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Yesterday during a discussion with Thomas Roberts and Jimmy LaSalvia of GOProud about why CPAC excludes gays and other groups from their conference the topic of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie came up, and his own lack of invitation to speak. Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager, had nothing good to say about CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the distilled fringiest of the right wing fringe:

ROBERTS: “Why does the CPAC organization want to risk alienating burgeoning stars like a Chris Christie, not invite him?”

SCHMIDT: “Look, this CPAC convention is increasingly the Star Wars bar scene of the conservative movement. All that’s missing from that convention is a couple of Wookies.”

Schmidt would later go on to call Mitt Romney's appearance last year, where he declared he was "deeply conservative as a Governor", simply "kowtowing" to the extreme right.

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Oh goodie. Pass the popcorn. The religious right is none too happy now that Willard has lost the presidential election and wanting to push the party even further to the right -- GOP civil war: Herman Cain calls for third party:

It’s been less than 24 hours since the polls closed and already the first shots in an emerging civil war within the conservative movement are being fired. Right-leaning pundits have been taking turns beating up on Mitt Romney and blaming him for the loss last night. Donald Trump just tweeted, “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.” And GOP leaders are already taking to the barricades on either side of the divide, which basically comes down to this question: Were Romney and the GOP too conservative or not conservative enough?

Steve Schmidt, a top Republican strategist who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign, invoked the term on MSNBC this morning. “When I talk about a civil war in the Republican Party, what I mean is, it’s time for Republican elected leaders to stand up and to repudiate this nonsense [of the extreme right wing], and to repudiate it directly,” he said.

But on the other side of the fight, Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate who still has a robust following via his popular talk radio program and speaking tours, today suggested the most clear step to open civil war: secession. Appearing on Bryan Fischer’s radio program this afternoon, Cain called for a large faction of Republican Party leaders to desert the party and form a third, more conservative party.

“I never thought that I would say this, and this is the first time publicly that I’ve said it: We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No. We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party … has the ability to rebrand itself,” Cain said.

Fischer, a social conservative leader, noted that he predicted this summer that if Mitt Romney loses, evangelical conservatives would start a third party. “If Barack Obama wins this election the Republican Party as we know it is finished, it is dead, it is toast,” Fischer said in September at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. Read on...

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Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Monday attempted to shut down any talk of voter suppression by shouting "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" over and over again to change the subject to the September attacks on Americans in Libya, a topic that Republicans believe hurts President Barack Obama.

During a discussion about the tight presidential race in Florida, co-host Mika Brzezinski attempted to point out that Republicans had restricted early voting, creating long lines and chaos for voters in some counties.

"You just feel like you have to finish with a story, Republicans bad, [Florida Gov.] Rick Scott bad, voting suppression," Scarborough complained, throwing up his arms. "I have three words: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. I'm wandering around my ranch house muttering the words, 'Benghazi.' I mean, seriously, are we going here? Are we really going here?"

"But you know what?" Brzezinski attempted to continue. "We've had a..."

"Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" Scarborough interrupted.

"It's absolutely a story," NBC's David Gregory said of the long voter lines.

"Benghazi's a story," Scarborough quipped.

"It's something we have to watch very carefully," Gregory added. "And by the way, I think the Benghazi issue, I think there are real questions about Benghazi. There are serious questions... well, he brought it up!"

"Why do you want to cover up Benghazi?" Scarborough shouted, pointing at MSNBC.com executive editor Richard Wolffe. "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!"

"Is the voter story I just read a story?" Brzezinski asked Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

"Benghazi, Benghazi," Scarborough muttered as Schmidt tried to answer.

"I mean, kind of," the Republican strategist admitted. "Is it possible a local elections officials in Florida screwed up the early voting? Yes. Is it part of some big, giant Republican conspiracy out there? Absolutely not."

"So what happened in Benghazi?" Scarborough said.

"I think we can all agree, Republicans and Democrats -- whatever your preference -- they all should be able to vote," Wolffe explained. "Those lines are offensive wherever they are, whoever's responsible. Lines should not happen for several hours just to allow people to do that."

