December 6, 2015

If there's one thing you can count on from Mr. "No Labels" supporter turned CNN host Michael Smerconish, it's a healthy dose of both siderism every time he's allowed on the air. This Saturday was no different, with Smerconish opening up his show opining about the terrible partisanship in Washington D.C. and the rhetoric coming from our politicians following yet another mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA this week.

SMERCONISH: “Here we go again.” That's what my colleague Brooke Baldwin said here on CNN Wednesday, as the earliest news started trickling out of San Bernardino. She meant semi-automatic weapons, innocent victims, lock down, man hunt, shootout, fear, outrage. But here we go again sadly also applies to what came after.

Politicians immediately suited up in their usual jerseys and resorted to the same old playbooks. Republicans again said, it was time to pray. The New York Daily News ran a controversial cover noting that God wouldn't fix this. Democrats again made calls for gun control.

The New York Times tried something different, putting an editorial on the front page of this morning's newspaper, the first time they've done that since 1920 calling for the outlawing of civilian ownership of weapons capable of mass killing.

But will it make any difference? More telling is that my most popular Tweet of the week, by far, was when I quoted a Time's blogger wondering why the paper even has a comment section on such stories, since it could just use “the same ones each time there's a mass shooting in the USA.

This morning news broke that ISIS radio is claiming the San Bernardino attack was carried out by supporters, yet when we learned in the midst of the attack the female shooter had posted a tribute on Facebook to the leader of ISIS, that simply rebooted the tiresome debate as to whether to use the words radical Islam.

Now you'd think the presidential campaign season might offer an opportunity for the airing of detailed plans to combat ISIS, but no.

(Begin video.)

TRUMP: Oh I would handle it so tough. You have no idea. You don't want to hear it. You don't even want to hear it. You don't want to hear how I'd handle it.

(End video.)

SMERCONISH: Instead, sound bites get rewarded, especially, that candidate whose deep thinking on ISIS consists of a platform to build a wall, create a Muslim database and kill the families of ISIS members. Look, when 9-11 happened the country rose above partisan politics. Now, we're so polarized that in the words of columnist Ruben Navarrette “We may not have to worry about our enemies defeating us. We’re doing a splendid job all by ourselves.”

So who does Smerconish and his producers at CNN believe is fit to weigh in on this subject? You guessed it. Bush's Brain, professional Republican ratfucker and the man George W. Bush loving referred to as Turd Blossom, Karl Rove.

I've got to give it to them. If there's anyone who should know about promoting that partisanship and fearmongering and using it for political gain, it's Rove, but you'd never know that from his introduction here or the segment that followed, where he was asked for his opinion on Trump's hateful rhetoric, the 2016 presidential campaign and whether Trump is likely to be their nominee.

Rove did his best to downplay Trump's chances even though they're looking better all the time and they lost the feed before Smerconish had a chance to ask him about the pivot he was pretending that the eventual Republican nominee would be able to make away from the type of overt racism we've heard from Trump once the primary race was over.

Given Rove's great predictive powers back when RMoney was getting his butt kicked by the Kenyan usurper, I'd say good luck with that pal. Trump is the Republican brand now and I don't see how any of them are going to be able to run away from following his lead and moving further and further to the right as they are now, even with the media doing their best to give them a pass on it as we all know they will.

And shame on CNN for bringing this slimeball on for commentary and to push his book. Bringing Rove on to talk about partisanship in Washington would be like asking David Duke to come on and weigh in on white supremacy.... oh wait... never mind.

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