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You can add Liz Cheney's name to the list of Republicans that aren't in any mood to help poor old Reince and the rest of them out with their latest farce of a "rebranding" effort. As Steve Benen noted, Cheney's op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's rag this week is laughably delusional. I'd qualify that by saying it would be were it not for the fact that this woman is actually taken seriously by so many: Cheney slips further down the rabbit hole:

The point of Liz Cheney's Wall Street Journal op-ed today is fairly predictable and not altogether uncommon among far-right activists -- she wants the Republican Party to resist the urge to become more mainstream, and instead "fight" harder against the GOP's real and imagined enemies. But in execution, Cheney's piece is a rather extraordinary work of delusion.

Jon Chait highlights some of the more glaring problems with the op-ed -- he uses it to argue, persuasively, that Cheney is "obviously stark raving mad" -- which reads like a bizarre rant from a partisan so filled with rage towards President Obama that reason was thrown out the window when the writer made a right-hand turn into Crazy Town. Cheney is certain, for reasons that remain mysterious, that Obama has "launched a war on Americans' Second Amendment rights," is deliberately sabotaging capitalism, and wants to destroy the nation's global standing on purpose.

It's a truly ridiculous tirade with all the sophistication and accuracy of a Breitbart comments section. But there's also an unintentionally amusing part -- Cheney's unhinged rant includes this Ronald Reagan quote from 1961:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well-taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

This is, to be sure, a popular quote on the right, and if it seems familiar to long-time readers, it's because I've written about it several times before.

In this case, however, Cheney forgot to look up the context in which Reagan made these comments before relying on it. Indeed, note that at one point in the quote, Reagan said, "And if you and I don't do this," although in Cheney's piece, there's no frame of reference to tell the reader what "this" is.

And what was Reagan referring to at the time? I'm glad you asked. "This" was referring to preventing the creation of Medicare. [...]

And so, freedom-loving Americans had to stop Medicare or we "may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

Yes, that evil Medicare that's going to enslave everyone, just like, as Steve also noted, Social Security, and now "Obamacare." Chait's column which Steve referenced is worth a full read as well which you can find here: Liz Cheney Is Even More Bonkers Than We Suspected.

Emily Arrowood and Simon Maloy also took the op-ed apart over at Media Matters: Liz Cheney: Get Over 2012 And Start Embracing Romneyism :

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On this tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, both Joe Scarborough and Luke Russert attempted to do a bit of revisionist history this Tuesday morning on MSNBC and Salon's Alex Pareene did a fine job of taking them apart for it.

MSNBC selectively remembers the Iraq War:

Updated: Morning Joe and Luke Russert leave out some important context. Like how much MSNBC pushed for war

MSNBC today ran two very interesting segments addressing the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. In one, Luke Russert interviewed veteran NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel on the state of Iraq today (spoiler: not great). In another, Joe Scarborough hosted a large panel to discus how the Iraq War happened and what went wrong.

The Russert segment is sort of bizarre, referring to “that big anniversary” and completely ignoring the reasons the Iraq War started. It concludes — after Engel explains how Iraq is once again in a sectarian civil war — with Russert essentially asserting the inevitability of a military strike against Iran, saying they could be “months” away from building nuclear weapons. [...]

Both of these segments show how incredibly little anyone learned from very recent history. [...]

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On the ten year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, there has been an awful lot of naval gazing by our media, sadly with most of it being revisionist history on what happened during the run up to that invasion and occupation, with a lot of glossing over just how complicit the media was in helping the neocons beat the war drums. And as Jeremy Scahill noted during this interview on Martin Bashir's show, there's still a lot to answer for by our politicians on both sides of the aisles -- but in particular, the neocons and Bush administration.

It's too bad there wasn't any accountability for his fellow guest on the program, Michael O'Hanlon, who supported the invasion and who was as guilty as the rest of them with enabling the neocons. Scahill sadly didn't go after O'Hanlon, but I appreciate what he was given a chance to say during the segment.

SCAHILL: People like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith should not be able to show their faces in public in this country without being confronted with what they did to Iraq. I mean, the reality is... having spent time in Iraq throughout the '90's... many of the Iraqis I knew are dead. Many of the Iraqis that survived the war are displaced and with the millions of others that have been displaced.

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Color me not shocked that Fox is carrying water for wingnut Sen. Ted Cruz and his dishonest attack on former Sen. Chuck Hagel during yesterday's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense. Sean Hannity opened up his show by replaying part of Cruz' cheap shot at Hagel earlier that day.

Fox's Hannity Lauds Sen. Cruz' Deceptive Attack On Chuck Hagel:

Fox News host Sean Hannity applauded Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for his attack on Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, claiming that Cruz' questioning during the Hagel's hearing demonstrated that he had made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments. But Cruz' claim that Hagel had accused Israel of a "sickening slaughter" was based on distorted quotes from heavily-cropped sound clips.