"I agree," Scarborough replied. "Just like I agree that we really need to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Christine O'Donnell appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher this Friday evening during the segment immediately following his opening monologue and blamed her witch ad debacle on her advisers and wanted to get into it with Maher over whether it's fair or not to continue to blame Bush for the troubles with the economy we're still having today. Thankfully, her time was cut short since she was not a member of the panel on the show - or at least she wasn't until the Internet only Overtime segment.

As with all of his shows, Bill Maher always brings all of the guests back in for the on-line version only end of his show and listening to the stupidity that came out of Christine O'Donnell's mouth during this segment was just truly astounding. She was asked how she rectified her supposed "small government conservatism" with the intrusion into people's lives with her social beliefs, and she pretty much spent the entire rest of the segment tying herself in knots, not being able to explain the differences between or need for states' rights and when the federal government needs to step in, revising history, and just making crap up when it suited her.

The other guests who were uselessly trying to reason with her, which was pretty much impossible since you can't reason with someone who's head is thick as a brick, mainly looked like they were all just ready to bang their own heads on the desk by the time this thing was over.

I can honestly say I pity David Simon, Steve Schmidt, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jim VandeHei, well, maybe not VandeHei, but the rest of them for having to sit through this debacle and try to argue with this know nothing teabagger.

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After Clint Eastwood's bizarre performance at the Republican National Convention this Thursday night, Rachel Maddow read the Romney campaign's response to his speech:

Judging an American icon like Clint Eastwood through a typical political lens doesn't work. His ad libbing was a break from all the political speeches, and the crowd enjoyed it. He rightly pointed out that 23 million Americans out of work or underemployed is a national disgrace and it's time for a change.

Following some of the other pundits reactions as to why the Romney campaign thought putting Eastwood on stage was a good idea and what the fallout might be, former McCain adviser Steve Schmidt added this:

I'm just saying, he's an 82 year old man, we should give him a break.

The problem is not Eastwood. It's whoever made the decision from the Romney campaign to bring him out there.

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I can't think of anyone less qualified than the Snowbilly from Wasilla to weigh in on who Mitt Romney ought to pick for his running mate in the upcoming presidential election, but apparently Sean Hannity believes inquiring minds want to know. And of course Palin used it as an opportunity to beat up on that "liberal media" that supposedly treated her unfairly when McCain picked her as his running mate.

HANNITY: Question Governor and four years ago you were selected and you didn't know you were going to be selected, you were telling me, until what, four days until you were, you didn't know you were even being vetted four days prior, which is a pretty amazing story.

The names I hear most often are Portman in Ohio, Rubio in Florida and Paul Ryan, who will be on this program tomorrow night, from Wisconsin. Good choices?

PALIN: They are good choices. They are and I think that Gov. Romney will probably play it safe, relatively speaking in terms of finding someone who is a known commodity, so that the media doesn't do what the media did to me; making things up and kind of trashing somebody's reputation and record in order to distract from what the election really was supposed to be about.

So, those are good names. There are other great names out there being batted around and I look forward to seeing who that one is who can assist Gov. Romney in moving forward.

I hate to break it to you Sarah, but if there was some damage done to your reputation, you brought it on yourself and I think John McCain's staffers like Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace who dished out the dirt for Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book, Game Change, that HBO made into a movie did your reputation as much or more damage as anything you can blame on the so called "lamestream media" you love to bash and that you now work for. If what was represented in that movie is true, they were pretty horrified by the fact that you were not remotely qualified to be vice president or step in as president if something happened to his health not too long after McCain picked you to run with him.

Now sadly, we can all thank him for inflicting you on the American body politic and as a new member of the wingnut welfare club for years to come over at Fox noise, where propagandist and fellow right-wing flame thrower Hannity thinks you have anything of value to add to the discussion on who else should potentially be allowed to be one breath away from being our next president, that we might rightfully be terrified of, as anyone with an ounce of sense was of you.

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In the wake of Mitt Romney soon having to choose a running mate of his own, former presidential candidate John McCain was asked by PBS's Charlie Rose about his lack of regret for now infamously picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain stuck to his ground with his choice of Palin, despite the recent revelations that have come out after the release of Game Change, where much of McCain's former staff spilled the beans that they did not think she was remotely qualified to be president.

Par for the course when conservatives are backed up against the wall with bad decisions they've made, McCain chose to play the victim card for Palin as one of the reasons he's continuing to defend her. Because heaven forbid she and he should be rightfully criticized for the fact he should have never let this woman come "one heartbeat" away from the presidency if McCain had won the last election.

McCain asked "what the point was" that his former running mate was continuing to be savaged in the press. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that she's still fully willing to interject herself into that conversation by joining Uncle Rupert's wingnut welfare brigade over at Fox and the fact that she is more than happy to have the media reporting on whatever her latest ghost writer was posting on her Facebook page. Given the fact that Palin is apparently still craving the limelight, his protests here ring pretty hollow.

McCain can complain all he wants about how unfairly he thinks his former running mate has been treated in the media, but that will never excuse him for his maleficence and responsibility for inflicting that woman on the rest of us and on the fact that someone in our corporate media is going to pay to have her on the air even if it's not Fox. McCain has helped to dumb down the American electorate by putting Palin in the spotlight to begin with and with giving her a format for the right to be listening to her in the first place.

After hearing this interview with Charlie Rose among a number of others where he's expressed the same sentiments, it's apparent inflicting Sarah Palin on the rest of us is something he's never going to admit he was wrong for doing, much less apologize for.

Rough transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

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Sums it up quite nicely. Via comedian Joe Mande.

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A former senior strategist for Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign says that the depiction of Sarah Palin by actress Julianne Moore in HBO's film "Game Change" was "very accurate."

"I think for all of us that were in the campaign it really rang true," Steve Schmidt told MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski on Monday. "It gave you a little bit of [post traumatic stress disorder] PTSD at times."

In the movie, Schmidt's character -- played by Woody Harrelson -- deals with a mentally unstable Palin who knows little about foreign policy and often refuses to cooperate with the campaign.

"I think when you look back at that race, you see person who's just so phenomenally talented in so many levels, an ability to connect, but also someone who had a lot flaws and someone running to be in the national command authority who clearly wasn't prepared," the former McCain aide explained. "Someone was nominated to the vice presidency who was vastly unprepared to take the oath of office should it become necessary, and as it has become necessary many times in America."

Schmidt added that losing the election was not as bad as the idea of Palin someday becoming president.

"What's worse in that context for me is with regard to the country that I love, that I have family members in the uniformed services in the armed services," he said. "We have 100,000 people in Afghanistan. When a result happens that puts someone who is not prepared to be president on the ticket, that's a bad result."

"I think the notion of Sarah Palin being president of the United States is something that frightens me, frankly."

On Sunday, McCain continued to defend his vice presidential selection, saying that Palin was the "best qualified" person for the job.

“I thought she was the best qualified person,” he told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “I thought she had the ability to excite our party, and the kind of person that I wanted to see succeed in the political arena."

“What I don’t understand, even in the tough world of politics, why there continues to be such assaults on a good and decent person, Sarah Palin, a fine family person, a person whose nomination energized our campaign,” McCain remarked. “We were in the lead and they continue to attack and disparage her character and her person.”

Watch this clip from HBO's "Game Change."

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(H/T: Mediaite)

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After Newt Gingrich's extremely long, lie packed speech on Super Tuesday the panel covering election night at MSNBC actually did some fact checking on one of Gingrich's lies, that President Obama said he only cares about gas prices because it will harm his chances of being reelected.

Newt Makes False Claim About Obama On Gas Prices:

Speaking at his victory party Tuesday night after winning his home state of Georgia, Newt Gingrich falsely claimed President Obama was "worried about higher gas prices because it will make it harder for [him] to get re-elected."

Here's Newt's full comment:

The president was right the other day. He's so nervous about gasoline prices and energy, that he's done two major speeches. I thought today, in one of the most shallow and self-serving comments by a president I've heard in a long time, he was candid in his press conference. He said, you know, I'm really worried about higher gas prices because it will make it harder for me to get re-elected. I did not make this up. It was just nice to know that the president once again has managed to take the pain of the american people and turn it into his own personal problem.

But President Obama didn't say that.

Here's what he really said at today's White House press briefing, directed at Fox News reporter Ed Henry, who asked the president if he actually wants gas prices to go even higher so he can "wean" the American people off fossil fuels.

Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher? … Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?

Karoli posted President Obama and Ed Henry's little exchange from earlier here -- Fox News' Ed Henry Smacked Down By President Obama During Presidential News Conference.