In his debut as a CNN commentator, former White House press secretary Tony Snow says it's unfair for John McCain to criticize Bush's handling of Katrina, and suggests that Dick Cheney could be a big political asset. This seems like right-wing hackery so egregious as to be counterproductive to the cause.
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Snow Job
25 Apr 2008 11:28 pm
Comments (36)
Cheney has some serious credibility with hardcore Republicans. Probably with some of the very people McCain was supposed to have trouble winning over.
Ah, the start of the Cheney-for-VP campaign! I've been waiting for this.
Hannity was ranting and raving about McCain criticizing first the NC Republicans then Bush. It was pretty amusing, but he'll get in line again like after the primaries.
Tony Snow is as big a liar as Alberto Gonzales was, and CNN has made a huge mistake by hiring him.
He said Dick Cheney had credibility with the people who had doubts about McCain. Cheney's popularity was in the mid-teens last I looked. If that's the base McCain needs to solidify I'm feeling a little less than threatened.
I'm also starting to suspect that the people John McCain hates worst are the people that still love Dick. If he pulls this off I could really see him pulling their wings off and laughing about it on every aspect outside foreign policy.
I think McCain should follow Snow's advice. Please.
Helpful tip: every time a Dem hack tries to make hay out of Katrina, discuss how the Dems colluded with Bush on this anti- and un-American scheme.
Is MattY smart enough - and intellectually honest enough - to enumerate all the tremendous costs of that scheme?
Bush spent Hurricane Katrina hamming it up at McCain's birthday party. So, yeah, McCain criticizing that sort of is out of line.
If you're trying to start a war with Iran, I can't imagine a better combination than John McCain and Dick Cheney.
So Snow's right - if that's what he wants to see.
And of course, now that he's a "pundit" rather than a hack news asshole and then a propagandist for the White House, clearly a war with Iran is in his and CNN's interests. Nothing like a war to boost news ratings, right?
Matt's totally wrong. This isn't counterproductive in the least - it's exactly productive for CNN, Snow, McCain, Cheney, the neocons, the Zionists, the right wing nuts, the military-industrial complex, and the oil companies.
Face it - most of the US electorate has no idea about any of this. They turn on CNN and hear some talking head say it's not fair to for McCain to criticize Bush over Katrina. Well, that might not go over too well in Louisiana but for the Republican base it's perfectly fine. And for the crowd that likes Dick Cheney, it's great.
Meanwhile, the rest of the electorate doesn't even know what Snow's talking about.
Spike is absolutely correct, although of course Tony Snow didn't raise that point. Need I say that the media has similarly reported McCain's criticism of Dubya over Katrina this week without raising the point?
And I thought Tony Snow on tv was going to be a bad thing, he might be one of the best things to happen to Dem candidates this election. Snow's swallowed the kool-aid, in one big gulp, and he's considered a legitimate voice of the conservative movement AND he's totally in love with Bush/Cheney, nothing could be better than him spending the next 6 months tying McCain to Bush.
"This seems like right-wing hackery so egregious as to be counterproductive to the cause."
It seems like dementia to me. Anyone check his calcium levels recently?
CNN is dead to me.
Ladies and gentleman, your liberal media at work!
Did he suggest that Dick Cheney would be a political asset as a VP candidate? If so, that makes no sense. If he suggested that he'd make a political asset as a fund raiser, then that would make sense. Cheney is better than you might expect on the rubber chicken circuit.
As for Tony Snow generally: don't underestimate him. Despite being wracked with cancer, he handily out-debated three lefties at once on Bill Maher's show last time he was a guest.
MY, what are you doing? Let's cheer this on in silence with giggles. We don't want to let CNN or Snow catch on.
Cancer often metastasizes to the brain.
"As for Tony Snow generally: don't underestimate him. Despite being wracked with cancer, he handily out-debated three lefties at once on Bill Maher's show last time he was a guest."
