Christian right and the TeaBirchers in their party for decades and now that they've taken over the joint, they're complaining.

RADDATZ: Congressman, anybody make you nervous there at 2016?

BECERRA: No, no. I think...

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (54)

PLAYS: (133)

Embed

From this Sunday's This Week on ABC, former HP executive and California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina apparently believes that people's civil rights should be put up for a vote... because we all know how well that's worked out in the past. And don't dare call anyone like John Boehner insincere or uncompassionate, because heaven forbid that might hurt their feelings.

We'd hate to get weepy Boehner crying again. And God knows we can't have any of those activist judges deciding things like this. They're only supposed to act that way when it comes to writing new laws that give corporations the same rights as people my friends.

RADDATZ; Let's more on to another big topic for the Republicans this week, and that stunning announcement by Rob Portman that he now supports same-sex marriage. Obviously a personal decision for him, the only Republican senator to support same-sex marriage. George Will, does this go anywhere?

WILL: He will not be the last, because the demographic tide here is large, powerful and execrable. I have said on this program before, opposition to gay marriage is literally dying, it's an older demographic. And if you raise the question among young people, they're not interested. And I dare say this is one of the good things about CPAC. As you saw at CPAC, this was another division and again, a healthy one. It's largely young people attend CPAC. And this is not at the top of their agenda. It's not even on their agenda

RADDATZ: I might take awhile for them to die out, though, George.

DOWD: I think that there's been an amazing -- and George is right, there has been amazing -- in the last ten years, I think there's been almost a 20-point change in people's perception of gay marriage in this country. I think Rob Portman is another domino in this whole effect.

I think Republicans, any Republicans that stand in the way of this, are standing in the way of march of history on this.

Rob Portman I know well. I did debate prep with Rob Portman in years past. He's a good person. And the people that I think that have criticized him and said, oh, by the way, hHe only did it was a personal thing that affected him personally, he wasn't going to do it otherwise. To me, why do we criticize people for that? The person that started MADD, it was a personal thing. The people that -- many people who have come out against gun control have been personally affected by it. If somebody's path to the truth, or somebody's path to a place where we actually think they're open and compassionate is a personal decision, god be wtih them.

FIORINA: I think we have to be careful, because John Boehner's views, which are different from Rob Portman's views, are equally sincere. And I think when we get into trouble on this debate when we assume that people who support gay marriage are open and compassion and people who don't are not. It's why I believe the right way to solve these very personal issues is to let people vote on them, don't have judges decide it, don't even have representative government decide it, let people vote on it in the states.

I think people of both points of view, accept the democratic process. What they don't always accept is a bunch of self-important, self-appointed judges saying this is culturally the new norm.

DOWNLOADS: (168)

PLAYS: (1500)

Embed

Ah yes... Ronald Reagan... that great man of the working people and the American middle class... or at least he was in the alternative reality that is called Peggy Noonan's brain. After her predictions of "Romney rising" in the polls and that the enthusiasm factor would "carry the day" for his big win, Noonan was asked by This Week host George Stephanopoulos about the fact that the presidential election wasn't even close.

Noonan gave the audience a big dose of revisionist history on Reagan. And like most Republicans since Romney lost the election, seems to believe that Republicans don't really need to do anything differently. They just need to work on their messaging. I hate to break it to you Peggy, but it's not just the rhetoric. It's your policies. And they haven't gotten any better since Reagan did his best to help destroy our middle class.

It does seem impossible for Nooners to have a conversation about anything, without dragging out St. Ronnie's corpse to worship. It's pretty humorous given the fact that their party is so far off the cliff these days that he wouldn't make it through a GOP primary race right now.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Peggy Noonan, one of the things they're going to have to absorb is one of the points you've made is that this election in the end actually wasn't all that close, President Obama, 330 electoral votes. They're still counting the popular vote...

NOONAN: Yes, they are.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... but he's above the -- he has more than a 3 percent lead over Mitt Romney right now.

NOONAN: Yeah. I think -- I mean, from the beginning, it struck me as this is not just the re-election of a president. This is the rebuffing, if that's the right word, of the Republicans.

Look, I think there are many lessons to be learned over this election. There was a not ideal candidate. It was a not ideal campaign, et cetera, et cetera. But, yes, America is -- in America, something's always being born. It's always changing. Demographically it's changing. At the end of the day, elections are actually about ideas. They're about the stands each party takes.

The Republicans do have to sit down and say, what are we doing? And as important, how are we doing it?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (108)

PLAYS: (548)

Embed

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani found himself getting an attitude adjustment from CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Monday after he suggested that she was blaming former President George W. Bush for recent attacks that left four Americans dead in Libya.

In contrast to claims made by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's campaign, reports on Sunday indicated that for as long as ten days after the attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, the CIA told President Barack Obama that the incident stemmed from a spontaneous protest.

On Monday, Giuliani accused O'Brien of offering an "incredibly generous interpretation for the president" when she presented him with the most recent reports.

O'Brien noted that former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd said that Republicans were wrong to rush into releasing a report on Benghazi prior to the November election because it had taken "months and months" to get answers about failed intelligence that indicated Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"So, we're going to blame this on Bush too?" Giuliani snapped at the CNN host.

