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After a stinging election night defeat, President George W. Bush's former White House secretary still says that the Republican Party will never support LGBT rights and reproductive rights for women.

"The big issue that Republicans are going to have to wrestle with is the Hispanic issue," Ari Fleischer explained after President Barack Obama's defeat of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney made it clear that the country was more liberal than he had expected.

"It's not the social issues," he insisted. "You're not going to make the party pro-choice and pro-gay rights and think you've made the Republican party the party that's the popular party. We have a party like that. It's the Democratic Party."

"But the Republican Party used to be against abortion," CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted. "In the past year, they have become identified with opposition to contraception. That is, you know, moving backwards at a pace that is astonishing and politically disastrous."

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This has to be one of the more pitiful segments that I've had the unfortunate circumstance of watching for a while now. Anderson Cooper really should be ashamed of himself for allowing Mary Matalin and Ari Fleischer get away with this ridiculous defense of Rush Limbaugh where they decided to start attacking Arianna Huffington for a satirical piece posted at her web site, The Huffington Post.

Here's the offending piece that apparently had Fleischer and Matalin worked into a tizzy -- The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum.

And here's his response which was also posted there as well where he explains what he wrote and why he wrote it -- Dear Catholics: I Am Heartily Sorry, etc.:

Actually, I'm not sorry at all, but I suppose an explanation is in order.

Last week, I wrote a piece with the somewhat provocative title "The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum." The purpose was to take Santorum to task for his persistent and opportunistic attacks on the faith of others, in particular his dog whistle references to President Obama's "phony ideology" and his assertion that it is impossible to be a Christian and liberal. My criticism took the form of a ridiculously over-the-top broadside against Roman Catholicism, a demonstration of the type of vicious religious ignorance and intolerance I too often see coming from too many so-called Christians, especially Santorum. [...]

I won't say that Catholics need to lighten up or learn to take a joke, because the piece wasn't intended to be light-hearted or funny. It was satire, meaning... well, you can look that up. (It was probably a mistake to put it in the Comedy section; the editors wanted readers to know it was not to be taken literally.)

It's traditional at this point for me to half-apologize, to say that I'm sorry if anybody was offended, but I really don't mind if anybody was offended. I hope they will now think twice before they question the faith of progressive Christians, or Mormons or Muslims. I doubt they will.

Apparently that was completely lost on Matalin and Fleischer as well, or maybe not and they know full well the piece was satire and their only defense of Limbaugh is to distract, attack and lay it on thick with the false equivalencies. And note to Maria Cardona here, the correct answer for Fleischer when he ambushes you with a question about something you haven't read is to say you haven't seen it and won't comment on it until you do and you'd be happy to discuss it later after you look at what he's talking about instead of ceding ground to their attacks.

A writer that most people have not heard of at Huffington's site writing a piece of satire and his response after the fact explaining what he did and why is in no way the same as Rush Limbaugh's nasty, personal attacks on Sandra Fluke and Fleischer and Matalin know it.

And speaking of Ari Fleischer, why is anyone listening to anything this man has to say about women's reproductive rights or contraception after that sage advice he was paid to give the Komen foundation?

And one last note to Cooper and Cardona, someone needs to call Matalin out when she conflates contraception with abortion like her buddy Rove did a little while back.

h/t Digby

Transcript below the fold.

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During some of CNN's follow up to the potentially final Republican primary debate this Wednesday night, Anderson Cooper asked former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer what he thought about Newt Gingrich's statement during the debate that "the elite media" didn't ask President Obama about a vote he took back in 2008 as a Senator that would have made "infanticide legal."

Rather than point out, as TPM noted that Gingrich's inflammatory rhetoric was dubious at best, Fleischer decided to go on an attack of the media as well, and asked if the same sort of "hardball" questions of a similar ilk were asked of the Democratic candidates back when President Obama and Hillary Clinton were embroiled in their primary race.

Sorry Ari, but Newt didn't get a "hardball" question. Here's what John King asked Gingrich that he thought was such a tough question:

KING: Let's get right back to questioning the four contenders for the Republican nomination. We take a question now from cnnpolitics.com. You can see it up on the screen here.

Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control, and if not, why? As you can see -- it's a -- it's a very popular question in the audience, as we can see. Look, we're not going to spend a ton of time on this but it is -- please.

So apparently asking someone whether they believe women should be allowed to use birth control in the wake of Republicans attacking women's ability to afford to have access contraception is now considered "hardball."

This coming from the same man that was overpaid by the Susan G. Komen foundation for such sage advice as their recent attack on Planned Parenthood, which somehow never seems to be a topic for discussion at CNN when they're got him on there.

