George McGovern

When George McGovern died at 90 over the weekend, liberals were guaranteed to remember him as if 1972 were yesterday. Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article titled "George McGovern was a winner:  His 1972 campaign was the most lopsided loss in presidential history. But this man was no loser.”  

Rosenbaum wants to run through the potentialities that could have led to a glorious McGovern victory in ’72.  Rosenbaum  says McGovern talked of "the role of the media, which basically took over presidential politics that year with the advent of the self-regarding 'Boys on the Bus' campaigning mode." Rosenbaum was on that press bus: 

George Will on Sunday refuted Peter Beinart's claim that former governor Sarah Palin is the Republicans' George McGovern.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Beinart appearing on ABC's "This Week" claimed the GOP today resembles the Democrat Party between 1968 and 1972 when McGovern took it over and moved it so far to the left that it no longer represented the views of average Americans.

This ended up harming the Democrats in the long run leading Beinart to conclude, "The Republicans will do great in 2010, but I think Sarah Palin is really the Republicans' George McGovern."

Will smartly responded (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

People inside our office (Rich Noyes) and outside (Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO) laughed at the thought that Hillary Clinton’s political position has descended to such a desperate valley that George McGovern -- the ultraliberal 1972 nominee that lost 49 states in a landslide to Richard Nixon -- was telling Hillary Clinton she was a loser. But Thursday morning’s network TV accounts carried none of that sly humor (the appeal of which is apparently limited to conservatives). They cast it with more pathos, that working for McGovern (in Texas) was Hillary’s first campaign job:

ABC’s Jake Tapper on her delegate deficit: "A narrow but probably insurmountable chasm, causing high profile supporters like former South Dakota Senator George McGovern, whose 1972 political campaign was Clinton's first political job, to jump ship."

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell had the violin out: "But even some of the faithful are wavering. Leading Senator Dianne Feinstein, a prominent superdelegate says she wants Clinton to explain what the rationale is for continuing. And former presidential candidate George McGovern, for whom Bill and Hillary Clinton worked in 1972, endorsed Barack Obama, calling on Clinton to quit the race."

When you're a Clintonite, you're a Clintonite all the way.
From your first Monicagate defense,
To Hil's last primary day.—with apologies to Leonard Bernstein*

Look next to the definition of "Clinton loyalist" in the dictionary, and you're likely to find a photo of Lanny Davis. The man who would have put Baghdad Bob to shame for his unflinching flackery during Bill's Monica mess is back on the beat for Hillary. Yesterday, Davis wrote a HuffPo column purporting to set forth 10 Undisputed Facts showing Obama's weakness as a general election candidate against John Mccain. As Jake Tapper has observed, some of those "facts" are "both disputed and not facts," including the risible notion that Hillary didn't run any negative ads. Guess the commercial featuring Osama Bin Laden slipped Lanny's mind.

Davis was back at it on today's Morning Joe. After repeating his claim from the HuffPo column that Obama is in a dead heat with McCain in super-blue in Massachusetts while Hillary's up by 15%, Davis took his anti-Obama argument a giant step further. Davis claimed that Barack is on track to lose in a blow-out of epic, McGovernesque, proportions.

View video here.

CNN's Jack Cafferty on Monday advanced former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's call for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, posing as his “Cafferty File” question in the 6pm EST hour of The Situation Room: “Why won't Congress impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?” Highlighting McGovern's bombastic op-ed in the “Outlook” section of Sunday's Washington Post, “Why I Believe Bush Must Go: Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse,” Cafferty quoted McGovern's contention Bush and Cheney “have repeatedly violated the Constitution,” “have lied to the American people time after time” and have carried out a “murderous, illegal, nonsensical war.” So “illegal” that the House and Senate, controlled by Democrats, continue funding it.

All six of the posted answers, read later in the hour by Cafferty, castigated Congress for not following McGovern's advice. One argued “the Democratic Congress will not move on impeachment because we have nothing but cowards in Washington,” another Cafferty chose to spotlight asserted that “the collaborators who gave Bush everything they wanted won't condemn themselves now by impeaching him” and Cafferty ended with this sarcastic take from Sally, a neighbor of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia: “Because all they did was cause death, destruction, torture, defiling of the Constitution and decimation of the nation's finances. Thank goodness they didn't have sex with an intern.”

Will the MSM ever give up their quest to get Bush and Cheney impeached? Seemingly, no. And this time they have trotted out one of the biggest most, irrelevant losers in American electoral history like a performing monkey ready to sing impeachment to the MSM's organ grinding tune. The Washington Post rolls out George McGovern to beat the impeachment drum making fools of themselves doing it. McGovern gives us all the boring, ridiculous tropes of American defeatism that the left has mired themselves in since their loss in 2000, but he adds a new one to the list when he says that Bush is "worse than Nixon."

Not content just to let the WaPost give McGovern his platform, CBS uses McGovern's blather as a launching pad for their own advancement of the impeachment idea.

It looks like A South Dakota museum devoted to the political career of far-left Democrat George McGovern registered 5,000 fewer visitors last year than a Wisconsin museum devoted to mustard. So why all the hype from the Associated Press about how a "Museum about McGovern draws many visitors"? Oh, the AP did their best to make it seem like the George McGovern Legacy Museum is a "surprising" run away success in the world of museums. They go on and on about how there are a "lot of friends" of McGovern around the world and his museum is "interesting" and a "lesson" for our times. But, then they make the mistake of saying how many visitors have come to this thing and it reveals a paltry attendance. So, far from a great success, this so-called museum is not as successful as AP tries to make it seem. So, why is the AP pushing this thing? Could it be because of their affinity for McGovern's extreme left views? Do they want to urge people to attend to be exposed to McGovern's failed ideas of the past? This story certainly isn't about a museum success story, whatever the case may be.