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Preview and Analysis for Weekend of August 18th and 19th, 2007

Posted by Beowulf on Sunday, August 19, 2007 8:30:35 AM


Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows:

NBC's "Meet the Press"
  • Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff

CBS's "Face the Nation"

  • Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff
  • Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. (note: not listed on FTN site)

Fox News Sunday

  • Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff

 

 CNN "Late Edition"
  • Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.
  • Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.
  • Stephen Moore, former president of Club for Growth (note: not listed on CNN site)
  • Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish Iraqi parliament member
  • Howard Wolfson - Clinton campaign (note: listed on CNN site, not on other listings)
  • Chris Kofinis - Edwards campaign (note: listed on CNN site, not on other listings)

ABC's "This Week"

  • DNC presidential candidate's debate
  • Joe Biden
  • Hillary Rodham Clinton
  • Chris Dodd
  • John Edwards
  • Mike Gravel
  • Dennis Kucinich
  • Barack Obama
  • Bill Richardson.

And they're he's off outa here!  Evil Karl Rove, that is.  It wasn't intentional, but using my normal formatting of the table above I've ended up with the three shows featuring Rove on the left and the two shows he's not on in the right hand frame.  Now, you'd think that would be the wrong way to arrange things, but it's correct from the page's point of view, so I'm leaving it... <g>

It's clear from the promos for the three shows with Rove that they're all looking for one last chance to "get" Rove somehow.  Chris wallace in his usual Fox And Friends promo on Friday said he was going to "take on" Rove, for example.  That sounds threatening to me.  Watch for the interviewers to do most of the talking, quoting Rove's enemies (including the press) extensively and giving him a few seconds to respond before they move on to the next attack.  It might be interesting if he really just doesn't give a darn anymore and just let's fly!  Hopefully he won't be tempted into fratricide.

Everything else is the interminable Campaign '08 with a smidgen of Iraq and Iran thrown in.  I'm sure they'll also talk about the "wild ride" on Wall Street this week, but they don't have any guests, it appears, specifically to talk about that except for the roundtable sessions.

NBC Meet The Press leads off the Rovefest.  If Little Timmah is back from vacation he'll no doubt be in full hunch mode.  NBC has been one of the leading organizations both in demonizing Rove for more than six years and in promoting the idea that Rove is "getting out of town one step ahead of the sheriff."  See Powerline's Rove Derangement Syndrome for a discussion of a recent NY Times editorial with that theme, as well as other evidence of dinosaur media dementia.  The LA Times' Ron Brownstein and Matt Cooper, late of Time Magazine, are old nemesis of Rove and have trunks full of invective laid up for him.  Kate O'Beirne is an easily dismissed gadfly from the right on these shows and I doubt she'll have much impact or contribute much to the conversation.  My bet is that John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal is on strictly to react to the gloom and doom regarding "the shambles that McChimpy Bushitler has made of our economy."  Harwood is generally depressing about this stuff (a bad economy is good for the Dhmmicrats but a good economy isn't good for the Republicans) so that might be a depressing session, depending on how it's set up.

CBS Face The Nation gives Ol' Bob a brief shot at Rove, before moving on to John McCain... maybe.  As of this moment McCain isn't listed on the FTN web site, but he is in the other listings on newspaper and magazine sites.  It's hard to do justice to one guest in the half hour format of FTN, let alone two.  If both men are on then this will be the talk show equivalent of doing the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs (and yes, I know a parsec is a measure of distance, not time).  I can't think that much will come of either interview, except some nasty comments disguised as question from Scheiffer lashing out at Rove and Bush and some pitying comments about McCain.  There might be some news made if McCain tries some kind of "hail Mary" stunt to jump start his campaign... again, but I get the feeling he's done and that he knows it.  Maybe he really is angling for Rudy's VP slot and will be saying nice things about how "truly conservative" the New York mayor is.  I wouldn't be surprised, particularly since he still thinks that he has some influence with most conservatives.  John, that ship has sailed, bubalah.

Fox News Sunday rounds out the Rove marathon and may be viewed as an opportunity by Chris Wallace to finally overcome the fallout with his "friends and family" over the Clinton interview.  Maybe, just maybe, Chris is trying out for Bob Scheiffer's chair when he retires or to replace Steponallofus if he bolts ABC for a spot on Hillary's team.  I doubt that, as she clearly needs him to much just where he is.  I wonder if these interviews are being done today or if they'll be live.  It would be interesting to know what order they're taking place as it might affect how Rove responds to the various interviewers.  There's no Brit again as he appears to be taking August off, along with most of the rest of Washington (and the rest of the world, for that matter).  Barnes, Kristol and Williams are joined by Nina Easton for the roundtable.  Hardly as satisfying as a Brit smack down of Juan and not as good as when Krauthammer sits in.  It's likely to be mostly about the turmoil in the economy caused by the credit and housing problems of the sub-prime lenders.  Barnes was pretty tepid last night on Special Report when discussing the issue and I haven't heard the others spin, which probably means it will be pretty dreadful.

