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Democratic strategist James Carville on Sunday praised tea party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as "the most talented and fearless Republican politician" in the last 30 years.

In a panel discussion on Sunday, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos noted that recent news reports indicated that Cruz had been examining a possible run for president in 2016.

"The people love Ted Cruz because he's taking on his own party, his own leadership, he's taking on the other party," former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) opined. "He's trying to rock the boat to get us to stop moving towards this cliff that we're headed for as a country. So I've been in about 25 cities in the last few months, all you have to do is mention Ted Cruz and people get on their feet."

"I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I've seen the last 30 years," Carville agreed. "I further think that he's going to run for president and he's going to create something. I'm not sitting here saying that he's going to win. And I think Sen. DeMint is right. I've listened to excerpts of his speech in South Carolina, he touches every button, and this guy has no fear. He just keeps ploughing ahead, and he is going to be something to watch."

"And a lot of Republicans feel this way," he continued. "You hear this a lot, 'If we only got someone who is articulate and was for what we were for, we would win elections. And we get these John McCains and these Mitt Romneys these squishy guys that can't do anything.' Well, there's one thing this guy is not: He ain't squishy, not in the least."

"We're anti-squishy men," Republican strategist Mary Matalin, who is married to Carville, volunteered. "We like really hard men."

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Nothing like watching a bunch of overpaid, millionaire pundits yucking it up and having a grand old time discussing whether the administration has happily thrown their base under the bus with -- no regard for the lives of those who would be affected by these policy changes.

That's exactly what the audience was treated to on this Friday's Morning Joe on MSNBC. These millionaire pundits probably would not find the hippie punching so humorous if any of of them thought they might have to rely on Social Security to get by in their old age.

Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals (VIDEO):

Democratic strategist James Carville said Friday that he doesn't think President Barack Obama is sweating the criticisim he's taken from his liberal base over a budget proposal that includes cuts to Social Security.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he's received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.

"I think he likes that," Carville said. "I don't think he's upset. He got a very favorable Washington Post editorial. 'Morning Joe,' very favorable commentary right here. I guarantee you if he's up watching this right now. Got a good David Brooks column. He's kind of excited this morning. This is kind of important to him."

But Carville added that the White House is not "totally out of bounds" with its budget, arguing that the proposal will "throw the Republicans off" and that Obama is desperate to strike a grand bargain with the GOP.

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President George W. Bush's former chief strategist Matthew Dowd is slamming the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for snubbing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) while inviting former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who he asserts "wasn't competent enough to keep a Fox News contract."

Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot on Sunday told an ABC News panel that CPAC had made a mistake by not inviting Christie after he pushed Congress for Hurricane Sandy relief funds and backed some gun-control legislation following last year's mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

"If I were CPAC, I would have invited Christie and let him say what he wanted on guns or anything else," Gigot insisted. "And if you disagree with him, boo him or what have you. But this is a time that the Republican Party needs to have a debate, and a pretty raucous debate."

"CPAC, to me, has totally diminished its credibility as an organization," Dowd agreed. "And you invite Sarah Palin, who wasn't competent enough to keep a Fox News contract? But she's invited to CPAC meeting?"

Democratic strategist James Carville, however, welcomed the CPAC move as something that could help Democrats by elevating fringe elements in the Republican Party.

"Any day that you have more Sarah Palin and less Chris Christie is a good day for James Carville," he quipped. "I'm all for it!"

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Speaking on Morning Joe, Carville offered this pithy assessment of the problem Republicans face regarding the sequester.

James Carville: The sequester, many people don't know what it is, but it sounds stupid and cruel, so they think it's a Republican thing."

Byron York at the Washington Examiner gives, from a conservative's standpoint, a somewhat more nuanced opinion on the pickle Republicans find themselves in:

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner describes the upcoming sequester as a policy “that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more.”

Which leads to the question: Why would Republicans support a measure that threatens national security and thousands of jobs? Boehner and the GOP are determined to allow the $1.2 trillion sequester go into effect unless President Obama and Democrats agree to replacement cuts, of an equal amount, that target entitlement spending. If that doesn’t happen — and it seems entirely unlikely — the sequester goes into effect, with the GOP’s blessing.
...
Could the GOP message on the sequester be any more self-defeating? Boehner could argue that the sequester cuts are necessary as a first — and somewhat modest — step toward controlling the deficits that threaten the economy. Instead, he describes them as a threat to national security and jobs that he nevertheless supports. It’s not an argument that is likely to persuade millions of Americans.

The GOP’s astonishingly bad message on sequester cuts

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Every time I hear one of these pundits on cable television use the word "spin" I try to remind myself that it's just a polite term for the word they ought to be using, which is "lie." Which is exactly what Will Cain was doing here on CNN's "The Situation Room." Republicans like Cain are desperate to try to downplay the huge gender gap they have right now, where as Dave already noted here, they're looking at a 2-1 deficit among female voters in swing states.

We can add Cain to the list of Republicans such as Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers who recently tried to claim that it's really the Democrats who are behind all of this "war on women" stuff. His arguments here were just as unconvincing.

And before I go any further, just a little reminder that Will Cain is a contributor to Glenn Beck's site, The Blaze, a site run by someone who was thrown off of Fox News for their over-the-top rhetoric and being too extreme for that network. Why he, or his fellow Blaze contributor, Amy Holmes, who is also a CNN regular on Howard Kurtz's show, or Dana Loesch and Erick Erickson for that matter, should be regularly polluting the airways at CNN is beyond me, but having any of them on is just another example of how that network has decided the best way to get ratings is to become Fox-lite.

