Parker Spitzer Opens Up Shop With Tea Party Debate Featuring Andrew Breitbart

How they kept this one under wraps till the premier is anyone’s guess, but the first-ever guest on CNN’s new show Parker Spitzer was… Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart joined the hosts and Harper’s columnist Tom Frank on the shows “The Arena” segment, which is a bit like Crossfire with a smaller table, to talk Tim Geithner, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin‘s domination of Facebook.

For a show that says it’s all about consensus, starting the show with a polarizing figure like Breitbart, especially given the recent James O’Keefe misadventure directly related to CNN, is a bold move. Breitbart wasn’t wearing his war paint tonight, though, jovially debating Spitzer and Frank (Parker was not a substantial player in the debate) on the patriotic dissent of the Tea Party and the damage Palin may or may not be doing to the Republican Party. The conversation started with a topic on which it seemed the entire table agreed– the danger of having Geithner in charge of the economy (Geithner seems to be the bipartisan bogeyman of the show for now), and broadened to the Obama administration in general. Breitbart compared the Bush and Obama administrations to “Old” and “New” Coke, respectively, arguing that Obama’s New Coke never lived up to the hype surrounding it.

The group disagreed much more loudly on the effect Sarah Palin has on the Republican Party and whether her influence is positive or negative. Frank and Spitzer were skeptical of her abilities, but Breitbart lauded her for having similar powers of “anointing” candidates as Oprah Winfrey.

Watch the segment from tonight’s Parker Spitzer debut on CNN below: