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.