Since then, I’ve been joined on this lonely island by The Plumline‘s Greg Sargent, and now, The Young Turks‘ Jayar Jackson, who explained, last night, that he didn’t think Santorum said “black people,” but more importantly, that the issue is somewhat moot. Host Cenk Uygur, for his part, still wasn’t buying it.

“I remember…when this first came out, it seemed like it was a bit of a stumble,” Jayar said, adding, “I feel like you didn’t hear the full word.”

“You’re crazy, man, you’re crazy!” Cenk exclaimed. “You just saw the tape!”

Now, hopefully, this is the last time I have to get inside Rick Santorum’s head, but it seems clear to me that he did stumble, that he got ahead of himself and started to say “make lives better,” but in mid-word, tried to correct it to “make people’s lives better,” and it came out as “make mmbligh people’s lives better.”

Here’s the TYT clip, which loops Santorum’s remarks together a few times. I’m hearing a long “I” sound, and no hard “K” sound:

It doesn’t really matter how many, or few, people agree with me, I’m either right or I’m wrong. I mention Jayar and Greg Sargent simply as a way to dispel, for anyone who doesn’t know me, the notion that I have any interest in defending Rick Santorum for any reason other than the merits.

By the same token, I don’t think Joan Walsh, or Keith Olbermann, or CBS News and NPR, are acting in bad faith when they report Santorum’s remark as “black people,” because yeah, that’s what it sounds like. Additionally, Santorum really didn’t help matters by waiting three days to explain himself. I contacted his campaign multiple times over that period with a link to the video, and it is fair to ask why, the first few times he was asked about it, he hadn’t seen the clip yet. Most people, upon being asked about a racist comment they might have made, would immediately check the video.

This demonstrates, at best, a disturbing apathy on Santorum’s part, that he didn’t care enough to take 30 seconds to watch the video I sent him four times (and was also forwarded to him by a conservative colleague). Furthermore, I sympathize with liberals who think his days-late explanation sounds like bullshit, exactly because it so closely matches the explanation in the column I sent him four times.

That doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t say “black people,” and the fact that he didn’t say “black people” (as Jayar alludes), doesn’t mean that Santorum isn’t a hateful bigot. It matters because it’s the truth.

It also matters because the Santorum quote is now obscuring the fact that Newt Gingrich actually did make a bona fide, undeniably racist statement yesterday, a far more significant one in that it exposed the inherent race-baiting in his constant references to President Obama as the “food stamp president.”

What I would like to see now, then, is for all of the conservatives who congratulated me for my honesty about Santorum to show similar honesty, and call Gingrich out for his neo-Southern Strategizing, which he has been doing for a long time.

As it happens, Joan Walsh appeared on The Ed Show last night to discuss Santorum’s remarks (Schultz, while he isn’t convinced by Santorum’s explanation, creditably left the question open), and she’s still not buying it. Fair enough. However, Schultz played yet a third version of the remarks, taken from a closer position, with even clearer audio. Honestly, check it out, and tell me there’s no way he was saying “mmbligh.”

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Reporting for Washington Post‘s blog The Plum Line, Greg Sargent opines “It’s a reminder that the battle lines on this issue remain as sharply drawn as ever. It’s not TV on a par with Alan Grayson or Steve King, but let’s hope it gets a bit of cable play, anyway.”

Speier opens her comment:

“I really planned to speak about something else. But the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots. Because I’m one of those women he spoke about just now. I had a procedure at 17 weeks pregnant with a child who moved from the vagina into the cervix. And that procedure that you just described is a procedure that I endured.

“I lost the baby. And for you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous.”

Watch the clip below courtesy of CSPAN:

(H/T The Plum Line, via)

The senatorial candidate’s page on the social networking site alludes to a study of “Post Modernism in the New Millenium” at Oxford; however, Greg Sargent points out that the Tea Party favorite was never enrolled as a student at the prestigious university. In reality, she took a summer seminar at The Phoenix Institute, a certificate-granting organization that “rented the space” at Oxford. According to Chris Fletcher of The Phoenix Institute:

It wasn’t an official course of Oxford University. It wasn’t sponsored by Oxford University. It was our curriculum, and we did the grades. [Her claim] is misleading.

The Republican’s LinkedIn profile also indicates that she is seeking “career opportunities,” presumably something to fall back on if her bid for Delaware’s senate seat proves to be unsuccessful.

