Amusing GOP Reactions to Tuesday

I'm not exactly sure how to take the clip above, but in the end, I take it that Rush was telling his listeners that he's been lying to them because so much is at stake? Is it possible that Rush could have any lower credibility? Drugs, lies and hypocrisy - what's next, Rush? Funniest of all is that there are a significant number of people out there who will believe whatever he tells them, circumstances or evidence be damned. Isn't that the definition of a cult? Ahh, whatever.

I do get a kick out of the conservative reactions to the Tuesday election. This campaign season opened my eyes to many things, and one of them is that I should try to listen to differing voices to better shape my own views. So, on Wednesday morning, I gave it a go - if for no other reason than to listen to conservative crybabies whine and sulk, much like liberal talking heads have been doing since 2000.

Among my favorites on Wednesday was Sean Insannity. This guy really is a piece of work, who will spin just about any event, fact or quotation to shape his political views. I won't even bore you with a bunch of Hannity's blarney, but the gist of it can be summed up this way:

1. Democrats will overreach and will suffer the consequences in '08. (Maybe he's drawing comparisons to the GOP, who wildly overreached following their being swept into power in Congress in '94, but that's just a guess.)

2. He mentioned Reagan about a dozen times in the hour I listened to him. That always gets me laughing - Reagan did a bunch of great things, no question, but to hear conservatives tell it, Reagan single-handedly won the Cold War and is responsible for everything great that has happened in America in the last 30 years. Something tells me that if Hannity, Limbaugh and Coulter could figure out a way, they'd portray him as having influenced how the Constitution was written, too.

3. This one is my favorite example of all - Hannity rattled off a list of incumbent presidents and how they've done in the 6th year of their presidency. Take a read on Hannity's misleading facts:

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate; In Dwight Eisenhower's sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate; In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson's sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate; In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford's sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats; and Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office.

Fair enough, right? First, at the top of his show, on first mention, Insannity mentioned "President Ford's sixth year." He didn't have a sixth year, genius, since he served from Aug. 9, 1974, the day Nixon resigned, until January 20, 1977, the day President Carter took office. And one shouldn't include '74 anyway, since that was the first post-Watergate election - of course the GOP was going to get its clock cleaned, especially after Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974. So, including that year was dumb to begin with. Later on his show, Hannity corrected himself, saying "Nixon/Ford's sixth year." Okay, no one's perfect, Sean, but especially you.

One thing that Insannity neglected to mention that pokes a big hole in his line of "6th year of the presidency" line of reasoning - President Clinton's Democratic Party, in 1998, the 6th year of his presidency and the first election since the Lewinsky scandal broke, had these results: no loss in the Senate, and a pick-up of five seats in the House. This made President Clinton, under the cloud of impending impeachment, the first president since James Monroe in 1822 to pick up seats in the 6th year of his presidency. Whoops.

Ann Coulter, on her Website weekly screed, took a more disingenuous approach to citing the Clinton numbers, writing "During eight years of Clinton — the man Democrats tell us was the greatest campaigner ever, a political genius, a heartthrob, Elvis! — Republicans picked up a total of 49 House seats and nine Senate seats in two midterm elections."

So, Ann rattles off the same laundry list that Hannity did on his radio show (who copied off of who here?), but when it came to Clinton, she just added up the numbers from his two mid-term elections, since her whole "sixth year premise" didn't add up; Clinton's party added seats in his sixth year. Your readers may not know any better, Ann, but I do.

Okay, I'll wrap this up, because I could cite amusing Republican reactions all day, but why bother? But, one more, and I'd be remiss not to include this one. Written by Jonah Goldberg, it appeared this week on the National Review's Website:

How Bush Should Handle Loss
By Jonah Goldberg

I think James Baker and Dick Cheney should take Bush out to the woods around Camp David. After 24 hours in a sweat lodge, he should be given only a loin cloth, a hunting knife and a canteen of water. Bush should then set out to track and kill a black bear, after which he should eat its still beating heart so he can absorb its spirit. He should then fly back to Washington in Marine 1. His torso still scratched from the bear's claws, his face bloodied and steaming in the November chill, he should immediately give a press conference at which he throws the bearskin on the front row of the press corps, completely enveloping Helen Thomas, declaring, "I'm not going anywhere."

This will send important messages to Democrats and well as to our enemies overseas, who are no doubt high-fiving as we speak.

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Hilarious!