May 11, 2009

5/11: Sorry, Policy Wonks...

Maybe it's fitting that during the weekend of the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the political blogosphere chatter was lighter on the substance than usual. Liberal bloggers have spent the past 24 hours mocking ex-VP Dick Cheney after he appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" and said that he preferred Rush Limbaugh's brand of conservatism to that of ex-Sec/State Colin Powell. Lefty bloggers are convinced that the unpopular Cheney hurts the GOP every time he makes a public statement, and they loved his comments about Powell no longer being a Republican. Markos Moulitsas quips: "Cheney is the gift that keeps on giving. I fear the day Republicans wise up and muzzle him." Not surprisingly, conservative blogger Erick Erickson has a different view: "Put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh camp. Heck, put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh 2012 camp."

In other news, conservative bloggers are blasting comedian Wanda Sykes after she took some shots at Limbaugh during her performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Erickson offers the following summary of Sykes' performance: [This was] the first time in recorded history a lesbian has stood before America's media elite and performed oral favors on a man -- and not just any man. She did so to the President of the United States. It was a Lewinsky moment without the cigar and stained dress."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberals (Green, O'Connor) and conservatives (Malkin, Morrissey) are both mocking Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) after his campaign changed the layout of its SpecterForTheCure.com website in response to criticism that the site mislead visitors into believing that their donations were going to medical research instead of to Specter's re-election campaign. Meanwhile, lefty bloggers continue to urge Rep. Joe Sestak (D-07) to challenge Specter in the Dem primary.
• Conservative bloggers (McLaughlin, Hawkins, Klein) are buzzing about their 5/8 conference call with SC Gov. Mark Sanford (R), who admitted, "A blogger conference call is slightly out of my comfort zone because I really don't know what it is."
• Liberal bloggers (Marshall, Rosenberg, Benen, Black) are annoyed that GOPers dominated Sunday's TV news shows.

CHENEY: Someone Order A Smaller Tent!

Liberal bloggers enjoyed Cheney's latest media appearance:

• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "Cheney is the gift that keeps on giving. I fear the day Republicans wise up and muzzle him."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Dick Cheney, the DNC's manna from heaven."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "80% of voters have a favorable view of Colin Powell. 19% have a favorable view of Rush Limbaugh. So, of course, Cheney picks Limbaugh, who is about as popular as the Republican party right now. [...] And that's why we want Cheney on television as much as possible. Keep digging the GOP's own grave, Dick. Keep telegraphing to the country just how conservative and far to the right today's Republican party really is."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "It was one thing to hear Rush babble out Powell last week -- having Cheney say this is kind of crazy. Powell was the guy who sold Dick Cheney's excellent Baghdad adventure, and now he isn't good enough for the GOP. Kind of amazing. Four decades of military service, National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, and they don't want him."

While liberal bloggers think Cheney's comments about Powell are harmful to the GOP, they're not exactly ready to embrace Powell. Attaturk thinks Powell "has a lot to defend himself about," while digby decries "the rehabilitation of Colin Powell among progressives." digby continues: "Cheney may have been the chief architect [of the Iraq invasion], but Powell was the chief salesman and cover artist."

On the right side of the blogosphere, RedState's Erickson stands firmly with Cheney: "Put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh camp. Heck, put me in the Cheney-Limbaugh 2012 camp. If not a Presidential ticket, at least they should be the listened voices on the right -- the ones whose advice guides the direction our candidates go. Yes, the left may laugh at that and encourage it, but they would be wise to think about it. [...] Colin Powell, Meghan McCain, and others would have the GOP become more Democrat to compete on the playing field of American politics. Cheney and LImbaugh both urge a clear, distinct brand. The money is on them. The GOP will never win by being Democrat-lite."

Hot Air's Allahpundit offers a more qualified defense of Cheney's comments: "It's superficially surreal to watch a former VP side against his own Secretary of State, especially given Powell's public approval rating vis-a-vis Limbaugh's, but what's Cheney supposed to say here realistically? That he thinks a guy who voted for Obama and has been known to muse that 'Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less' is a superior spokesman for a conservative party? This is like asking a lefty blogger if the Democrats are better off with Keith Olbermann or McCain-lovin' maverick Joe Lieberman. Sure, Liebs is the more impressive person, but which one's closer to the 'progressive' ideal?"

