Bill O'Reilly (!) mocks Sarah Palin

You know how far the GOP has moved to the right when Bill O'Reilly starts to sound reasonable - even rational. My first post in a while was going to recap a trip to Costa Rica from which I returned Tuesday, but this exchange between the Fox host and a half-term Alaska governor is too priceless:



This snippet about halfway through is especially hilarious (slightly edited):

O'Reilly: "So what is your solution here, Governor? What would you do tonight? Tell the nation tonight what you would have said your main point in that speech."

Palin: "Stop, stopping the gusher."

O'Reilly: "But nobody knows how to do it."

Palin: "We haven't had the assurance by the President that that has been his top priority..."

O'Reilly: "If that happens, there's going to be an outcry. But are you telling me that you don't think the President's top priority is stopping that leak? Is that what you're telling me?"

Palin: "What - what I'm - what... blah blah blah"

People often accuse the President of speaking in generalities and shirking the specifics, but a proposal for how to stop the oil spill doesn't get more general than "stopping the gusher."

Tellingly, Palin's proposal to stop the oil spill by stopping the oil spill is strikingly similar to the GOP's proposal to lower health care premiums by lowering health care premiums:

What everyone needs to get through their heads is that it's pointless to demand that somebody, whether President Obama or BP, "do more" to stop the oil spill - as if the President and BP have no incentive to do so and aren't doing everything they can to stop it. Short of the President or Tony Hayward "scuba diving to the bottom of the Gulf, placing large amounts of silly putty in the hole, then performing a miracle by bringing back all the dead wildlife to life and declaring, 'I am the Chocolate Jesus!'" (as one reader suggested), I'm not sure what more pundits could want. Sadly, even if President Obama did this, conservatives would still hate him (and liberals would still hate BP).

Palin, Boehner, et al aren't just the party of "no" - they're the party of "no clue."

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