{"id":15348,"date":"2008-04-26T12:55:53","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T16:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15348.html"},"modified":"2008-04-26T12:55:53","modified_gmt":"2008-04-26T16:55:53","slug":"just-what-cnn-needed-a-bush-sycophant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/just-what-cnn-needed-a-bush-sycophant\/","title":{"rendered":"Just what CNN needed, a Bush sycophant"},"content":{"rendered":"

For reasons that I’ll probably never quite understand, CNN invited former White House press secretary Tony Snow to join what the network bills as the “best political team” on television, overlooking Snow’s record of, well, being something of a Republican hack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Snow made his debut yesterday on the “Situation Room.” How did it go? Well, it appears that Snow is having a little trouble<\/a> making the transition back to broadcasting, because CNN’s latest addition seems to think he’s still<\/i> the White House press secretary.<\/p>\n

Blitzer: What do you think about McCain’s decision yesterday? He was very forceful in making it clear he did not like the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina.<\/p>\n

Snow: Of course he also doesn’t know a lot about what went on behind the scenes, but you would expect that. You’ve got somebody who’s running for a nomination. The president’s popularity ratings are low. He’s going to put a distance between himself and the president. Everybody hates what happened in Katrina, including the president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see, so Bush’s handling of Katrina was fine, and McCain is just making cheap criticism for crass electoral purposes.<\/p>\n

Blitzer: Do you think he’ll be doing more distancing of himself on other issues?<\/p>\n

Snow: I think he’ll do it when it’s easy. But on the other hand, there are things, like the war, where he’s agreed with the president…. Right now, Democrats have made it clear they don’t have any issue other than the fact they’re not George Bush. What McCain wants to be able to do is say, “Neither am I.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm. Democrats are running on their ideas regarding Iraq, healthcare, the economy, the environment, veterans’ issues, energy policy, foreign policy, and homeland security. They don’t, however, “have any issue other than the fact they’re not George Bush.” Why, this is the kind of insightful analysis you can only hear from CNN’s highly-paid political analysts — and any fourth-tier right-wing blog.
\n<\/p>\n

Wolf Blitzer: Dick Cheney is going to be going to a fundraiser in North Carolina for John McCain, for other Republicans. Is that going to be smart for McCain to be associated with Dick Cheney?<\/p>\n

Tony Snow: Yeah. I think so. Look, it’s not going to be smart if you are trying to get Nancy Pelosi’s vote. But if you’re trying to make sure you’ve got the Republican base on your side, absolutely. Dick Cheney is somebody who still really has earned the respect and admiration of a lot of Republicans. You’ll see a lot of people out making speeches. … The fact is, you’ve got a lot of Republicans out there who now have a vested interest in getting a Republican president. McCain will have to sort through the folks who he wants to have speaking on his behalf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, so to summarize, according to the newest member of the best political team on television, John McCain shouldn’t criticize Bush’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis, Democrats don’t have any issues they care about, and Dick Cheney is a great asset for the GOP this year.<\/p>\n

As Yglesias put it<\/a>, “This seems like right-wing hackery so egregious as to be counterproductive to the cause.”<\/p>\n

Note to CNN: you paid too much. There are plenty of Bush sycophants — well, in light of his 28% approval rating, “plenty” might be a little strong — who would probably be willing to go on the air and repeat pro-Bush talking points for a fraction of what you’re paying Snow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For reasons that I’ll probably never quite understand, CNN invited former White House press secretary Tony Snow to join what the network bills as the “best political team” on television, overlooking Snow’s record of, well, being something of a Republican hack. Snow made his debut yesterday on the “Situation Room.” How did it go? Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}