On the January 31 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity aired a portion of Hagel's confirmation hearing in which Cruz referenced an Israeli attack on Hezbollah and claimed that Hagel described Israel's actions as a "sickening slaughter." Cruz went on to ask, "Do you think it's right that Israel was committing, quote, a 'sickening slaughter,' as you said on the floor of the Senate?": [...]

Despite Hannity's approval of Cruz' line of questioning, Hagel was not accusing Israel of engaging in a "sickening slaughter" of Lebanon, he was decrying the escalation of violence by all parties in the region. As Slate's Dave Weigel points out, Hagel "described the conflict that way--a sickening slaughter was occurring --blaming both sides, and quickly following up by criticizing Iran and invoking the 'special relationship.' Cruz's truncation of the quote completely changed the meaning." [...]

Hannity also applauded a portion of the hearings in which Cruz used deceptively edited footage again to claim Hagel called the U.S. the bullies of the world after playing edited sound clips of an interview Hagel conducted in 2009. Hannity aired Cruz dismissing Hagel's denials, and called Cruz' questioning a "checkmate" on Hagel: [...]

In fact, the full context of the statements made by Hagel were not presented during the hearing, nor later on Hannity's show.

And who did Hannity follow up with to continue his dishonest attack on Hagel? None other than Liz Cheney -- because God knows we can't have a discussion on national security or foreign policy on Fox without getting the neocon point of view.

Hannity and Cheney called Hagel about every name in the book and implied that he was feckless after hearing his testimony today. That's pretty rich coming from Bush administration cheerleader Hannity and the daughter of someone who likely qualifies as one of, if not the worst Vice Presidents -- someone who dishonored the office in which he served. Both of them actually believe that Donald Rumsfeld did a good job as Secretary of Defense.

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Lindsey Graham refused to say whether he'd filibuster the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of State, but he did guarantee we'd see plenty of kicking and screaming out of the neocons who think that anyone who didn't agree with them on our invasion of Iraq is "out of the mainstream."

Graham: Hagel Pick An ‘In Your Face’ Nomination:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday that former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Obama's likely pick for secretary of defense, would be a problematic choice, particularly regarding to his positions on Israel and Iran.

"He has long severed his ties with the Republican Party," Graham said during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union." "This is an 'in your face' nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel.'

"It looks like the second term of Barack Obama is going to be an 'in your face' term," Graham added.

"Quite frankly, Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking I believe on most issues regarding foreign policy," he said.

(Daniel Ellsberg debates Bill Kristol on C-SPAN, Mar 28, 2003)

Now that all of the neocons are worked up over the possibility that former Sen. Chuck Hagel might be nominated to be our next Sec. of Defense, it seems there's a little dust up going on between documentary film maker Michael Moore and Iraq war cheerleader, Bloody Bill Kristol.

I Want to Give $1000 to Bill Kristol's Favorite Charity – If He'll Just Tell the Truth About Iraq, Oil and Chuck Hagel:

I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.

Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.

Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)

• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." – Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was…while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.")

• "Of course we should go to war for oil. It's like saying, you're going to war just for oxygen, just for food. We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." – Ann Coulter, author, April 11, 2011. (Watch her say that here at 37:30.)

• "Of course it’s about oil, it's very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that. From the standpoint of a solider who's now fought in the middle east for six years – my son-in-law's fought there for four years, my daughter's been over there, my son has served the nation – my family has been fighting for a long time." – Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM, October 13, 2007. (Watch Abizaid say this here.)

• "We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil." – Midge Decter, author, May 21, 2004. (Listen here, at 35:55.)

I like to think the best about people. I know all you're looking for is an open, honest debate about Chuck Hagel's qualifications – with absolutely no smears or bullying. And because you feel that way, I'm sure you'll want to update what you wrote about Hagel with these quotes, and explain that Alan Greenspan and Ann Coulter and John Abizaid and Midge Decter are vulgar and disgusting and far-left too. Read on...

Digby has more on Moore's post and Midge Decter here: All the neocon Hippies:

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From Go Left TV's Ring of Fire, Mike Papantonio with a reminder after this Monday's final presidential debate, about just who Mitt Romney is surrounding himself with as foreign policy advisers. It's George W. Bush/Dick Cheney all over again.

Mike Papantonio talks about how Mitt Romney's pitiful performance in the foreign policy debate, and why it should scare American voters.

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With the final presidential debate on foreign policy coming up this Monday, Rachel Maddow again reminded us of the fact that Mitt Romney, with no real experience of his own, is just reassembling George Bush's foreign policy team and hoped that this is a topic that is finally discussed during the debate on Monday evening.

Maddow again featured too wrong to fail, Dan Senor, who's been traveling around working with vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on the campaign trail for now. And she took the viewers through the long list of other Bushies who Mitt Romney has hired.

For more on that, here's some recommended reading.

From Ari Berman at The Nation: Mitt Romney's Neocon War Cabinet:

Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.” On some key issues, like Iran, Romney and his team are to the right of Bush. Romney’s embrace of the neoconservative cause—even if done cynically to woo the right—could turn into a policy nightmare if he becomes president. [...]

Romney knew little about foreign policy when he ran for president in 2008. An internal dossier of John McCain’s presidential campaign said at the time that “Romney’s foreign affairs resume is extremely thin, leading to credibility problems.” After being branded as too liberal by conservative GOP activists four years ago, Romney aligned himself with Bolton and other neocons in 2012 to protect his right flank. Today there’s little daylight between the candidate and his most militant advisers. “When you read the op-eds and listen to the speeches, it sounds like Romney’s listening to the John Bolton types more than anyone else,” says Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for national security at the Center for American Progress. (The Romney campaign’s openly gay foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell, who had been an indefatigable defender of Bolton as the latter’s PR flack in the Bush years, was forced to resign after harsh attacks by anti-gay conservatives.)

Bolton is one of eight Romney advisers who signed letters drafted by the Project for a New American Century, an influential neoconservative advocacy group founded in the 1990s, urging the Clinton and Bush administrations to attack Iraq. PNAC founding member Paula Dobriansky, leading advocate of Bush’s ill-fated “freedom agenda” as an official in the State Department, recently joined the Romney campaign full time. Another PNAC founder, Eliot Cohen, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, wrote the foreword to the Romney campaign’s foreign policy white paper, which was titled, perhaps not coincidentally, “An American Century.” Cohen was a tutor to Bush administration neocons. Following 9/11, he dubbed the war on terror “World War IV,” arguing that Iraq, being an “obvious candidate, having not only helped Al Qaeda, but…developed weapons of mass destruction,” should be its center. In 2009 Cohen urged the Obama administration to “actively seek the overthrow” of Iran’s government. Read on...

From Kimball at Daily KOS: The vital narrative of the next debate:

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As TPM reported this Thursday evening, CBS News’ Jan Crawford sat down with Mitt Romney for an interview that is scheduled to air in full this Friday and Romney gave President Obama an "F' on foreign policy.

Despite Bin Laden, Romney Gives Obama An ‘F’ On Foreign Policy:

In an interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford scheduled to air later tonight, Mitt Romney gives President Obama an ‘F’ grade on foreign policy, even when considering the successful raid on and death of Osama bin Laden.

“Oh an ‘F’, there’s no question about that,” Romney tells Crawford.

“Even despite the killing of Osama bin Laden?” asks Crawford.

“When I look at foreign policy, when I look at across the board in foreign policy, I look at the fact that he was looking to have a force of American troops staying in Iraq securing what was so hard to have been won there with a status of forces agreement - he failed to achieve it,” Romney explained. “I look at what’s happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring has become the Arab Winter - that’s hardly a success.”

As we've already noted here Romney's idea of what makes for deciding on what is good foreign policy is to bring back in all of the Bush neocons to show us once again just how successful taking these same people's advice was under President Obama's predecessor and to constantly beat the drum for more military intervention as a first resort across the globe and for more military spending, and the cuts to domestic spending and our social safety nets as a result be damned.

It's astounding to me that those in the media refuse to acknowledge the recent history of just how disastrous Bush's policies were and why they're not asking Romney why he thinks taking advice from the same people who advocated for invading Iraq and Afghanistan is a good idea or who he should be hiring.

If Mitt Romney thinks President Obama deserves an "F" on foreign policy, I wonder what grade he thinks we ought to be giving him?

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Here we go again with these neocons pushing for the United States to get involved in another war in the Middle East. From this Wednesday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, too wrong to fail former George W. Bush adviser who is now advising the Romney campaign, Dan Senor joined Mitchell to carp about the United States not doing enough to try to stop the violence in Syria and called for arming the rebels there.

Never mind they're not an organized group and that arming them may just end up escalating the violence there, or that we might be starting a proxy war with Russia by doing so, these Bushies have never found an armed conflict they didn't want the United States to get involved in. Senor's statements here reek of political opportunism and another excuse to attack the Obama administration.

And never mind that this is the same guy who was the one out there telling everyone how wonderfully things were going in Iraq when the opposite was true. No matter how terribly wrong these neocons have been about our policies in the Middle East under the Bush administration, they're still going to be treated as credible by our media.

Senor and his fellow neocons have been carping like this for some time now. Here's more from Foreign Policy Magazine on the letter they sent to the Obama administration in February: Conservatives call for Obama to intervene in Syria:

Fifty-six leading conservative foreign-policy experts wrote an open letter Friday to U.S. President Barack Obama calling on him to directly aid the Syrian opposition and protect the lives of Syrian civilians.

"For eleven months now, the Syrian people have been dying on a daily basis at the hands of their government as they seek to topple the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad. As the recent events in the city of Homs-in which hundreds of Syrians have been killed in a matter of days-have shown, Assad will stop at nothing to maintain his grip on power," wrote the experts.

"Unless the United States takes the lead and acts, either individually or in concert with like-minded nations, thousands of additional Syrian civilians will likely die, and the emerging civil war in Syria will likely ignite wider instability in the Middle East."

They got their title wrong. It should have read PNAC neocons call for Obama to intervene. Here's the list of those so-called "experts" that signed the letter.

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