Unwittingly (in every sense proving our (and Matt's) point. Like numerous oother recent media hires (can we say Krisol, Rove, etc.), Snow is not a journalist or an independent commentator, but a movement operative. Supposedly, an organization like CNN does not, or should not, hire a reporter/analyst/commentator to "out-debate lefties" (of course, there are none appearing to debate, but that's another, though related, issue). Snow is not going to do anything but offer kneejerk defense of Bush and the boys, and the people who hired him are well aware of that fact. To be fair, Snow is so emotionally/professionally/personally/ideologically bound to these people, that his brain can probably not do anything else. He may be just one more inveterate wingnut hack, but the real onus is on CNN for (yet again) hiring one.
I think the only honorable thing to do is for Dick Cheney to nominate John McCain as his Vice President.
The succession of power is a very important feature of our constitution.
I remember when Tony Snow went ga-ga over Kid Rock's '04 endorsement of W. The youth vote was assured.
And, as far as CNN - it's just dreck. AIPAC wolf, Larry the reptile, Little Lord AC Fauntelroy. airhead Rick Sanchez, the old brother "Tony" somethin' who looks like Roscoe Lee Brown's son. Talking vomit.
CNN has really lowered its standards and seems trying to compete with Fox News.
They have both Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs spewing their own brand of xenophobia and closet racism virtually every day.
Now they have Tony Snow. Even Campbell Brown is married to Dan Senor, who used to be Bush's main man in Iraq, and now is a Fox News commentator. I wonder what lies he puts in her head.
The problem with former Bush administration people serving as conservative voices on the air is that they are not just conservatives, but partisan hacks for Bush who have a history of lying for him. Unfortunately, they have a case to be made for being on the air, as for many years people like Carville and Begala have been on the air, having been partisan hacks for the Clintons.
So in a way the very idea of having someone like Snow on the air is another bad legacy of the Clintons; basically the Republicans are just doing what the divisive Clintons have done.
This is part of why McCain is going to lose. Bush may have dismal popularity ratings overall, but McCain not only needs those remaining Bush people to vote for him, but also needs high turnout among them. And as one might guess, those remaining people are fanatically loyal to Bush, and will not tolerate major criticisms of Bush. And yet without distancing himself from Bush, McCain can't win enough of the rest of the electorate to win the election.
It is nearly an unsolvable problem, and certainly McCain isn't the one to solve it. I still think Huckabee would have had a slight chance ... but fortunately for the Democrats, the Republicans chose McCain over Huckabee.
Matt Yglesias: "In his debut as a CNN commentator, former White House press secretary Tony Snow says it's unfair for John McCain to criticize Bush's handling of Katrina, and suggests that Dick Cheney could be a big political asset. This seems like right-wing hackery so egregious as to be counterproductive to the cause."
Have you considered that this may be deliberate? The Bush administration, especially Cheney, is so unpopular among most of the public that this criticism from a Bush crony will probably help McCain with the independent voters he is courting.
Ed Marshall: "I'm also starting to suspect that the people John McCain hates worst are the people that still love Dick. If he pulls this off I could really see him pulling their wings off and laughing about it on every aspect outside foreign policy."
I've been thinking about what McCain is going to do if, God forbid, he actually manages to get elected this November.
McCain doesn't care about the economy, or even domestic policy in general. He's come close to stating this outright. He did care about campaign finance reform, but not enough to allow it to get in the way of his ambition. What he does care about, and deeply, is war. He doesn't want to be President so much as he wants to be Commander-in-Chief. He wants to be remembered as the man who "won the War on Terror."
McCain, personally, is far more popular this year than Republicans in general. It's unlikely that his personal popularity will rub off on Congressional candidates. Therefore, a hypothetical President McCain would probably be facing a substantial Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. This creates a stalemate. Congress can cut off funds for the wars that McCain so dearly wants to fight, and McCain can veto the important domestic programs that Congress is dedicated to passing. A Democratic Congress would be angry at the Republicans and not in the mood to cooperate, hoping to secure a veto-proof majority in 2010 and make McCain irrelevant.
I think McCain would strike a Faustian bargain with the Democrats in Congress: if they provide the war funding he wants, with no questions asked, he will sign off on the most important domestic legislation. That keeps McCain from looking like a failure with nothing to show, and prevents Congress from getting a "do-nothing" or "obstructionist" reputation. It would paper over the divisions in society for another couple of years, and superficially look like a win-win scenario... if you don't count the spiraling deficit and the steady trickle of American deaths in the Middle East.
CNN continues to lower itself into the abyss.
as Arianna Huffington says, it's not hiring Republicans to be pundits that's so egregious here -- after all if the media is to be fair and balanced, it should have a punditocracy from all colors of the spectrum, it's the fact that they chose somebody who is a propagandist. Tony Snow? You have to be kidding me. I thought Lou Dobbs was offensive with his constant rantings (and yes, I am offended by liberal ranters just as much -- ala Olbermann), but this is too much. I can't watch that station anymore.
as Arianna Huffington says, it's not hiring Republicans to be pundits that's so egregious here -- after all if the media is to be fair and balanced, it should have a punditocracy from all colors of the spectrum, it's the fact that they chose somebody who is a propagandist. Tony Snow? You have to be kidding me. I thought Lou Dobbs was offensive with his constant rantings (and yes, I am offended by liberal ranters just as much -- ala Olbermann), but this is too much. I can't watch that station anymore.
McCain, in fact, needs to send a message to the bomb-Iran block to win the election, and Chaney is probably the best person to send that message. One could hope that the Democratic candidate makes this necessity as painful as possible for McCain.
Let's be Clear: Republicans/Corporations own Cable News TV --
Republican Strategy: (1) help Hillary Clinton secure the Democratic Nominee; (2) McCain to actively try to win over African Americans that the Clintons have alienated, so that they will vote for McCain in November! So that is why you see McCain actively seeking out the support of African-Americans now, hoping to woo them back into the fold of the Republican party while, they smile in glee as the Clintons alienate them by their kitchen sink strategy. The Republicans in their plan to help Hillary make Barack look unelectable through their surrogates, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and others, continually ask their watching public to sow doubts, "do we really know who this guy is?" (ever after Barack wrote two very personal autobiographical books); they ask: "why can't this guy seal the deal?", then they continually bring up Rev. Wright, as if Rev. Wright's statements were Barack's. Do they ask of Clinton, "Was it not Rev. Wright you called on for prayer and support after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and invited him to the White House?" No, they rather ask with indignance, "why did he Barack) sit there for 20 years" though Rev. Wright's 9-11 comments were not 20 years ago but five. Then they praise Hillary -- saying how smart she is, how tough; how she can attract blue-collar white workers and dismiss all of the white support Barack gets in every election. They even praise her for her ability to drink down shots and for her acting ability to turn herself into a working-class girl who can shoot ducks behind a cottage (possibly another Bosnian fabrication) -- in otherwords for her performances and lies. Chris Matthews calls it impressive! In otherwords, they do not reward truth and authenticity in our politicians but how well they can act which has nothing to do with the true governing of a society.
Their plan and plotting is to get Hillary elected Democratic nominee, then unleash the "arsenal of weapons" they have against her and Bill, for they have been Planning this for a long time; then defeat her in the Fall with the very help of African-Americans that the Clintons have alienated and that McCain is so eagerly trying to impress at this time; -- beautiful though Machiavellian!
Let's be clear, Barack is fighting a Two-headed Giant: the Clintons as a unity for they are one, the Republican Party: McCain, Cable Television: Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Wolf Blitzer Rush Limbaugh (we need to have Barack bloodied up) & Fox News -- a Mighty Giant indeed. Hillary actively seeks their support to help her beat Barack but they will turn against her like a mighty sword if she was to become the Democratic nominee come fall.
Ah, the smell of oligarchy in the morning!
