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Michelle Malkin visited Fox & Friends yesterday to jeer discuss Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony in front of Congress Wednesday. The Los Angeles Times noted that the Republicans were so intent on “resurrect(ing) a specious political attack that got them nowhere in the final days of the presidential campaign,” they missed opportunities to get real answers as to how to prevent such tragedies from happening again. And, in the process, made Clinton look “stronger than ever.”

Malkin and her Fox News hosts were so busy following in those footsteps that they failed to consider how they missed the mark in just the same way

Malkin began her “analysis” by sneering that the hearings seemed all about “Hillary 2016.” But that's all the Republicans at both hearings were focused on, too -- getting a sound byte to use against her potential candidacy.

Malkin gave special attention to the widely-seen clip of Clinton responding to Republican Senator Ron Johnson in which he beats the political dead horse alleging that the Obama administration deliberately oversold an anti-Muslim YouTube video as the cause of the attack. Clinton's forceful and persuasive answer: "Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”

“It makes all the difference in the world,” Malkin said contemptuously. But she never explained why. She became too caught up in attacking Republicans for having “squandered the opportunity to really stick it, not only to Hillary and the State Department, but to this entire lying administration.”

She continued, “Now I understand that there are a lot of staffers and a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been so steeped in this that they don't realize that the basics still need to get out to the American public and that was the missed opportunity, I think.”

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John and I have been wandering the halls at Netroots Nation here in Vegas this week, having a blast hanging out with our blogospheric friends. But we also led one of the conference's first panels yesterday morning, titled "Right Wing Populism and the Tea Parties".

It also featured our friend Adele Stan of AlterNet and the amazing Hugh Jackson of the Las Vegas Gleaner. Of course, I'm a little biased, but I thought the ensuing discussion was very good, the room was pretty full and the questions very thoughtful.

Turns out that some folks from rightward publications were there too. Susan Davis of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire was there and filed a pretty balanced story.

However, I noticed that she also truncated not only the title of our book, Over the Cliff -- she omitted the subtitle, How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane, though that in fact was a significant theme of the panel as well -- she also truncated the quote from me as well:

“After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent,” said liberal blogger David Neiwert. “The right never gives up.”

“The answer to the tea party is to activate the populist wing of the progressive movement,” he said. “We need to seize on [the public’s frustration] ourselves and channel it to our movement.”

What I actually said in full was this:

"After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent. But having studied the right for many years, I can tell you: They never, ever, give up. They are relentless. Even after their ideology has been completely discredited by eight years of conservative rule, even after they have driven the country into an economic abyss, they keep going -- even if it means going insane in the process."

Oh well.

And then there was Chris Moody of the Daily Caller, who couldn't take the time to talk to any of us afterward, and wrote an even more distorted account headlined "Liberals warn: Don’t write off the Tea Party (even if they’re crazy)".

You'll note, if you read the piece, that Moody omits my explanation for why we call the Right "insane," namely this, which I said:

"We say that they've gone insane a little bit facetiously, but really, we say it because they believe things -- lots of things -- that are provably untrue. And that really is a kind of insanity. It's why we sometimes just say these people are nuts."

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