I think The Daily Beast's Eleanor Clift has been spending a little too much time "paling around" with Pat Buchanan, driving over for their appearances together on The McLaughlin Group. Here she is on MSNBC this Saturday, playing concern troll for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

CLIFT: Well, when I heard the news yesterday, my first instinct was, "Oh they're really closing in on Chris Christie.” But then when you examine it, exactly what the lawyer is saying and you see that weasely language, and it was never credible that Christie didn't know anything about the lane closures. I think just about everybody in New Jersey knew about them when they were happening because they were front page news and probably on the local news.

So I thought, "Well, maybe there isn't that much discrepancy there." And I think the danger on the Democratic side, the big ‘D’ Democratic side is looking a little too eager and overreaching. I mean, I remember the Clinton scandal and pretty soon people were, you know, cheering for the president, because his opponents or his critics had so overreached. And I think, you know, sometimes, I find myself feeling sorry for Chris Christie. I’m wondering how he is managing his diet and his stress. And at some point, there's a human element to this. [...]

If his opponents really overplay their hand and begin to make him seem sympathetic and if he truly didn't have anything to do with the planning of this, learned about it while it was going on, and he's... his worst guilt is maybe that he laughed it off, I think that's problematic, but he could probably survive that.

First of all, what happened to Bill Clinton and what's going on now with Christie is apples to oranges. Republicans went on a witch hunt and impeached a president over lying about sex because that's the best they could come up with after that fiasco of a fishing expedition by Ken Starr. Christie's scandals, at least so far, appear to be real and not drummed up by the Democrats in his state.

And second, I want to know when any of these pundits in our media have said those words to Republicans? Clift admitted later that Christie might be lucky to even hang onto his governorship and did not try to pretend that these reports that keep dripping out day after the day aren't a real problem for him, but she feels sorry for him. Really?

The media continues to lower the bar with just what constitutes a real problem for Christie. First it was that he'd better not have known about the orders to close the bridge. Now it's that he had better not have ordered it... and look, those mean old Democrats are piling on poor Chris Christie. Don't you feel sorry for him? Sorry, but not in the slightest Eleanor. She's not the only one either. I heard Andrea Mitchell echoing those same sort of comments on her show earlier this week. Look for this to be their new fallback to defend him if the news out of New Jersey continues to get worse.