SYKES: Conservatives Aren't Laughing

Conservative bloggers are blasting Sykes' comedy routine at the WHCD and are criticizing Obama for laughing at Sykes' Limbaugh jokes:

• Erickson: "By now you have probably read about Wanda Sykes' comments at the Correspondents Dinner. It is the first time in recorded history a lesbian has stood before America's media elite and performed oral favors on a man -- and not just any man. She did so to the President of the United States. It was a Lewinsky moment without the cigar and stained dress. Never mind that the American media elite would never dream of inviting anyone to speak at the Correspondents Dinner who supported a Republican. But the fawning hagiography to Obama continues. And it does so with some pointed remarks about Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "I find it fascinating...that the media world and the White House shrieked when Rush said he hoped Obama would fail, but laughed at Sykes' calling Rush a terrorist last night, including the President who felt so threatened by Rush that he criticized him by name in the first days of his presidency. If Rush had called Sykes the '20th terrorist' and wished kidney disease on her, I doubt that Obama would be laughing, and the media would fall all over themselves to rip him to shreds. But honestly, does the news of a double standard for conservatives really surprise anyone?"
• Glenn Reynolds: "'I hope his kidneys fail.' As classy as we've come to expect."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Certainly, President [George W.] Bush had his faults, but it's pretty hard to imagine him laughing had a comic wished kidney failure on, say, Keith Olbermann. He never stooped to the politics of pettiness. Yet President Obama -- harbinger of hope, unity and reconciliation -- was apparently happy enough with the crack to giggle along. Tells you a lot, doesn't it?"

On the left side of the blogosphere, The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates offers his take: "Meh, I think Wanda Sykes' Limbaugh bit was so/so. The treason part was weak, but the 'I hope his kidneys fail' was pretty hilarious. Anyway, hand-wringing over Wanda Sykes is pretty useless. She's a comedian. She's not there to respect the line. Moreover, I think people need to remember the context. Sykes belongs to three groups which Rush has made a career maligning -- blacks, gays and women. I don't have time to dig up the Rush-file. But I'm willing to bet that if take together all the abhorrent things Limbaugh has ever said about those three groups and measured them against Sykes few minutes, it wouldn't be a contest."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In Defense Of Identity

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias thinks it's fine for Obama to consider sexual orientation when selecting a SCOTUS nominee:

"[E]veryone knows that a president is going to consider age and health as important criteria in picking his nominees. That's because a slot on the Supreme Court isn't a reward for past excellence in jurisprudence, it's an effort to produce high-quality future jurisprudence. We care about past performance insofar as it's indicative of future results. We're not just handing out gold stars, in other words, we're hoping to produce good Supreme Court decisions. But while of course you'd have to look at a judge's past work as an important consideration, it'd be crazy to consider it the exclusive source of evidence about future judging. It's hardly implausible to think that a gay justice may have a different perspective on cases related to gay rights, and I don't see why it would be illegitimate for a president to take that into consideration.

More broadly, the nature of the Supreme Court is that a great many of its most important cases concern the rights of women and various kinds of minority groups. It's absurd to think that a forum of nine white, male, heterosexual Christians could possibly compose the best possible forum for deciding these kinds of issues. The reality is that a nine-person group can't possibly fully represent the diversity -- in terms of religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, etc. -- that exists in the country at large. But one can do better or worse on this regard and it makes perfect sense to aspire to do better. That's not an alternative to caring about the quality of the jurisprudence, it's part of trying to get good jurisprudence."

LEST WE FORGET: Mainstream Media At It Again, Bloggers Report

From The Onion:

"NEW YORK -- The mainstream media -- a loose consortium of corporate news outlets known for using professionally trained journalists who adhere to an editorial process -- have once again completely missed the boat in their reporting of national events, outraged sources within the blogosphere said Monday. 'When will the MSM dinosaurs realize that they're TOTALLY irrelevant?' wrote 39-year-old part-time librarian James Last, commenting on coverage of Obama's first 100 days in a scathing post that appeared on his blog, The LAST Word. 'If the idiots at MSNBC, The New York Times, and WaPo could lift their heads from the money trough for a minute, maybe they'd write a story that's not completely driven by the corporate agenda. I'm not holding my breath.' Right-wing bloggers were reportedly equally upset, with many singling out MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as 'shills' for the liberal agenda. At press time, an estimated 8.4 million bloggers nationwide were watching CNN."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at May 11, 2009 12:41 PM