Craig Crawford

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):

Appearing as a guest on Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, the Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford – formerly an MSNBC political analyst – admitted that the mainstream media have "listen[ed] too much to the Democratic message" that the Tea Party movement will harm Republicans rather than Democrats in this year’s congressional elections. He further charged that the media are "playing into that Democratic message that these candidates are insane." Crawford:

Sometimes we're wrong when we listen too much to the Democratic message. That's the Democratic party message, that the Tea Party is bad for them [Republicans]. I think we should scrutinize that a bit more, be a little more skeptical of it. The other is that they're all crazy. And that's the trouble with focusing on all these statements and everything. We're playing into that Democratic message that these candidates are insane.

A bit earlier, after host Howard Kurtz observed that the media do not "respect" Tea Party candidates and "some of us seem to be looking down our noses at these insurgents," Crawford lamented: "Yeah, and I hate to see the mainstream media doing that because I certainly respect them and their politics. They have been very successful."

Crawford notably has a history of criticizing conservatives for charging that the media are biased against them in his book, "Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media." Last March, he also famously resigned from MSNBC, and, in a comment thread on his CQ blog, complained about the left turn the network had taken: "I simply could not any longer endure being a cartoon player for lefty games, just gotta move on to higher ground even if there’s no oxygen."

Ana Marie Cox on Sunday compared the Tea Party movement to the anti-war women's group Code Pink.

Appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," the GQer formerly known as Wonkette wasn't at all bothered by Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans disrupting Karl Rove's book signing last week.

"It's not infringing on Karl Rove's right to speak to have someone else interrupt him." 

She continued, "Code Pink was to Fox News, you know, what the Tea Partiers are to MSNBC now. I mean, Code Pink was the group that the Republicans and the GOP and Fox News wanted to have represent the Democratic Party" (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary): 

No longer capable of tolerating his colleagues at NBC, political contributor Craig Crawford announced he has resigned from MSNBC post. 

"Three months short of my current contract I sent the following to the boss, Phil Griffin: ‘Phil, Just wanted to give you the heads up that my situation with MSNBC has become so unrewarding for me that I've decided to move on,'" he wrote this morning on his Congressional Quarterly blog.

"I simply could not any longer endure being a cartoon player for lefty games, just gotta move on to higher ground even if there's no oxygen," Crawford later elaborated on a comments-thread.

Crawford will likely be best remembered for work his work during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries - drawing much ire from MSNBC compatriots - for vigorously defending the biggest Democratic threat to MSNBC's golden-boy:

Twice in the past week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has on his Countdown show tried to dismiss the popularity of Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue by mentioning discounts like Newsmax’s promotion that offers the book for $4.97 to new subscribers. Olbermann first raised the issue on the Thursday, November 19, show, as he mentioned rumors of high sales numbers. Olbermann: "Publishing industry rumors, first week sales more than half a million. No idea if any of them were not at these 50 to 75 percent discounts."

On Monday’s show, during a discussion with MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe, Olbermann again tried to credit the popularity of Palin’s book to discounts after Wolffe commented that she would soon have millions of dollars:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Millions, she got it upfront, right? Because she's not going to get millions if they're selling this book at Newsmax for $4.97. You and I, as authors, understand: Get it upfront, right?

RICHARD WOLFFE: We would hope that Bob Barnett did his job in that way. But look, you know, she is turning out the crowds. This book is selling, and let's hope people are reading it.

OLBERMANN: It's $4.97! If we sold books for $4.97, they'd be stacked up out here and people would be taking them as they went home.

Also on the November 19 show, the Countdown host suggested there was "tackiness" in Palin’s plan to visit Fort Hood and donate book proceeds to victims of the massacre there, and quoted a Palin critic who compared her to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, as Olbermann called the comparison "apt." Olbermann:

On Tuesday’s Countdown show, at the beginning of a segment about the Obama family’s pet dog, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and MSNBC political analyst Craig Crawford, joked about FNC host Bill O’Reilly being a dog. Picking up on Olbermann’s earlier suggestion that he gets tired of hearing about presidential dogs, Crawford opened the discussion by ribbing the Countdown host about the possibility of the show getting its own pet dog.

After Olbermann disagreed, Crawford came back with a lame joke: "Well, you’ve already got O’Reilly’s show.

Olbermann responded: "That would be a female dog."

The over-the-top name-calling against the FNC host came just minutes after Olbermann used his "Worst Person" segment to slam Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as he lectured the conservative talk radio hosts that one does not have to "spend every waking hour trying to annihilate" a political figure because of policy disagreements.

