Bob Shrum

Leave it to Ed Schultz to conjure up the most deranged spin yet in response to the Internal Revenue Service admitting to undue scrutiny of tea party groups.

While many liberals have been critical of the Obama administration in the wake of the hardly surprising revelation, Schultz on his radio show yesterday was full-throated in his defense of the IRS -- even to the point of making the absurd claim that it showed how conservatives should support President Obama's plan to "simplify" the tax code. (Audio clips after page break)

The Washington Post tiptoed gently on Friday around Joe Biden’s hopes of being elected president in 2016. “For Biden, dreams vs. realities” is the story’s headline, but at the very top of Page One, it says “At the top of his political game, the vice president shines as Obama’s personable No. 2. But events may conspire against a 2016 promotion.”

Post reporter Philip Rucker rather comically took 30 paragraphs to establish one series of “events” that threaten Biden are gaffes. The front page says Biden is a “long shot at best,” but insists he’s seen as “genuine, down-to-earth, rock solid on the issues" and “clearly has the experience and gravitas to ascend to the presidency.”

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Emerson warned. Is it too much to expect in the same sentence?

Appearing on Ed Schultz's radio show Wednesday to weigh in on the allegations against Herman Cain, veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum had this to say (audio) --

The solution to our raging unemployment rate is so simple, I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it before.   Luckily, Chris Matthews did.  The government simply needs to spend more money!  Because, as "everyone knows, as we studied in school," government spending creates jobs!

Matthews, just as wacky on the weekend Hardball as he is in his Mon.-Fri. version, went on a two-segment rant this morning, pleading for higher government spending on the theory that government can put people back to work across the country.

First Jim Cramer and then Bob Shrum were only too happy to agree.  The supposedly capitalist Cramer went so far as to suggest that government, and not small business, is the engine that drives the economy.

Matthews closed by claiming that the private sector isn't working to create jobs, and thus government must do so, darkly warning that otherwise "you're going to have an unstable society."

View video after the jump.

On Tuesday, NewsBusters identified the media's emerging strategy of discrediting Glenn Beck by pitting his religious beliefs against other Christians.

Mere hours later, as if on cue, MSNBC was all over it.

"Hardball" host Chris Matthews invited on liberal Salon editor Joan Walsh and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, two people who are something less than experts on the religious right, to help him psychoanalyze conservatives.

Their conclusion was all too predictable: Beck's rhetoric is harmful to Catholics and smacks of anti-Papal Klan rallies.

It has now been established by the media that Mormons like Beck are anti-evangelical, anti-Catholic, and possibly just plain anti-Christian.

Prepare yourself for liberals who bash conservative Christians at every turn to suddenly care about Christians getting bashed (video below with partial transcript):

Chris Matthews almost got another tingle up his leg on national television Tuesday talking about how wonderful Barack Obama is.

So did Salon's Joan Walsh,

In the opening segment of "Hardball," the host and his perilously liberal guests concluded by trying to figure out why conservatives don't like the current White House resident.

In the end, and sadly predictable, the conclusion was the color of Obama's skin.

But before that, the sycophantic praise and exultation for the object of their affection was literally breathless (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Democratic operative Bob Shrum, just after Sarah Palin finished her address to the Tea Party convention in Nashville, during the live MSNBC coverage Saturday night anchored by liberal radio host Ed Schultz who noted Palin had cited Ronald Reagan:

The difference with Ronald Reagan was that he always had an alternative vision of where America should go. And what we heard tonight was more a masterful exercise – masterful – in paranoid politics. I mean, she came across to me as a merchant of hate with an oh gosh smile...

Audio: MP3 clip

Joe Scarborough has expressed serious doubts as to his Republican affiliation, and made clear that House GOP whip Eric Cantor "is not my friend."  But caution to those who assume Joe has gone left: he has clarified to this NewsBuster that his critique of the GOP comes from the Ron Paul-esque right . . .

Scarborough's stunning comments came on today's Morning Joe in response to Dem Bob Shrum's taunting of Joe over his ostensible GOP membership, in the context of Pres. Obama's attempt to rescue Martha Coakley from the rubble of her campaign.

Democrat strategist Bob Shrum on Sunday not only praised Reaganomics, but used it as an example as why Americans should be patient in allowing President Obama's stimulus plan to take effect.

During the panel discussion on Sunday's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory asked his guests, "Why shouldn't the Republicans, who certainly spent a long time spending a lot of government money and under whose watch the economy took the turn that it did, why shouldn't there be more patience from the Republican aisle?"

Shrum amazingly offered the following answer (readers are advised to prepare for an alternate reality):

Bob Shrum has a funny way of telling the troops to calm down.

