Convention Night 3: Colmes at His Best
Reported by Ellen - September 2, 2004 -
Colmes was nothing short of brilliant last night. He provided running, intelligent commentary with the pieces of Cheney's speech that were broadcast. My favorite line was, "Who went and shook Saddam Hussein's hand?" in the middle of Cheney's attack on Kerry's Iraq voting record.
Besides that, Colmes brought up one of my pet Bush Administration peeves by harping on Cheney's lack of Viet Nam service and his "I had other priorities" explanation. In fact, I think it was mentioned twice.
The guest line-up was good too. Democrat Jamie Rubin was the only guest during the first hour. Democrat Bob Beckel and Oliver North had an interesting debate during the second hour. Alan even kept the discussion away from the Smear Boat Liars for most of the time.
The third hour was phone calls. Interestingly, most of the calls were from people who felt that the Republicans had not made their case as to why Bush should be re-elected. Considering that the callers are usually more conservative on this program, that says a lot. The Bush supporters who did call didn't have a chance. And somewhere in the mix, Colmes even brought up that Bush got his people to redefine certain economic terms in order to make his numbers look better!
As if that weren't enough, in a discussion with Fox reporter Steve Brown, Colmes forced Brown into admitting that the vast majority of NYC protesters have been peaceful and dignified. Colmes even mentioned, as an example of peaceful demonstrators, that one of the demonstrations had been at Fox News. So he didn't mention it was a shut-up-a-thon. Why quibble?
In case you don't believe me, one of the callers at the end of the night also remarked how much he enjoyed Colmes' mettle. "Bob Dole must have slipped you some Viagra," the caller said.
