Hilary Rosen and Ed Rogers on Hardball

Rogers is a slimy one. Aside from monopolizing the "conversation," he basically just uses the following strategy: he says things that entail that we're winning in Iraq. Rosen challenges that. Then he say, in a shocked voice "oh, so you think we're losing in Iraq, eh? That means you're a defeatist."

To review: if we're losing a war and the president lies to us and says that we're winning, then if you point out that he's lying, then you are a defeatist.

Got that?

As I've made clear here, I've had a rather more optimistic view about how things were going over there than many liberals--until recently. I'm certainly no defeatist about Iraq. But this strategy is slimy beyond belief. If the American people allow it to work, they'll basically set things up so that it's never permissible to point out that a war is going badly. This is like putting blinders on when you go into a war--insulating yourself from crucial information that would allow you to make needed course corrections. Brilliant.

Rogers did have one good point, but it doesn't exactly take a genius to glom onto this one: if the Democrats run Hilary Clinton they're screwed.