The willingness of MSNBC on-air commentators to engage in political hackery for the Democratic Party knows no boundaries - as indicated by the latest charged hurled at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown," who once called conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, "big mashed up bag of meat with lipstick," almost on a nightly basis attacks Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and has also regularly drubbed Palin, is now charging her with sexism.
On his Nov. 2 broadcast, Olbermann accused Palin of forcing former GOP congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava out of the race for New York's 23rd Congressional District and said Palin should be charged with sexism for doing so.
"Her campaign last year began, I mean within hours of her selection by Sen. McCain, began to be enveloped by their perpetual charges of sexism," Olbermann said. "Every criticism of her was sexism. Everything was because she was a woman, because she was a conservative woman. Why did she just put and push another Republican off the cliff and where are the charges of sexism about that?"
Olbermann's guest, MSNBC regular and occasional "Countdown" fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell, agreed.
"Of course we remember that gender defense-ism of hers came after her criticizing Hillary Clinton for making sounds like that, of course," O'Donnell said. "And well look, this is a terrible situation for them because this is a party that is in the wrong end of the gender gap. And what did they do for it this week? They kicked out this woman who had the Republican nomination to run for the House of Representatives."
However, Scozzafava did not receive the nomination by facing the electorate in a primary. She was selected by a handful of New York State Republican Party bosses.
And predictably, O'Donnell saw this as evidence for the claim he has made almost nightly - that the Republican Party is crumbling.
"They just beat her out of the place. This couldn't hurt them with women any more. I mean it's astounding," O'Donnell said. "They don't even quite qualify for party status anymore when they're down in the low-20, like 19 percent of Americans saying, ‘I'm a Republican.' This makes things much worse."
O'Donnell would do his viewers a service by taking a look at a recent Gallup poll. According to the poll's findings, conservatives are shown as the top ideological group.
"Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June," Lydia Saad wrote for the Gallup Web site on Oct. 26. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group."
