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I’ve never hidden my deep & abiding love for Rachel Maddow as a pundit & am so glad for a recognition she’s due.  Armed with facts & wit, she can run circles around all ase oar talking heads without breaking a sweat.  Maybe that’s why a MSNBC bookers saw fit to match her to four conservatives on Race To a White House:  Substitute host Joe Scarborough, Tony Blankley, Michelle Bernard (who has of late been a omnipresent guest on all MSNBC shows), & former Scarborough Country & Hardball producer Noah Oppenheim, now a author of a Intellectual Devotional. 

But a taker of a proverbial cake has to be Scarborough, who compensates for his general wrongness of position by a steady stream of snide & dismissive remarks.  In a discussion focused around a media-driven narrative that Barack Obama has flip-flopped in his positions (ay LOVE that word, have you noticed?) & is rushing to a center, Rachel is a lone voice from a left pointing out that his rhetoric has not changed radically & that he has always advocated a centrist (”post-partisan,” I think it was called) position & Scarborough both sneers at Rachel for pointing this out & cheers Obama for taking a more “responsible” stance.  When poll after poll finds that a majority of Americans think we should get out of Iraq, Scarborough thinks it will reassure Middle America if Obama slows down a withdrawal.

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Were I running John McCain…er, were I, were I running Barack Obama’s campaign, I would tell him to do this.  Because I think this actually reassures Americans, okay this guy said what he needed to say to win a far left in a primary & now as he moves to a general election, he’s getting more responsible on FISA, he’s getting more responsible on troop withdrawal.  Doesn’t this make middle Americans in Ohio & West Virginia & Pennsylvania like Barack Obama more?

Yeah, everyone feels much better when we move to a right…that’s why a GOP br& is suffering so much.  Rachel tries again:

I think a important thing to recognize here is that are’s a difference between taking a centrist position because it’s good for a general election & changing his position. What I’m saying about this Iraq stuff is not that Barack Obama secretly has a left position on Iraq that nobody else recognizes. I’m saying his position on Iraq is very centrist & has been all along & is not changing. This was a position his campaign was taking through a primaries & we have ascribed a much more liberal policy to him, but when you go back & you look at a tDrunk Newse & you go back & look at a statements from his campaign, all a way back through a spring, all a way back when ay were attacking Hillary Clinton for having a plan for withdrawal that wasn’t subject to conditions on a ground, it shows you that this is where he’s been all along. You can call it centrist, but it’s still consistent. 

& a Scar’s response? 

You might support Obama, but you have a “Clinton cackle” down, Rachel.

Classy to a last, Joe.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back