But Olbermann is well known for devoting a large portion of his program daily for the last several years to slamming President Bush – not only calling Bush a "fascist," but also suggesting last December that Bush administration members, presumably including President Bush himself, deserve to be "in hell" for some of their actions in the Iraq war. Olbermann: "I don’t know what, if any religion you belong to, but I suspect you’ll agree that people who ignored that many foretellings of preventable death should have a long time to think about it in hell!"

Former President George W. Bush reinstated a policy in 2001 that restricted foreign countries using American dollars for abortions. CBS political consultant Craig Crawford called the action "red meat to the Bible Belt conservatives."

Just three days after taking office, President Barack Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a policy set into place by Ronald Reagan that prohibited American funding for foreign abortions. Have the media called it red meat for liberals? No. They've mostly been silent.

Count Craig Crawford as a dissenting voice in the media storm blaming the Clintons for the injection of race into the Dem primaries. The Congressional Quarterly columnist and MSNBC political analyst offered his unconventional wisdom on a special Saturday edition of Morning Joe today.

CRAIG CRAWFORD: I never understood exactly what Bill Clinton said that was supposed to interject race, actually. I know he was arguing at arm's length with Obama about the war and some other issues. It wasn't clear to me -- I mean the most direct reference to race I saw in this campaign was interjected by the media after New Hampshire trying to say that for some reason Obama lost New Hampshire because of racism. I never followed that one either.

View video here.

Did I miss the joke? Was there something funny about what Pete Stark (D-Calif.) said on the floor of the House, claiming that President Bush sends our soldiers to Iraq to get their heads blown off for his amusement? Craig Crawford can apparently see some humor in it.

Crawford appeared on today's "Morning Joe," and while the MSNBC political analyst certainly didn't approve Stark's statement, he did try to soft-pedal it, smilingly portraying it as just one more outburst from a congressional scamp.

View video here.

Does it get much lower than this?

After first extolling the "F--- Bush" headline, MSNBC's David Shuster, substituting for Tucker Carlson today, later engaged in a grotesque game of "gotcha," exploiting an Amercan soldier killed in Iraq to make his partisan point.

Chatting with Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford, talk turned to the controversy surrounding the editorial in the Colorado State student newspaper headlined "Taser This: F--- Bush" [f-word spelled out in headline].

Wolffe went first, and was patently delighted by the incident. With a hearty grin, he observed . . .

At first I thought I might have misunderstood. Lester Holt surely didn't mean to imply that befriending the NRA jeopardizes a politician's reputation for being tough on crime, did he?

Oh yes he did.

View video here.

On this morning's "Today," weekend co-anchor Holt introduced a segment on Rudy Giuliani's Friday speech to the NRA, in which Rudy tried to take some of the sharp edges off his prior anti-NRA positions . . .

Don't look for Arianna Huffington to be sitting down to a chummy luncheon with Hillary Clinton anytime soon. Huffington has been no fan of Clinton for some time, considering her insufficiently, and inauthentically, anti-war. But on today's "Morning Joe," Huffington took her animus to another level, accusing Hillary of an ultimate Dem sin: "swiftboating" an opponent, namely Barack Obama.

HUFFINGTON POST FOUNDER ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: After the CNN debate, I think it was ridiculous the way she and her campaign attacked Obama for saying he would engage in diplomatic talks with dictators. That is sort of a classic example of swiftboating your opponent. Like the equivalent of what Republicans do anytime Democrats call for troop withdrawal and they are talking about "cutting and running" or "precipitous withdrawal" or any of the clever little phrases.

View video here.

Since last week, MSNBC's Countdown show has reached new levels in displaying personal insults as host Keith Olbermann, as well as regular guest Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly, have repeatedly made fat jokes about the subjects of their conversation. Both their targets were conservatives – Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. While Ailes was at the receiving end several times last week, once directly called "fat ass" by Olbermann, on Monday's show guest Crawford took a cheap shot at Hastert's weight. While discussing the possibility that Republicans would "throw Hastert under the bus" by forcing him to resign over his handling of the Mark Foley sexual abuse scandal, Crawford quipped: "Well, if he fits, if the bus has a lot of clearance." (Transcripts follow)

You can watch Imus in the Morning for a couple of years before this will happen, Don Imus thinks a guest goes too far with a joke. Normally, the I-Man enjoys finding humor in the agony of public figures. On today’s program Craig Crawford tried to play along and tested his new Samuel Alito material at 6:44.

Craig Crawford: "I actually think, you know, the wife leaving the room crying, that made all the evening news and, you know, it was the better video and made him look like a sympathetic figure. Although, you know, she started crying when Senator, when Lindsey Graham said Alito is not a bigot, that seemed to make her cry. I guess she thought she had married a bigot. It was surprising to her to hear that he wasn’t a bigot."