Happy Saint Patrick's Day After, heroes and welcome once again to your Sunday Morning liveblog of the political talk shows. My name is Jason. My brackets have been busted gloriously. Thanks a LOT, people, for not telling me that I should have definitely taken at least two of the 15-seeds this year. (Actually, if anyone had Lehigh and Norfolk State both going into the second round -- and it's not hard to imagine a MEAC diehard who really hates Duke -- than enjoy your future table in Bracketology Valhalla.) At any rate, both of my alma maters are eliminated, so with my brackets fatally wounded, I can just enjoy the rest of the basketball with no pressure. 15 seeds forever!
First, of course, I will have to watch these chat shows, so let's get started. As always, feel free to chat it up in the comments. If you'd like to drop me a line, please feel free. And if it's your thing, you can follow me on twitter.
And now, since we're both up at the same time, it's...
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Bret Baier is subbing in for Chris Wallace, and Baier is sort of talking softly for some reason. But Mitt Romney is here, and so is George Clooney, only he's with Chris Wallace. DON'T BE JEALOUS, whichever Fox host is jealous.
But first, here's Mitt, live from Moline, Illinois. Home of John Deere. Quad Cities, represent! He's trying to snag delegates and win the primary on Tuesday. But first, he'll have to answer questions about, say...Afghanistan. Where things are not going well, as always. Hamid Karzai says he is "at the end of his rope," which is probably woven from heroin. What would Mitt do about this?
"First I would exercise leadership." Okay! Great, but did you have anything more specific? Sure. He would talk to Karzai, work with Karzai, make Karzai feel safe again, cradle Karzai in his arms. "Just breathe with me, Hamid," he would say, "Let all the stress fall away. Just let it go. It's not your fault. Your soul is a butterfly."
Mitt says that we have troops in harms way and that we have an interest in the war going well. This is the part of Mitt's "solutioneering process" where he just says things that are obvious. It's an important phase, that comes right before the part where he gets mad with President Obama's "timetable for withdrawal," which is "leading Mr. Karzai to take action that is self-preservation in nature." If we just agreed to stay forever, Karzai would forego "self-preservation."
Romney won't withdraw until "commanders on the ground" blah blah blah all the things presidents have said for over a decade about why we have to stay there, despite the fact that soon, kids that were five years old when it began will be eligible to die there, in what American adults everywhere should definitely celebrate as one of their key accomplishments in life.
Romney says that it's clear that the war isn't going well, and it's Obama's fault because he was personally responsible for ensuring the legitimacy of Afghanistan's elections. The ones that led to Karzai's continuing presidency. The same Karzai that Romney wants to make assurances to, that American blood and treasure keep flowing there. Everyone who currently commands or wants to one day command troops in Afghanistan needs to follow the logic of their statements to the second level.
Let's move on to Iran. What are the chances that Israel will bomb them? Why would Romney know that? He says he doesn't really know anything, but that Obama should have installed harsher sanctions against Iran and given more support to the Iranian dissidents. So...okay...Obama should have definitely hurt the Iranian people with crippling sanctions, and then loudly supported their uprising, which would have led the mullahs to crack down on said uprising with about one hundred times the brutality with which they did.
It sort of amazes me that more people don't understand that terrible things would have followed in the wake of the president actively and loudly promoting the Iranian dissidents. Honestly, it just sort of flabbergasts me. As it stands, the President took the extraordinary step of asking a private company, Twitter, to alter their operations so that dissidents could continue to communicate with one another. I think we understand who is on what side. The dissidents were actually quite fortunate that America didn't try to "do stuff" beyond that.
Romney's position on Iran is the same as Obama's anyway. They better not make one! If they do, some military stuff is "on the table." THE SCARY TABLE, WITH ALL THE STUFF ON IT.
Baier, using Obama's "those who wants war should just say so," to ask Romney if he'll say so. Romney won't. He supports crippling sanctions, which just should have come sooner. He says there's "nothing casual about Iran having a nuclear weapon."
Does Romney think that Obama is responsible for high gas prices? He has previously said no. But this is Fox News Sunday, an entirely different audience with entirely different pandering needs. So he says instead that he always intended to raise gas prices, and he's appointed people to make that happen, and they've succeeded, only now he's had an "election year conversion" and what we should do is drill everywhere and pretend that this is going to lead to lower gas prices. Romney is very good at telling an audience what they want to hear!
Baier reminds Romney that he has been talking about this a lot. He'd like to know why he only just started talking about it. Romney says he's been talking pretty consistently about it. I guess there just weren't teevee cameras pointed at him when he talked about it. Or he was just always whispering, "Don't tell anybody, but...you know...energy stuff."
He did mention, over and over again, that Michigan's trees were the right height. Everyone caught that!
Would Romney get rid of the Department of Education? "Not necessarily," he says, suggesting he'd combine it with other agencies, or alter its role. He'd "pull back" their "reach." He would also push back against "federal teacher's unions." He likes having states "test our kids," so that he can identify failing school districts and then ensure their failure by starving them of funds and sanctioning them. Like Iran! So he supports that part of No Child Left Behind. The part that doesn't actually educate anybody.
Baier tries to trip up Romney for criticizing Romney for criticizing Santorum for his "take one for the team" comment on No Child Left Behind. Romney says that he was criticizing Santorum for voting for things he didn't support, and that he doesn't have that problem, because he is a member of the pro-NCLB team that still supports it. But doesn't he merely support the same part that Santorum still supports? Don't they both want to "pull back" the "reach" of Federal government in education? This sort of begs a follow-up, but we don't get one.
One day, I think a smart interviewer could literally cause Romney to short circuit. Though maybe he is a nuclear powered panderbot, with fissile material. Maybe no one can afford to take the chance of causing a core meltdown in the Romneybot. If that's true, then thank you Bret Baier, for saving thousands of innocent lives today!
Romney says that the campaign will come down to a candidate facing Obama that knows how the economy works. I think Santorum, actually, is rooting for the economy to get better, so that the larger 2012 argument isn't about the economy, but is actually a more traditional argument on ideological values, where Santorum would mostly trump Romney.
Romney brags that he has a great financial organization and infrastructure, and Santorum doesn't. "We have to have a nominee that's competitive...this is not about a shoestring operation." Okay, but, face it, if Santorum won, he wouldn't be in a shoestring operation anymore...he'd have the RNC behind him, major donors, major strategists, super PAC support.
But Romney's going to be the nominee, in all likelihood, so it's a moot point. On the other hand, Romney keeps making it very pointedly, so maybe it's not as moot as I think it is.
Oh, okay, Bret is losing his voice, because of allergies. Hence the soft-talking.
[Never fear, more liveblog is on the way in just a few minutes. Actually, why would you "fear" that? It's not that important. Just relax.]
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