Why CNN thinks any of us should care what this overpaid Bush lackey and apologist who's obviously on the wrong side of women's reproductive rights if he thinks he can make a buck off of it has to say about anything that involves women's health, ever, is beyond me, but it just looks like just more of CNN's continued move to do their best to become Fox-lite.

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While discussing how the Mitt Romney campaign is going to respond to Newt Gingrich winning the South Carolina Republican primary race and how it was he managed to win there, we got this bit of infinite wisdom shared with us by one of CNN's panelists, Republican “strategist” Alex Castellanos on how Mittens can play the “tough guy” just like Gingrich did during the debates leading into this third primary race.

CASTELLANOS: There's more to it than that you know. We don't know what a president will be faced with. You want somebody in that chair who can handle big things. Newt Gingrich got attacked. He demonstrated tremendous strength. Mitt Romney, next time somebody accuses him of closing down a steel mill should say “Yeah, I'm that guy and you know what? I'd do it again. I'd hate to do it... I'd hate to do it, it would hurt, but somebody needs to go to Washington and I think I can replace most of these buildings in here with like three good web sites.”

We've got to change this country dramatically . He's that kind of guy. He does transformational things.

I don't know about anyone else but the kind of “transformation” that Castellanos is talking about here is not exactly the kind most Americans think is good for our country. If shutting down steel mills, outsourcing jobs to China, raiding pension funds, slashing wages, busting unions and lining your pocket while doing it is something he thinks Romney ought to be bragging about, I just wonder what anyone is smoking that would ever hire this guy.

If he really believes it's good advice that Romney should be playing the tough guy when it comes to shutting down industries in America and putting people out of work during his time at Bain Capital, someone's overpaying him to manage their political campaign if he can actually find work other than being an overpaid right-wing hack at CNN (or sadly a guest on Meet the Gregory a.k.a. Karl Rove's dance partner as well) these days.

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I highly recommend watching the entire show if you have time which you can catch here if you don't have the show recorded at home, but here's one of the better portions of this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes which followed their panel discussions which took at look back at the invasion of Iraq as the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq ends today.

HAYES: Since we're taking a look at the legacy of the Iraq war today we thought we'd approach our now we know segment a little differently. One of the striking features of our tortured relationship with the war and it's aftermath is that as a byproduct of a kind of collective, social PTSD we simply no longer talk about Iraq very much at all. Because of this we've allowed so many of the key figures who engineered the war, sold the war and oversaw the bloody quagmire to escape the kind of public sanctions their failures merited.

So we thought as part of our looking the war squarely in the face it would be interesting to take a look at where some of the major and not so major players in our war effort and anti-war effort are now.

On Chris' list, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Judith Miller, David Addington, Paul Wolfowitz, Cindy Sheehan, General Eric Shinseki, Ari Fleischer, Jessica Lynch, Ken Pollock, Scooter Libby, Doug Feith and Paul Bremer. Sadly as Chris noted here, no bad deed has gone unrewarded when it comes to this group, most of whom are now making a comfortable living at conservative think tanks and are sadly still allowed to come on television and are asked for their opinions.

I'm quite sure we'll never see a segment like this on Meet the Press since David Gregory wouldn't want any of them to fall off of his potential guest list.

Best line of the segment:

HAYES: Doug Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense, who Geneal Tommy Franks once called "the f-ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth," is advising Rick Perry on foreign policy.

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Keith Olbermann and The Nation's Jeremy Scahill respond to the "revisionist historian", "credit where credit's due" right wingers who are demanding that everyone "thank Bush" after Obama's speech on Iraq this week. They've got some thanks for him alright, as in yeah, thanks a lot of your illegal invasion and wrecking our economy while enriching your defense contractor buddies. Thanks.... thanks for nothing.

John McCain, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Dan Senor and the rest of these war mongers who think we should be praising Bush for invading a country that wasn't a threat to us and squandering our tax dollars should be ashamed of themselves, but that would imply that they have the capacity to feel shame.

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If these Bushies want to come on the air to attempt some turd polishing about why the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq, a country that was not a threat to us, then they should be treated the way Paul Begala treated lying propagandist Ari Fleischer on Anderson Cooper's AC360.

COOPER: Out of Iraq by the end of next year, that was the promise from President Obama. He said the combat mission's over, but America and will provide support for the Iraqi people as both a friend and a partner.

Ari, you were obviously working for George W. Bush. I'm curious to what you thought as you listened to this. And obviously, not a great speech but a historic moment.