"You've got to stop putting words in my mouth, sir!" O'Brien shot back. "Seriously, hang on, let me finish. Because every time I ask you a question -- let me finish my point -- every time I ask you a question, you like to push back as if the question that's being posed to you is unfair, it's not. I'm a journalist. You said some things, I'm trying to get some accurate responses from you."

"It sounds to me like we are trying to blame it on Bush," Giuliani insisted again. "It's absurd to blame Benghazi on Bush."

"That's not what Matthew Dowd is saying," O'Brien pointed out. "What Matthew Dowd is saying, similar situation, talking about weapons of mass destruction. And back then -- in the same confusion -- it took a long time. Years later, we still don't know. He's not saying, blame it on President Bush. He's just saying, weeks in a place like Libya, it could take a long time before someone actually knows what exactly happened."

"We always enjoy chatting with you," she concluded. "It wakes me up, that's for sure."

DOWNLOADS: (187)

PLAYS: (2532)

Embed

As Mugsy rightfully noted, it looked like someone spiked Matt Dowd's oatmeal during this Sunday's This Week panel segment. Of course he couldn't do this without the typical Villager qualifications about "both sides" being equally horrible false equivalence for openers, but it was nice to see someone call out the Republicans' utter hypocrisy when carping about the speed of the investigations over the embassy bombing in Libya.

DOWD: George, here this is what I think is what's wrong I think in this system that we have today in which there is no pause button. And there's no time for thoughtfulness on both sides of it. Somebody says something, and we automatically throw everything at them and say, oh, I can't believe they said this. They're horrible. They have bad intentions, they're evil, or what they did. Why don't we have answers and all, that there's no point in time where we can sit back and say calmly, on both sides of the aisle, it happens on both sides.

But I think, let me just say one thing to put this Benghazi thing in context of like, why don't we have answers and where are they -- I worked for President Bush. We had a president and an administration for years made an argument about weapons of mass destruction for years, and now we've lost thousands of lives over an Iraq based on a false assumption and all of that.

This is not - there wasn't two weeks, this was months and months and months of a conversation where we never got the right answer to this. And still today, nobody in the administration at a high enough level...

SUSTEREN; And the point is that our intelligence gathering is bad.

Of course he was interrupted before he could even finish his point by Fox's Greta Van Susteren and that crook Ralph Reed, who ought to be sitting in a jail cell instead of appearing on my television screen, both carrying water for Mittens and basically ignoring what Dowd said. If 9-11 had happened on a Democrat's watch, after seeing these Republicans in action on the Libya debacle, I'm fairly sure they'd have been impeached over it.

DOWNLOADS: (128)

PLAYS: (898)

Embed

On this Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, former Bush-Cheney stategist Matthew Dowd did his best to give a little cover to Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign based on an endless string of perpetual lies by playing the 'both sides" are equally terrible game.

Sadly this is the type of false equivalency we see day in and day out from the talking heads in the media, but one of the more ridiculous ones. Since when is Romney refusing to release his tax returns the equivalent President Obama supposedly not saying we're going to have to have some "shared sacrifice" when it comes to balancing our budget?

First of all, it's not even true. Unfortunately President Obama has shown more than a willingness to make a deal with Republicans, much to the ire of much of his base, and cut some sort of "grand bargain." The side which has said they refuse to budge and raise a penny in taxes has been the Republicans. Sadly I think this was an exercise in these Villagers just dying for more austerity when our country cannot afford it and insisting on balancing the budget as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets, because Republicans have always hated them since the day any of them were enacted -- as much as it was trying to muddy the waters on Romney's lies. They want the New Deal dismantled so badly, they can taste it.

Republicans never cared one iota about the deficit when their hero George was blowing huge holes in it with his tax cuts and a couple of wars he left off the books. But now what a Democrat is back in office they're all screaming to the hills about how we're "broke."

And you've just gotta' love George Stephanopoulos here saying it's not a debate moderator's job to fact-check the people debating. Sadly that's the status quo these days, but it shouldn't be.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (297)

PLAYS: (3806)

Embed

Matthew Dowd, President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist, on Sunday said that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan "so stretched the truth" during his convention speech by suggesting that President Barack Obama was responsible for a GM plant that closed before he took office.

During a panel segment on ABC's This Week, senior Romney campaign adviser Kerry Healey noted that the false claim that Obama gutted the work requirement in welfare reform had "become so central to this race."

"What we've seen is that a unilateral action by the Obama administration saying, 'We don't feel that we need to enforce these anymore, we will release the states from enforcing the work requirement,'" she insisted. "And you can make the argument -- and I'm sure some people are spoiling to do that -- that isn't actually abandoning the core of the legislation, but it is."

Former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton shot back that Healey's assertion had been "widely debunked."

"I think there's a reason that Mitt Romney did not bring this up at his convention floor [speech]," Burton explained. "If you don't have the guts to make an argument to the American people in the light of day but you spend $10 million on it -- making it the core of your campaign -- it says something about the character of who you are, and it says something about the kind of campaign you are running."

