Fox News Sunday feigned a fair and balanced discussion yesterday about, as host Chris Wallace put it, how the left and right “are working to derail” 2016 presidential frontrunners. But after a lengthy discussion about derailing Hillary Clinton’s potential candidacy, guest Karl Rove hijacked the discussion to smear the other guest, Democrat Ted Strickland. There was no objection from Wallace.
The discussion began with “questions” about whether Bill Clinton’s behavior will make a difference in Hillary’s run and, of course, Benghazi.
But, when it was time to discuss questions about Christie – well, there was hardly any.
First, Wallace made what was supposed to be a Christie discussion partly about Strickland by asking, “First of all, why are you shadowing Chris Christie two-plus years before a campaign? And isn’t it possible, as he claims, that he just didn’t know (about the George Washington Bridge lane closures)?”
But then, when Wallace asked Rove to respond to Strickland’s explanation, Rove said:
Well, first of all, I think Governor Strickland is correct. The reason the Democrats are doing this is because Chris Christie is a strong potential candidate in 2016. They’re going to try to smother every Republican presidential possibility they can because they know that this race in 2016 is going to be difficult for the Democrats, hard to get a third term, particularly after the two terms of Obama.
I think the Democrats, however, will be better off picking another voice to go after Governor Christie. When Governor Christie found out about these two individuals and what they had done, he immediately fired them.
Let’s remember—let’s go back to 2008 and Joe the Plumber. Governor Strickland’s own appointee as head of the employment commission was found to have been accessing confidential governmental data bases to find out private information about Joe the Plumber and leaking it to the press.
Now, is Governor Strickland to adopt his standards either incompetent or lying and simply because it was his appointee who did these things?
Let’s step back and look at this. Let the process go forward and be careful to throw stones like Governor Strickland is throwing at Governor Christie. I understand why they want to get him out of there.
Unfortunately, rather than confront Rove on his tactics, Strickland fell into the trap of defending himself. They never got back to Christie in this segment.
Both Benghazi and Fast and Furious were traced to games of political grab-ass, which is why so many people (including Clinton and Holder) only had the story as far as what would be shared with them.
Yet, when the revelation of this going on came out, it wasn’t a “fair question” -It was an Obama-run conspiracy. Completely out of the question that there would be people in the intelligence community or the the branch staffs that would play these games. Amazingly, they also tried to make that same conspiracy into a show of incompetence from the White House, despite that incompetence would end at the feet of the agency director.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Strickland frankly looked shocked that Rove would play this card – which is dispiriting as he could have simply stopped Rove in his tracks by saying that Rove was bringing up untrue and irrelevant statements and trying to get the conversation back on the actual matter at hand.
Erm, no, Uncle KKKarl, he isn’t . . .
Poll: Christie numbers tank as scandals continue
Chris Christie’s political future looks to be in serious danger with more Americans believing the embattled New Jersey governor is lying about the bridge closure scandal than telling the truth, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Christie’s overall standing has taken a major hit in the survey, with just 22 percent of Americans viewing the Republican New Jersey governor favorably — down from 33 percent in October.
Twenty-nine percent now view Christie unfavorably, versus 17 percent a few months ago.
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/27/22471140-poll-christie-numbers-tank-as-scandals-continue?lite
“Strong potential candidate”? Must be more of that “Rove math” . . .
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When listening to Fox News Sunday (if I can stomach it), all I have to do is close my eyes and I can clearly see the Smirk and the Sneer.
Anyway, I heard this Sunday’s crap from Wallace et. al., and it’s only going to get worse if Hillary “stays in” the race: Monica, Benghazi, Monica, Benghazi, BENGHAAAAZZZZZI!!! (shriek).
Just the other day Kathleen Willey spent an hour on a fringe wingnut radio show (the local WABC two hours with the uber Israeli hawk and Obama-loathing slime mouth, Aaron Klein).
Stay tuned.