FLEISCHER: Well, my first thought was 7 1/2 years ago I was in the Oval Office when the president gave a speech committing us to Iraq. And it's appropriate. Americans don't like to commit troop abroad. And when we do, we want to win, and we want come to come. And the president -- I think President Bush has won because of the surge.

And then, in December of 2008, remember when the shoe was thrown at him? That was actually the announcement of a security agreement with the Iraqi government to bring our troops hope at the end of 2011.

The day had to come. So I'm glad the day was able to come and that President Obama gave a speech where he could thank the troops who also made this possible who really deserve all the credit for making it possible.

COOPER: Do you think he should have said more about President Bush?

FLEISCHER: You know, I think it would have been gracious of him if he'd mentioned the surge, but the problem he has, for President Obama to put the words "President Bush," "Iraq" and anything good in the same sentence, the Democrat base, which already doesn't want to show up in November -- what will Nancy Pelosi see if he starts talking like that?

So I understand -- I wish he was more gracious about it, but he has his own Democratic political imperatives, and he has -- he followed those tonight.

COOPER: Paul, what did you think of the speech? We haven't heard from you tonight.

BEGALA: Well, I think it was -- first, he was trying to do three different things, right? Say we're going to withdraw from Iraq, but we're going to surge into Afghanistan, but we're going to withdraw from there, too. But then, we're going to take care of folks here at home. I want to pick up, though, on this point that Ari makes about the surge, because it is staggering to me. First off, the surge was only necessary because President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld went to war with too few troops, because they wanted to prove General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, wrong. That's why we needed it in the first place.

Second, it could have never succeeded without the preceding Sunni awakening. Iraqis themselves had to decide. It wasn't the American surge and then -- that cured it. It was the Sunni awakening.

But I'll make a deal with President Bush. We'll give you all the credit for the surge if you take half of the blame for the lies that got us into the war, by which I mean Iraq -- excuse me, Ari, by which I mean...

FLEISCHER: No, Paul, it's not right.

BEGALA: ... by which I mean Ari himself saying Iraq was an imminent threat to America, by which the president of the United States saying it was a mushroom cloud that could become a smoking gun, by which I mean the threat of unmanned aerial drones that Saddam supposedly had that would gas America, the connections that they allege which were false between al Qaeda and -- and Saddam's regime.

So, you know, there was so much they got wrong about this. Some of it just was botched, and some of it was deeply dishonest. And the notion that somehow George Bush is owed any moment of grace here is appalling to the history.

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It's been three years since Ari Fleischer was pulling this same number on Hardball and playing the "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine as John called it at the time. The more things change, the more they stay the same. --Ari Fleischer's Propaganda Iraq War Ad:

The propaganda that is hitting our airwaves over the Iraq war with creatures like Ari is sickening. This warmonger brought up WWII and the tired and wrong "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine (Barbara mentioned this mind set in her C&L post) in his defense of this. Ari is so 2007---and we're all just Dirty F*&king Hippies stuck in a 2001-2002 mind frame. [...]

This link to Germany and Japan is despicable, but neocons have no shame. Iraq was not part of the World Trade Center attacks and Ari knows it, but they need a propaganda link, so---there you go. Ari doesn't even know the wounded soldier's name in his own ad. There is no hole deep enough for these people and not even Hell should welcome them...If you don't think this has been coordinated with the WH, well...I know you do. Ari's group is called Freedom Watch.

As Media Matters reported, Ari Fleischer wasn't the only one of these Bushies out there helping to spread the propaganda today. He had some help from Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley and others as well.

Media turn to discredited Bush officials to respond to Obama's Iraq speech:

Following President Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, media outlets hosted discredited Bush administration officials Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Ari Fleischer to respond, despite the fact that the three were at the forefront of the campaign of misinformation used to sell the war.

Lots more there so go read the rest. They forgot to mention Dan Senor who was about as infuriating as this hack Fleischer was on Morning Joe. Hardball also had Senor on and CNN's Anderson Cooper had Fleischer on as well. I'll have more on that soon since Paul Begala gave Fleischer a tongue lashing on CNN.

Transcript below the fold.

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Another day, another round of interviews with Karl Rove pushing his latest bit of revisionist history. Tom Brokaw asks Rove about the Bush administration's claims that the oil revenue would help pay for the war and Rove denies it.

ROVE: No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war. … [T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, “We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resource and pay for the war” is not accurate.

Think Progress noted, Rove is lying.

Rove’s claim is simply not true. In fact, days after the U.S. invasion, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstructing the country, i.e. a cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

One month before the war, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Iraq “is a rather wealthy country. … And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 3, 2009 with winners Fox & Friends. Runners up Ari Fleischer and Gretchen Carlson.