http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

You know, of course, that in the eyes of many conservative pundits this means you’ve fallen victim of Obama’s fascist-style cult of personality, right?

If that’s your rebuttal, I think you have to step a little further back. I do tune into conservative talk radio from time to time and for the last several months, until McCain became the presumptive nominee, it was wall to wall with the same accusations that Rove initiated in 2000. Hosts and callers were questioning McCain’s military record, they questioned his sanity, they questioned his ethics, his character, his relationship with lobbyists. Nothing was out of bounds. Nothing was beyond the pale.

if you read that AP story carefully you would have seen that ever single person quoted in the story about McCain’s anger is a republican. If you want to suggest that the AP was secretly working in cahoots with the Dems to smear McCain, you might ask yourself why only Republicans are quoted in the story. Is this evidence of just how devious the media/Dem conspiracy machine really is?

If you want to condemn Oliver for taking pleasure in watching Republicans eat their own, well, whatever. The conservative attempt to derail McCain was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in politics. Watching them all now scream about how McCain is getting smeared by the NY Times is just the punchline.

For Jay Tea to suggest that Rove is some kind of ethical smear merchant because he won’t run with a smear unless it’s been verified, is not only laughable on its face, it’s indicative of the kind of pretzel logic and deliberate myopia that afflicts all ideological hacks. Conservatives have been using smears manufactured by Rove in 2000 to bash McCain since the primaries started. I haven’t heard anything even remotely as corrosive from the left, especially the dem candidates themselves.

And Karl Rove, specifically.

A newspaper finally publishes a negative story about McCain and you think we’ve been bamboozled for the last 7 years and only now that he is the republican candidate are we willing to scream about it? Be real.

Granted he didn’t get a lot of scrutiny by the left when he wasn’t in the headlines, true of any politician, but there has been plenty of talk about how sucky he is since he decided to be the champion of Iraq.

Really? No!

Let me let you in on a little secret Midderpidge: People who have been paying attention have known that for years.

Working in the transportation industry, I know people that rail industry (both passenger and freight) that cannot stand McCain because he is so anti-rail. If you know the industry at all, you know that more freight rail means more passenger rail. McCain just happened to be the recipient of lots of donations from large trucking firms who don’t want to lose more business to rail companies who can ship freight via ‘intermodal’ – basically, a container is thrown on a train and moves from point a to point b and is then picked up by a local trucking company. It saves shippers a lot of money (for instance, a shipment that might cost $2000 from Jersey to California via truck would cost half that going intermodal).

That goes back to the 2000 election. There’s plenty more where that came from. People like you were suckered in by his ‘maverick’ nonsense. Not me.

Now, I am not voting for McCain in the same vein that guys like Rush and other conservatives are? No. I’m not voting for McCain (unless Hillary does get the nomination) because he represents the same old crap we’ve seen for the last 30-40 years. I don’t agree with Obama on virtually ANYTHING. But, I do see him, not so much as an agent of change, but rather a defining symbol of change that will be a wake up call to America’s political elite, which includes Democrats and Republicans.

I think Hillary’s campaign severely underestimated Obama. I think they saw him as a Howard Dean type of candidate. While Dean got the Kos types ready to go, he didn’t inspire any feelings amongst independents and that’s why his campaign fell flat the first time people actually had to cast votes. I suspect that Hillary thought Obama was just another Dean, more hype than anything else.

Mrs. McCain should have not tried to attack Michelle Obama. WHen she did so, she became fair game. Drug addiction, horrible, too bad, we can sympathize; stealing the drugs from your own charity organization, well drug addiction is horrible, I feel bad for her. Going after the whistleblower who reported her thefts and drug abuse, however, shows a distinct lack of remorse. Avoiding all charges and facing no consequences other than a short stint in a rehab center smacks of elitism.

And Jay, McCain’s entire reputation is based on his reform the system image which we are seeing is completely fake. It isn’t the maybe/maybe not affair, it’s the special interests and favors John McCain is hypocritically willing to do for them.

Oh but wait! Democrats don’t do stuff like that.

Guffaws…

But now……now that McCain is the presumptive GOP nominee, you guys are going to use that same crap. It means that all the posturing was a bunch of nonsense.

Wizwank Jay must power his home in Crackerville, N.H. via all the r.p.m.’s irony generates from its grave.

No, that stateside-deferred gimp would never, ever let his prejudices govern his judgement.

Oh you mean the temper articles the press is happy to bring up now and that Oliver is happy to pimp? Those stories?

If the NY Times had left out that part about the affair, more people would have focused on the fact that he’s just as likely to be influenced by lobbyists as another politician.