Sunday, August 12, 2007
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It was Harold Ford and Markos Moulitsas debating on MTP, with David Gregory moderating. It was nothing. Ford says the Dems need to run to the center, Moulitsas says the country is liberal and the party should be proud to be liberal. They almost embraced at one point, but Moulitsas was angry that Ford blamed Harry Reid and Ford was angry that Moulitsas blamed him for John Breaux. Go figure. But they didn’t mess up the playground, so the kids can keep having fun.

Mitt Romney was on FNS, and I thought he did well with the softballs. There was the matter of Romney saying he did not spend money to win the straw poll, which could be overlooked, but there was the more serious matter of Romney continuing to compare himself to Ronald Reagan on abortion. That cannot be overlooked. But on the matter of Romney saying that though his sons did not serve in the military, they served their country by working for his campaign, Romney gave the right answer. He said that he misspoke and that the two were not comparable.

On TW, Brownback is in the race, suggested that there are “three or four” tickets out of Iowa’s caucuses in January, and he’s hopeful that he’ll get one. Later, Dennis Kucinich declared himself to be at the new center of the Dem Party.

On FTN, Jim Axelrod was in for Schieffer, and he interviewed Mike Huckabee. The former governor was on his game, comparing his finish in the straw poll to one of Jesus’ miracles and declaring that he was now a top tier candidate. He said that the GOP was pwned by Wall Street and he wants it to be owned by Main Street. And the obligatory shot at the winner: “It [Huckabee’s support] was a movement; it wasn’t just, hey, we’re giving out [goofy yellow] t-shirts.”

First on LE, with guest host Joe Johns in for Wolf, was Transportation Secretary Mary Peters. Peters said that it was not that we were spending too little money on the nation’s infrastructure; rather, it was how it was being spent. Johns suggested that bridges to nowhere were the problem, while Peters mentioned art museums and the like. Johns played a clip of Newt exclaiming that bureaucratic government was broken and Peters agreed. She reiterated that the problem was with how we were spending the money, though I don’t know that Gingrich meant that, per se.

Next on LE, Johns spoke with David Dreier for Rudy, Jim Talent for Romney, and Buddy Roemer for McCain. This was each campaign spinning the current situation in the manner that looked best for their candidate. The campaigns do it on shows like this and for the other media outlets, and people do the same thing here in diaries at RedState. It is one of my favorite parts of a Presidential campaign, perhaps because it can be alternately maddening and confounding.

Read the complete, show-by-show lineup at RedState.com