We're fair and balanced don't ya' know. We've got your right wing flame throwers up against Democratic establishment types like Carville who could be considered center-left in their views at best. Actual liberals, or progressives are shut out of these "debates" too often because god knows we wouldn't want to allow any of them to embarrass the likes of Will Cain. That might be considered "uncivil" and we can't have that.

If Will Cain actually believes, and isn't just trying to "spin" the audience at CNN, that there is no "war on women" then I've got some reading for him to do.

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James Carville seems to think that it will be "the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party" if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. I'm not so sure I agree with him on the politics and who takes the blame, but it is true that if something doesn't happen to get health care costs under control, we're going to see increasing anger from the electorate in response.

He's also correct on the public perception that this Supreme Court has become way too politicized and the fact that we can't afford to have any more conservatives appointed to the court after the enormous damage they've already done to America over the last decade or so with some of their rulings and as Carville noted, overturning an election in the case of Bush v. Gore.

Transcript of Carville and Erick Erickson's exchange below the fold.

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James Carville with the quote of the day while discussing the three way tie among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum as the vote counting during the Iowa caucuses progressed:

CARVILLE: There is one screaming, huge story here tonight and that is these Republicans just don't want to vote for Mitt Romney. I mean it's like you're trying to give a dog a pill. They keep spitting it up. Now, they're going to eat the pill, 'cause Romney's going to eventually be the nominee, but...

And it's the same thing he had before and he's got a weaker field. It just don't matter where he comes in, they don't want to vote for him.

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CNN's John King asks his guests James Carville and Mary Matalin to fact check these statements by Michele Bachmann in her response to the State of the Union address yesterday.

BACHMANN: Well, what did we buy? Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which lightbulbs to buy and which may put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.

King actually bothers to start pointing out that her statement about the IRS agents is just not true and when he asks Matalin to weigh in, she pulls out the pity card for Bachmann and claims that liberals are attacking her because they just want to shut her up. She also asserts that it's the Democrats that are propping her up on some equal footing with the president. Sorry Lady McCheney, but it's the tea partiers and your network that decided to do that when airing her response. I agree with your husband, keep her crazy ass out there talking.

They also never bothered to point out that it was George Bush, not Barack Obama that signed the energy bill that changed the standard on lightbulbs. Matalin was too busy pulling out the victim card for Bachmann.

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I agree with Mediaite's Sarah Devlin that SNL missed the mark on this one.

SNL: FOX News Gives “Embracing Civility” A Try, Is Defeated By James Carville:

On Saturday Night Live’s version of FOX News, the network decided to turn over a new leaf and give civil, polite political discourse a try. Kristen Wiig’s Greta van Susteren spearheaded the initiative, joined by Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and an already-struggling-to-be-civil Glenn Beck.

Things went quite well initially, but Malkin, Hannity and Beck were unable to go on after hearing James Carville brag about his meal at a vegan restaurant, and watching Rachel Maddow hijack Beck’s blackboard.

This would have been a whole lot funnier if they'd decided to push the envelope a little with making fun of the wingnuts at Fox. Lord knows there is a ton of material there that is ripe for some mockery. They could take a few cues from Stewart and Colbert in that department.

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Thomas Frank lays out the reasons why the pick of William Daley for Chief of Staff in the Obama administration is completely politically tone deaf to the mood of the average voter out there.

From CNN's Parker Spitzer:

SPITZER: Joining us in "The Arena" tonight are CNN political contributor James Carville and Thomas Frank, "Harper's" magazine contributor and author of several books including "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

PARKER: Thanks for joining us. So we're all talking about the changes at the White House, particularly the new chief of staff. Why should the American people care about who the president hires as his chief of staff, James? Go to you first.

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, you know it's one of the most powerful positions in the United States government. It's not confirmable. So I think it does matter and I also think it's a reflection of the White House strategy of policy which appears to me to be a continuation of the December policy that cooperate with the Republicans and to not be very confrontational.

And I think that president picking Secretary Daley sent that signal. I think it's a manifestation of an ongoing strategy that the White House has adopted.

PARKER: Well, everybody loves him, it seems like. I have found no one on either side of the aisle who's critical of him. And I'm sure Tom Frank would join us here and congratulate the president for picking such a rationale chief of staff, right?

FRANK: You know what, Kathleen, this -- this whole thing, it just -- you remember when I was on your -- I was up there in New York and I was on your show a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about -- the term that I use is the poverty of centrism, right?

The sort of exhaustion of this whole way of understanding politics. And this gives you another, you know, really big clue as to what's the matter with the Democrats. There's just no imagination out there. They seem to just be completely clueless with regards to, you know, how to play the political game. This is their response to the shellacking that they took.

SPITZER: You know, Tom, I got to jump in here and agree with you 100 percent. It seems to me there's another factor we've got to bring to the table here.

On the same day that Bill Daley comes in, Paul Volcker goes out. Paul Volcker, of course, the esteemed, highly respected former chairman of the Fed, was the only one in the administration who was really pushing for fundamental Wall Street reform. And so he is gone and we bring in a banker, somebody from Morgan Chase, who is now going to be at the center, as James said. Being chief of staff for the president is being arguably the second most powerful person in the United States government.

FRANK: Right. But, you're not -- you're not being fair there. It's a balanced choice because at the same time they brought in Gene Sperling who I believe used to work for Goldman Sachs.

SPITZER: That's right.

FRANK: So you've got -- you know you've got both sides represented there. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.

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