The origin of the inter-conservative fracas was a piece last Friday by Daily Caller’s Jon Ward which alleged “that the National Review editorial had been prearranged, however, by Neil Bradley, a top leadership aide* who is close to April Ponnuru, the executive director of the National Review Institute, and Kate O’Beirne, NRI’s president.”  Ward then quoted a Republican aide calling the editorial “a political blowjob.”

The folks at National Review Online immediately rejected the allegations and went on the attack, questioning Ward’s reporting.  Lowry, still fuming over the allegation, continued to attack Ward and the story over the weekend.

Carlson returned fire today, saying “National Review has taken sides, providing ideological cover for the party’s establishment wing at a critical moment. We think it’s worth knowing a lot more about that arrangement.” Carlson is standing by the reporting, saying the National Review editorial was being handed out by Republican aides before the editorial was available publicly.

In response, Lowry attacked Carlson’s credibility and explained the time-line that led up to the editorial.  National Review, Lowry said, had an embargoed version of the Pledge having given a conditional thumbs-up earlier in the week. Once the embargo was broken, the magazine readied its editorial for release and that’s why Republican aides had it in their hands before the GOP caucus even got an official copy of the Pledge.

Lowry also makes his own accusations, suggesting that Daily Caller was modifying its story online with notifying readers and that the clarifications were being made in response to defenses being made by the National Review gang.  Ben Smith at Politico outlines the allegations and shows the changed copy.

The slap-fight between the conservative outlets underscores the current battle within the conservative movement between the party establishment–National Review–and the Tea Party insurgents–Daily Caller. Accusing the National Review of being in-bed with the Republican party is a nice way of separating the elites from the grassroots, although the fact that the surrogates are both movement insiders makes the rhetoric less impressive.

From the sidelines, the spectators at the feud are enjoying the rumble. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post’s Plum Line scolds that “[t]he next time the Daily Caller publishes a ridiculous trumped up “expose” about Journolist, or any other ridiculous trumped up expose, here’s hoping respectable Republicans and conservatives, not to mention other right-leaning media outlets like National Review, won’t be so quick to play along.”

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait is also piling on the Daily Caller, saying “the story provides zero evidence — not even vague characterization — that the contact with NR was anything more than a routine spin session. And given the Daily Caller’s record of utter contempt for basic journalistic norms, the very strong presumption should be that this is a non-story.”

The video, originally posted by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line after being unearthed by a “Democratic source,” honestly brings some diminishing returns. O’Donnell’s clearly in the middle of a heated argument and probably misheard the question. Even if you disagree with O’Donnell’s stances now or then (let’s be honest, teenagers are like “dogs in heat”) no one is really going to think that O’Donnell actually believed she should or could stop sex in America. All anyone is going to get out of this latest video is that 2003 hairstyles suited her just a little bit better than those of the 90s and that the media still likes making fun of her.

Side note: Dr. Ruth is there!

Let’s consider Meacham’s initially dubious case, which he spells out in a Newsweek article online now, “Why Dick Cheney Should Run in 2012,” to be published in the December 7th issue of the magazine. He begins:

• “[A] run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country.” Insert joke: “The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.”
• Greenwald? “Jon Meacham tells a funny, original joke: liberals react to his column urging Cheney to run by “spitting out their lattes,” on Twitter. Burn. Get it? Coffee.

Good for the country, you say, Mr. Meacham. Why?

• “Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people.”

Nonpartisan evidence  – good start. Then:

• “Three years out, the GOP field does not offer a putative nominee.”
• “In an era of ideological purity within the party, Cheney is among the purest; no one can question his conservative credentials on national security, and his record in the House and as vice president places him beyond reproach from the base.”

But! “He was, it is true, second in command in years of great deficit spending…” So, kind of, Meacham admits. And:

• “A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way.”
• I’ll take Glenn Greenwald for 140 characters, Alex: “It’s unclear to Jon Meacham what Americans think of Bush — the 2006 and 2008 elections, and humiliating poll numbers, are very ambiguous.”

Lastly:

• “Cheney’s memoirs are due to be published—and thus due to be promoted—in the spring of 2011, not long before the caucuses and primaries begin. I’ll bet you that the Barnes & Noble in Des Moines (there’s a big one at The Shoppes at Three Fountains) is on the book tour.”

Or, as Greg Sargent of The Plum Line put it: Drudgebait. That is, a purposefully counterintuitive online argument meant to get the attention of Big Matt and run up website traffic. Gotta get those pageviews!