Every poll made in the last twenty years shows Americans distrust the media. But Americans distrust the Bush administration even more. So, obviously, it is time to hire Bush administration officials for media jobs - Gerson to the Post, Snow to CNN. CNN, of course, has been piling up viewers this year over Fox, because the action has all been on the Democratic side. You would think, then, that if CNN were a regular profit maker, they would go with audience share. But the media is not a regular profit maker. It always has two audiences - one is the governing class, and the network of wankers that express the opinions of the governing class, and the other is the regular viewing or reading audience. The first is always the audience of prime concern. And that audience has messages to push.
Sometime back in fall, Drezner and McArdle did a blogging heads in which Drezner, one of those rational choice guys, claimed that people who made mistakes in the media, like Michael O'Hanlen, would pay for it by less access to the media. Indeed, if the audience had some influence on the media, it would be much more liberal - that is the audience that reads newspapers and is more involved with political news. Fox has captured the niche on the right that is concerned with those things. But the media isn't liberal - it is afraid of Fox, and of course the Drudges and whatnot. And so we get the infinite circulation of nincompoops. The botched, bewildered right, wrong yesterday, wrong tomorrow, repulsing the audience but pleasing the oligarchs and kleptocrats that own the media.
Katrina was the obvious result of government by Sharptons and Jeremiah Wright types.
No, the US government will not keep an army of welfare bureaucrats and extra police ready to swoop in when your own corrupt and foolish local governments fail.
I don't want another dollar of my taxes spent on that city and when I hear race-baiters whine about not having yet "rebuilt" New Orleans, I'd rather we spend the money in Iraq. MAYBE there is some chance that will be money well spent.
Jozef,
Your ignorance astounds.
We have had several hundred hurricanes in US history, most before FEMA, many hitting populated and killing lots of people. Without Katrina's problems or massive costs.
The problem with Katrina was 10% Feds, 20% State, 10% city, and 60% with NOLA scum acting like 3rd World savages when not acting like parasites having a temper tantrum because other people weren't toiling hard enough or giving them enough.
We had fair warning of welfare blacks no longer fearing being shot after the 60s - routinely going on looting and pillaging sprees while screaming for Gov't goodies with their guilty white enablers whenever the system of control breaks down. Happens every blackout, blacks killing and robbing and wrecking. Happened throughout the Caribbean after Gilbert and Mitch.
New Orleans shouldn't be a surprise. We cannot expect them to act as civilized as Indians in Mumbai, Japanese in Kobe, Mexicans in Mexico City, Whites in Quebec after massive natural disasters ravaged those places. Where the people behaved in exemplary manner with almost no crime or "Federal Help", they had no class of permanent "welfare mammies and gov't supported thugs" running about demanding someone else fix everything because they were angry and outraged and were full of grievances. Without a pack of self-righteous liberal media demanding to know when the whites and imported Mexican labor would repair everything..And without tens of thousands of temporary housing units totalled by bestial inhabitants wrecking everything.
If McCain wishes to say the main problem is not "enough Federal workers" to wetnurse the parasites and protect them from themselves, fine. Maybe Johnny can provide a list of cities unfit to run themselves and which should not be allowed to vote but place themselves under Federal control, with martial law the rule disaster or not - much as DC was unfit most of it's modern era to self-govern or control its criminals and parasites, and the Feds had to run things. No troops or martial law except in the big riots, but run most things because the locals were so fucked up and incompetent.
"We had fair warning of welfare blacks no longer fearing being shot after the 60s - routinely going on looting and pillaging sprees while screaming for Gov't goodies with their guilty white enablers whenever the system of control breaks down. Happens every blackout, blacks killing and robbing and wrecking."
One exception was the blackout in NYC in 2003, but then NYC has a large, competent, and aggressive police force. Some New Orleans cops joined in the looting.
Christ, somebody shovel Ford into a hole, then cover it up.
Comments closed May 09, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Cheney is a political asset?
lol. That's rich.
Posted by artmann11 | April 25, 2008 11:32 PM