Dowd agreed that "truth has become a casualty" throughout the 2012 presidential campaign.

"It's as if we're going to make any argument possible that's advantageous to our side in order to overcome the other side," Dowd observed. "What happened at this convention is that nobody is calling [Republicans] on it. Paul Ryan, what he did in his speech, I think so stretched the truth -- and I like Paul Ryan and I have a lot of respect for Paul Ryan -- but the elements of what he said, closing the GM plant, which closed before Barack Obama took president [sic], about the Simpson-Bowles bill, which he opposed and you see, all of the sudden, he faults Barack Obama for."

"It some point, the truth should matter," he added. "When anybody that was watching that, that didn't know the facts of it, anybody watching that speech -- just like the welfare thing -- anybody coming away from that believes one thing. ... He was trying to say Barack Obama was responsible the closing of the GM plant and that isn't true."

(h/t: Think Progress)

DOWNLOADS: (112)

PLAYS: (482)

Embed

A senior adviser to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign on Sunday lamented that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had "embarrassed" the U.S. by insulting Britain as they kicked off the Olympic games last week.

Robert Gibbs told ABC's Matthew Dowd that Romney had disgraced himself "in front of our strongest ally in the world."

"Look, Mitt Romney wondered aloud whether London was ready for the Olympics, and I think it's clear that voters in this country wonder aloud whether Mitt Romney is ready for the world," Gibbs quipped. "And I think the world is not yet ready for Mitt Romney."

"Literally to go overseas, stand in the county of our strongest ally -- in the Olympics that they had been preparing years for -- and question whether or not they're ready does make you wonder whether or not he ready to be commander in chief."

"I thought it was embarrassing for our country," Gibbs added.

In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams last week, Romney had offended Brits when he suggested that London wasn’t ready for the games.

“It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out,” the candidate said. “There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials — that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”

During a torch lighting ceremony, London Mayor Boris Johnson made a point of calling out Romney by name in front of tens of thousands of people.

“There are some people coming from around the world who don’t yet know about all the preparations we’ve done to get London ready in the last seven years,” Johnson told the massive crowd in Hyde Park. “There’s a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we’re ready.”

“Are we ready? Are we ready? Yes, we are!”

Even conservative Prime Minister David Cameron took a jab at Romney's 2002 games in Salt Lake City, saying, "Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere."

The next day, the British press panned the GOP hopeful as “devoid of charm, offensive and a wazzock.”

“Good old Mitt,” The Guardian‘s Paul Harris tweeted. “His charm offensive in the UK failed to be charming, but he really pulled off the offensive bit.”

(h/t: Politico)

DOWNLOADS: (68)

PLAYS: (181)

Embed

On ABC's This Week, former George W. Bush chief campaign strategist and constant false equivalency purveyor of the "both sides are equally terrible" meme, when it's been obvious for some time that it's his side and those that voted for his former boss that are the biggest problem when it comes to everything that's wrong with our government, once again attempted to revise history with these remarks.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... address the other question coming this morning. You're hearing this a lot at the National Governors Association from Republican governors right now, they're saying, fine, if Mitt Romney wants to get -- whatever he does on the tax returns, what he needs to do is come out with a much more specific, much bolder agenda.

DOWD: What I actually think he needs to do -- he's got a 59-point plan or a 62-point plan or whatever. He needs a three-point plan. I mean, the problem in politics is not too many specifics. The problem in politics is, how do you pare it down with a vision and a message that the average person can lean over their back fence or talk on the front porch and say, "I like what Mitt Romney has to say about X, Y and Z, not X, Y, Z, A, B, C, one, two, three, four, five, six"? He needs a much more limited -- a limited message.

But the other thing I think he has a problem with is that most of his economic plan feels like it's retread of something from 25 years ago. It feels like what we're going to give you is more tax cuts, what we're going to give you is less government regulation, what we're going to give you is this, and it feels like it's something in the time gone by.

And I think a lot of the middle class, as James' book says and as James says, a lot of the middle class thinks all of those solutions aren't going to help us, all of those things aren't going to help us. I would take his 59-point plan, throw it out, and figure out a three- or five-point plan that basically addressed what we want to do in the next five years.

Sorry Matt, but the problem is not too many specifics. The problem is that it's not a "retread of something from 25 years ago." It's a retread of your old boss and his failed policies and we've been down that road before with that it meant for our economy. It's a retread of trickle-down economics that your party has been pushing for well over 25 years that we know does not work.

And it's a symptom of a party that has allowed themselves to be taken over by their Libertarian wing that thinks it's survival of the fittest, you're on your own, government has no role to play for the good of our society, and you'd better be ready to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or you can just starve. And don't dare ask the rich to pay another dime in taxes in the mean time or you're harming the "job creators."

Dowd apparently thinks that everyone who watches this show has no memory whatsoever of what his former boss did while in office, or that he worked for him. And if anyone was counting on Stephanopoulos to do his job and point any of that out, they'll be sorely disappointed since his job is to be a propagandist rather than attempt to actually report anything that could be considered "news."