Harold Ford, Jr. Joins Criticism Of Yearly Kos
Reported by Ellen - August 9, 2007 -
After two nights of segments about Sunday’s Republican presidential candidates debate, Hannity & Colmes largely ignored Tuesday night’s Democratic debate - except to question the candidacy of Barack Obama by hyping once again his comments about Pakistan. Near the end, Hannity resurrected his misrepresentation of DailyKos in order to attack Democrats for attending YearlyKos. Instead of a feisty Democratic guest, viewers got the conservative Democrat and FOX News contributor Harold Ford, Jr., who disagreed that Obama was right to have opposed invading Iraq and joined in the criticism of DailyKos. With video.
In front of a graphic that read “Barack backtracks,” Alan Colmes definitively stated that it didn’t sound as though Obama had backtracked on Pakistan and that Mitt Romney and Giuliani had said, essentially, the same thing. “I don’t even know what the controversy’s about,” Colmes added.
But for approximately four more minutes, it was debated. Meanwhile, there have been no segments on Romney’s or Giuliani’s flip-flops. Can you imagine if Obama or Edwards or Clinton said (s)he used a gun to hunt varmints how many times that would have been discussed on Hannity & Colmes?
Besides the bias in the topic, the use of Ford, who has become perhaps the most frequent of Democratic guests on Hannity & Colmes, is also telling. Ford is clearly not in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, at least on the war in Iraq.
Alan Colmes said, “I think Barack Obama had a great point when he said that those who voted for the war in Iraq and then had to apologize for that vote should probably be the last people to criticize he who was right about the war in Iraq all along.”
Ford’s responded, “Well, I don’t know who’s been right about this war all along.”
“Oh, sure you do,” Colmes said. Then, sounding flabbergasted, he added, “You don’t know who’s been right about the war all along?”
Ford answered, “One thing is clear. What we’re doing now is not working.”
When it was Sean Hannity’s turn, he said, “All the evidence is, the surge is working. It’s the war that was lost that has now become the winnable war.”
Ford did not dispute that. He started with what looked to be a decent defense of Obama. “What president of the United States would not be serious about saying to a leader of another country, Al Qaeda is hiding…” But when Hannity interrupted, Ford continued with a non-sequitor. “The vice president of the United States has indicated that going into Iran may be a possibility and should be considered… The only group we have left to go to war, as you know, are the Navy and Air Force… We have to be thoughtful and smart about how we do this.”
Then, tired of attacking Obama (probably because Hannity couldn’t find a racial angle with which to club him) Hannity went on to attack DailyKos again. Once again confusing DailyKos (he pronounced it correctly the first time, only) with YearlyKos, once again mispronouncing DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas’ name, Hannity went on to once again misrepresent Moulitsas’ post about the death of private military contractors in Iraq.
Hannity reprised his melodramatic outrage at Kos for having written “Screw them” about the dead contractors. Again, he was either ignorant of or deliberately ignoring the fact that Kos recanted that post. Then, in his Hanctimonious voice, Hannity said to Ford, “(Democratic candidates) didn’t show up at your conference (meaning the DLC). Does this prove a point that conservatives like myself have made, is that your Democratic Party has been co-opted by the extreme left and they’re pandering to the extreme left?”
Ford didn’t seem to know that Hannity had just distorted the facts in order to make a bogus attack, didn't seem to care that hypocritical Hannity doesn't object when a Republican guest maligns American victims, then semi-agreed with him by saying that both parties cater to their “extreme base.”
Ford continued, “I would have gone to DailyKos (mispronouncing the name and getting the name of the YearlyKos conference wrong, too) and told them, ‘I think you’re wrong the way you go about practicing your politics. If you’re serious about winning the war and bringing the country together, get another message and another set of tactics.”
You have to wonder: Did Ford naively comply with Hannity's agenda of painting the Democratic candidates as catering to the far left or was he deliberately collaborating? I report, you decide.
