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Lindsey Graham, who is a media darling appearing on the Sunday talk shows almost as much as John McCain tried to rewrite history and blame the Democratic Party for the failure of the Bush immigration bill. Apparently, he doesn't remember that Karl Rove's plan to try and capture the Latino vote failed miserably as the xenophobic right wing talk shows, bloggers and Tom Tancredo's went ballistic.

TAPPER: Well, the leader of the Republican charge, other than President Bush, for immigration reform last time was your dear friend Senator John McCain, who, as far as I can tell, is completely AWOL from the debate.

I know he has a tough primary against a more conservative -- arguably more conservative challenger there. But shouldn't -- I mean, where -- what is his commitment? It certainly doesn't look unwavering.

GRAHAM: Well, to me, his commitment is what it has always been. He has done the heavy lifting on immigration. He has been fighting the health care bill that the country dislikes and Republicans can't tolerate. He has fought the stimulus package. And he has worked with the president on (INAUDIBLE).

Here is my advice to the administration, I will release a document with Senator Schumer about my views on how to fix immigration. The campaign is over, you told Senator McCain. President Obama, lead. You write a health care -- immigration reform bill. You do the heavy lifting. You put together a comprehensive immigration reform package. You bring it to the Senate and House and see how many Democrat and Republican supporters you can get.

All you have done is talk about what we should do, now is the time to lead. Tell the people at the rally next weekend that your administration will write a comprehensive immigration reform bill. I will be glad to look at it. If I like, I will sign on. If I oppose it, I'll tell you where I disagree. And see how many votes you can get.

TAPPER: To be fair, Senator Graham, the reason that immigration reform didn't pass last time, even with you, Senator McCain and President Bush pushing for it, was because of the Republican Party. The Republican Party seems in no --

GRAHAM: That's not fair.

TAPPER: Why is that not fair?

GRAHAM: That's not fair at all.

TAPPER: Even Republican members who are part of the coalition voted against it.

GRAHAM: I can show you 10 Democrats in the Senate today who voted against immigration reform: Tester, Baucus, Bayh, Webb --

TAPPER: And how many Republicans voted against it?

GRAHAM: It was a bipartisan --

(CROSSTALK)

GRAHAM: A lot of us voted for it. We got over 60 votes at one time. It fell apart because the bill was attacked from the left and the right.

The Minutemen were on FOX News everyday practically. Graham can thank the Sensenbrenner bill in the HOUSE that said all illegal were felons. I can tell you that broke the camel's back as far as Latinos were concerned in Los Angeles. In 2004, many Latinos voted for bush because he was religious, but after the Sensenbrenner bill the GOP---that cancelled out all religious ties that held Latino support for the GOP.

Digby called it Huckleberry Sunday and writes:

I hope everyone realizes that this is a set-up on immigration reform. Graham is a snake. He is trying to position the Republicans as friends of the Hispanic community, but he will torpedo anything meaningful and then blame it on the Democrats. The GOP has no intention of going up against their tea party bigots, but they'd sure like to demobilize the Hispanic community by undermining their loyalty to the Democrats.

I consider Graham to be one of the most dangerous Republicans in the government. He's a very bad faith player whom the villagers love as a sort of cornpone Jimmy Stewart. I hope the Democrats don't underestimate him.

More unintentional hilarity from Grampy McSame:

"When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth - and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan," the New York Times reports.

And the buzzer goes 'BZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' See, as much as facts don't matter to Republicans, I pretty sure that holding up Ronald Reagan for his deficit cutting is not a good plan:

Reagan Tripled the National Debt...

For Tea Baggers supposedly concerned that "deficit spending is out of hand," history apparently began only on January 20, 2009. Because while President Obama rightly resorted to massive deficit spending to rescue the American economy from calamity, it was Ronald Reagan who ushered in the now-standard Republican practice of "spending our children's inheritance."

As Steve Benen rightly noted, it was not Reagan but President Obama whose stimulus plan delivered the largest two-year tax cut in history. And as it turns out, what Saint Ronnie giveth, he also taketh away.

As predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Ultimately, Reagan was forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe (a fact John McCain learned the hard way from Tom Brokaw last October). By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan nonetheless more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history.

Swing and a miss for McCain. Again.

C&L and other blogs have been documenting Fox News' use of misleading and false graphics for years. Usually, when a Republican gets in trouble or falls out of good graces, they mislabel them as Democrats -- but over the past few days Media Matters has caught some real stinkers that makes one wonder if they really are, just that bad:

Almost three months to the day since Fox News instituted its "zero tolerance for on-screen errors" policy, the following on-screen graphic was displayed during the February 22 edition of America's Newsroom: Read on...

Why does Fox News hate J.D. Hayworth? Isn't he the fluffernutter candidate who makes Senator John McCain look like a die hard progressive? To make matters worse, the very next day, Media Matter caught another goof.

Is Rupert Murdoch so cheap he won't spring for basic spell check software?

I’ve only recently joined the Twitterati, http://twitter.com/nonnythemouse and not being the most technologically proficient of folks, accidently hit the ‘yes’ button to something that obviously must have read, ‘you don’t have any friends, you loser, so how about adding these twenty random people to your contact list?’ One of them, for some unfathomable reason, was Senator John McCain. I’ve managed to pare down my ‘friends’ list to… well… mostly actual friends, but I’ve kept Sen. McCain on the list out of the same morbid curiosity that has me reading Red State’s emailed newsletter on a regular basis.

This morning, my Twitter box had a tweet (give me a break, I’m still learning the slang!) from Sen. McCain which said, ‘Vote on my amendment to eliminate $6 mill in wasteful govt subsidy to private bus companies for GPS systems - need to stop wasteful spending.’

Hmmm… thought I. Let’s go see what this is all about.

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I'm still trying to figure out who ran the worst campaign in the history of politics in the last 50 years. Was it Thompson or Giuliani? (OK, that's a little harsh) It had to be Rudy the front runner, but Fred ran a close second. Anyway, after his humiliating defeat, Fredrick is heading back to Hollywood.

Former Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is returning to his career as an actor and signed a deal to be represented by the William Morris Agency, the talent group said on Monday.

The 65-year-old actor and politician was a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. president before dropping out of the race in January after garnering little support. Arizona Senator John McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee.

Maybe Dick Wolf will create another spinoff series: L&O: Lazy-boy Intent. About an aging DA that's just too tired to show up in court. Or, something...