The purpose of the long-time Democratic strategist's opinion piece at The Week (the picture at the right is at that link) is to counsel his ideological colleagues that despite current appearances, soon-to-be president Barack Obama will indeed enact their liberal agenda.

But while telling Democrats to focus on the future and to resist the urge to dig through every nook and cranny in Washington in search of a Bush Adminstration crime to prosecute, his first sentence revives the long-debunked claim that George W. Bush didn't win the 2000 election fair and square.

Here are key paragraphs from his piece:

Does Maureen Dowd moonlight at MSNBC as Andrea Mitchell's writer? Here's how for, purposes of defending Caroline Kennedy in her NYT column today, Dowd mocked former New York Republican Senator Al D'Amato [emphasis added]:

[B]elieve me, she talks a whole lot better than the former junior senator from New York, Al D’Amato, who once wailed that he was “up to my earballs” in some mess, and another time complained to me that those “little Jappies” bring over boats full of cars and then take the boats back empty.

Now check out Mitchell's comments made during her 1 PM time slot on MSNBC today:

Bob Shrum has made an addition to the growing list of things you can't say about Obama, because it's racist: don't you dare suggest Obama's never done anything hard.

Dem Shrum issued his diktat while debating Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, on today's Hardball. Shrum seized on and distorted Rogers' statement, manifestly made in the political sense, that Obama had "never done one hard thing," to play the race card.

View video here.

It's hard to dislike political consultant Bob Shrum. Because of the Shrum Curse, he is exactly 0 for 8 in getting the presidential candidates he worked for elected starting with George McGovern in 1972 and most recently John Kerry in 2004. And because all of the candidates he worked for have been Democrats, that is why he is so well liked by Republicans because of his reputation as the Eddie Mush of presidential campaigns.

In case you are unfamiliar with Eddie Mush, he was the character in the movie "A Bronx Tale" who was a total jinx. He had a perfect track record of losing every bet he ever placed as well as jinxing everyone around him. That pretty much describes Bob Shrum so it must have been painful for Shrum to answer this reader's question in the UK Independent: "Would you give up your other victories to have gotten one Democratic president elected?" You can tell that Shrum was a bit irked in his reply:

May he live to be 120, but when Bob Shrum eventually goes to his reward, his epitaph could read "Here lies Shrum. He thought he was great.  But his presidential record . . . was 0-8."

After Shrum taunted Pat Buchanan on today's Morning Joe as "living on Mars" for supposedly overestimating the power of affirmative action as an issue, Pat fired back, reminding Shrum of his dubious lifetime achievement of having consulted on eight losing Dem presidential campaigns with nary a win.

View video here [NB: low audio level].

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked to Democratic strategist Bob Shrum about Senator Ted Kennedy being hospitalized over the weekend and asked: "How important -- is there a way to measure this? Because everybody took a deep breath on Saturday and took a second to say, ‘oh, my gosh.’" Shrum responded: "I thought it was an incredible acknowledgment of the fact that this is probably the most effective and significant Senator in the last 50 years, one of the most significant in American history."

Shrum continued to lionize Kennedy: "...this is someone who literally has touched almost everybody's life in America. There isn't a bill for economic or social justice that doesn't bear his imprint. He's lived the Kennedy legacy, which we're all fascinated with, but he's vastly enlarged it." Smith followed up by describing how Kennedy even garnered respect from the Republican nominee:

We put a little bit of John McCain's statement up just a second ago. I want to put it up in full because this is really important. Here's a guy who should be his ideological opposite theoretically and this is what John McCain says: 'Senator Kennedy's role in the U.S. Senate cannot be overstated. He is a legendary lawmaker, and I have the highest respect for him.’

Correction (July 31 | 14:40): Colbert's wrist was broken. He injured it running around his studio before a show. I regret the error.

Bob Shrum, the Democratic political strategist who has only slightly fewer losses on his resume than the Philadelphia Phillies, appeared on the Colbert Report last night to tout his book, “No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Complainer,” err, I mean, “No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Campaigner.”

Colbert, who was pretending to be gravely hurt and wearing a fake cast on his arm, was ushered in by wheelchair. Shrum, not missing an opportunity to shill for the Democrats, quipped:

“I hope all the suffering has made you more inclined to support national health insurance, so everybody can get the same kind of risk care you do.”

Clever as ever Mr. Shrum. But that was only the beginning.

Colbert immediately turned his attention to what Shrum, the Susan Lucci of political campaigning, is best known for, losing.

A transcript of Colbert and Shrum’s conversation follows. Colbert’s show is designed as a satirical homage to Bill O’Reilly and usually makes fun of conservatives and certainly Shrum knows this. Even so, he’s dead serious about his Bush-stole-Ohio charge.

Here’s the transcript. More commentary follows.: