Begala usually ticks me off in some way, but perhaps he -- and others -- are actually beginning to "get" a few things. (Maybe they even peak in on DU occasionally.)
Wolf kept trying to push the "But isn't this a problem for Democrats?" propaganda.
Instead of taking the bait, Begala just wouldn't go there. It was a beautiful thing to watch! Instead of using some euphemism (Bush is "out of touch") he called the idiocy, idiocy ("moronic," "foolish")
It was a beautiful thing to watch!!
Transcript...
BLITZER: A U.S. general says -- Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, senior policy and planning officer for the U.S. Central Command, says "This isn't a bump in the road, it's a pothole. And we'll find out if the shock absorbers in the Iraqi society will hold or whether this will crack the frame."
PAUL BEGALA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: CNN Well so far the frame is cracking. I deeply disagree with terry's interpretation that somehow it's good news that we have rampant sectarian violence and that a 1200-year-old mosque was burnt to the ground.
This is not what we were promised as a political matter. Here's the president's problem. It's credibility. The sound byte you played in our last segment. The president saying I am optimistic about Iraq. I think he has got the calibration wrong. You don't want to be pessimistic. But he needs to be realistic. And when he says stuff like that, he sounds foolish on the worst week perhaps.
BLITZER: So what should be the strategy for Democrats? The Joe Lieberman strategy, which is hold tight and finish the job as best you can, or the John Murtha strategy, which is basically a phased withdrawal?
BEGALA: Those are policy distinctions that serious policy people are going to draw. I don't have the solution to Iraq. I had the solution which was don't invade. OK, they should have listened to me.
Now they are in the soup. There's no good solution. But what I am saying is politically the president's credibility is crumbling. There are other pro-war Republicans. John McCain and Newt Gingrich who are still very popular. The president is not. The majority of the country thinks the president is no longer honest.
...
BLITZER: It's a complicated though political issue now almost three years into the war, next month three years since the U.S.-led invasion, for Democrats to come up with a unified strategy at this clearly delicate moment.
BEGALA: They don't need one. They are heading into congressional elections. They can do enough by saying we'll ask tough questions. We won't be a rubber stamp.
BLITZER: But you know the Democrats are going to be asked well what do you think the president should do?
BEGALA: Well, 100 different things because they have 100 different positions because they are actually thinking this through. I don't think that's the problem.
I think the problem is that the president from the beginning said we will be greeted as liberators. He said -- just recently the vice president a few months ago said this is the last throes of the insurgency.
Today he says this nonsense about how great everything is. The president is no longer credible about Iraq. He is not a credible leader on national security and it is going to croak his party politically.
BLITZER: Is it going to croak the Republican Party?
Why? Because he says moronic things like I'm optimistic when 100 people are slaughtered in the streets.