It’s one thing to host uber GOP-partisan Karl Rove to comment on last night’s presidential debate but you have to wonder what kind of thinking went into presenting him as a “political analyst.” But that’s exactly what Greta Van Susteren pretended she was doing as she hosted him in her post-presidential debate show last night. Then, predictably, the two of them set about trashing President Barack Obama’s performance and praising Mitt Romney’s.
In case that wasn’t enough disingenuousness for you, Van Susteren’s opening question was really an opening for Rove to spin Romney’s loss as a victory:
“How do you determine who won, what is your measurement and tell me what you think?” she asked, without mentioning who Americans decided had won.
Rove acknowledged that Obama won the debate but spun it as a technicality that didn’t matter.
It helps to understand that, to come to the realization that tonight it looks like Governor Romney, while he may have quote, lost the debate, looked like a Commander-In-Chief and presented himself in a presidential way and with the president’s tone being much too aggressive and much too petulant and oft times just downright nasty.
Instead of offering any balance, the supposedly liberal Van Susteren went on to praise Romney, herself. She noted that at the end of the debate (which she helpfully added was the better spot), he would work with Democrats. “This whole sort of idea of working when we’ve had - the city has been so locked up in fights in the city - that I thought if you’re looking just at sort of, not at the policies, necessarily, but who you like, who you feel more comfortable with, I actually thought that that would probably be something effective to communicate.”
That was Rove's next opening to go on an extended attack on the substance of what Obama said – unchallenged. In fact, “liberal” Van Susteren added to the pile on. Speaking of the debate’s dust up over the auto bailout, she went on to criticize President Obama’s contention that Romney’s plan to let the automobile manufacturers go into a “managed bankruptcy” would have doomed the U.S. automobile industry instead of saving it. Obama said, “If we had taken your advice, Gov. Romney, about our auto industry, we’d be buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China.”
Van Susteren claimed she couldn’t see Obama’s point. “What I don’t understand, and maybe I’m totally missing something on this,” she began. “Bankruptcy is a form of help.” She added, “Going into bankruptcy is not to punish someone but, rather, to give them breathing room… so that they can re-organize and try to fix things.”
Well, yes, Greta, you did miss something. Had you bothered to do a simple Google search, you might have found out what the Los Angeles Times reported:
The dispute comes down to whether a managed bankruptcy for General Motors and Chrysler would have been possible at the time without the government providing approximately $80 billion in financing to keep the companies running during the process.
… The bipartisan Congressional Oversight Panel, the government-appointed watchdog for the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, backs Obama on this. It said in a January 2011 report that private financing was not available for General Motors and Chrysler in late 2008.
Rove took off from there and claimed the bailout had produced undesirable results. He followed that up by highlighting one of Romney’s “strongest moments” and likened Obama to “Louis XIV masquerading as the President of the United States.”
Nobody pointed out a single strong moment from Obama, even though all the polls found he won.
I do mean, really! since when have the RW been so inclined to recognise the truth: their man is an empty shell to be filled by the very same people who were in charge between 2001 and 2008.
Including Mr. Rove, I presume.