CNN Late Edition has a line up on their web site that conflicts with the other web listings, just like CBS FTN.  There's agreement on Senators Bob Casey and Kit Bond who will have a suitably nuanced discussion not of whether we should get out of Iraq but when and how.  The listings are also consistent that Iraqi-Kurdish-Sunni MP Mahmoud Othman will be on.  He's a mixed bag so far as I can tell, being part of a new Sunni coalition intended to fix the political problems with the majority Shia government, but he's also the founder of the Iraqi Socialist Party, so I might not like what he considers a "fix."  Where the conflict in the listings comes in is that CNN lists the communications directors for the Clinton and Edwards campaigns and doesn't list Stephen Moore, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, while the news listings have it reversed.  Maybe some last minute strategery on someone's part?  Whatever, you know it will be all Bush bashing all the time.  Hey, it's CNN!

ABC This Week does their 90 minute Sunday morning debate stunt, this time with  the Dhimmicrats.  As others so astutely observed doing a Sunday morning debate was dumb for Republicans because a large percentage of their voters would be in church and wouldn't see it, but that clearly doesn't apply to the Dhimmicrat's primary voters.  Obama has some recent gaffs to overcome while Hillary has to protect her left flank a bit after the tacking to the right she's been doing.  The two of them will likely spar, but they'll both probably be concentrating mostly on not making a mistake.  Edwards is trying to make a move right now on Obama by pushing his well known populist poor man of the people credentials (hey, he's a trial lawyer, he lies for a living and expects people to swallow this stuff).  There could be some heat there between the two of them.  Biden and Dodd are stuck in also ran country and aren't likely candidates for the VP spot, which looks like it may be Richardson's to lose.  And then there's Kucinich and Gravel.  Talk about your flakes and nuts!  These two will likely be in full moonbat mode in order to attract some media attention as well as satisfy their lunatic fringe fans.  There's a rash of articles out there now lamenting that these two aren't likely to be around much longer as they're the ones who "should be" leading the parade.  I think that says more about those writing those things than it does about Kucinich and Gravel, but they're all nuts together.

The Saturday shows are their usual mixed bag, starting with The Beltway Boys waxing hysteric over the economy and belittling  Romney and Giuliani for competing on national security and immigration.  Mort's probably unhappy that they're not promoting fetal stem cell research and Fred's just being sour, as usual.  CNBC's Tim Russert Show trots out another re-run, this time with Yankee greats Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and the late Phil Rizzuto, who just passed away this week.  Well, there's no books for Timmah to plug and he's got to have his vacation, too.  Fox News Watch spends time on Rove and the press, Chinese imports and the coverage of that topic, or lack thereof, and Newsweek's Robert Samuelson's critique of his own magazines Global Warming cover story the previous week (read it on MSNBC.COM at Greenhouse Simplicities, as well as some good commentary about it in a great post by Marc Morano at Senator Inhofe's EPW Press Blog).  On paper it looks like an interesting set of discussions, but I'm really not holding out much hope for this crew.  Finally the Journal Editorial Report discusses the White House minus Karl Rove and Romney's strategy (I wonder if they'll call it a business plan?).  Interestingly their web page on OpinionJournal.COM also lists a discussion of the controversy over public funds being used to install Muslim foot baths (required before prayer five times per day) at University of Michigan-Dearborn (some news stories and blog posts on the topic), but it's not listed on the Fox web site for the show.  Are Roger or Rupert trying to suck up to some PC types?

Anyway, that's the run down.  Looks like a failure nothing week.  But, hey, it's August.  What do we expect? 

Better post this fast as we're starting to have thunder in the area.  I don't want to get finished before the Saturday shows for the first time in a long time and then not post it all because of losing power (or my PC!).

This should be cross posted to my blog at Wizards.townhall.com later today. I have finally caught up over their and I hope to keep up to date from now on. In fact I'm going to change the format just a bit when posting this in light of the success of the technique I used to get caught up. This analysis will still be first but then I'm going to try putting all of the show by show posts into one big Post number 1. If I end up falling back to separate posts you'll know that I found an upper limit to the length of FR posts.

This thread exists primarily as a heads up for who is on the weekend talks shows, what they've been invited on to push (based on their recent pronouncements) and the spin (meme) the DBM is likely trying to push based on that information. All of this is prep work for the weekly Sunday Morning Talk Show thread posted by Alas Babylon!. That thread provides a live commentary and analysis of the Sunday talking head shows, with valuable insight and exceptional fact checking. we are the Jedi Council of FreeRepublic, at least in regards to these DBM gabfests. You wanna know what was said and what it meant, as well as where they messed up? Read that thread!

Here's Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 19 August 2007

Mark Kilmer has posted his excellent preview of the Sunday shows over at Redstate.COM.

Politico.COM has their Sunday Talk Show Tip Sheet

Show by Show Preview

Below are the topics and guests announced for these programs, along with my take on the "memes" that the shows are trying to push.  With each guest's name are a series of links that I found in a web search that helped me get a handle on who they are and what their likely positions will be when they are interviewed.

Saturday Shows For August 18, 2007

The Beltway Boys (Mort Kondrake, Fred Barnes)

  • Meme:
    • We're doomed!  Doomed I tell you!  It's the worst economy in history!  And it's all Bush's faultTM!
    • Let's see, how can we disparage anyone who actually talks about the issue of terrorism in this campaign?
  • Topics:
    • Another rollercoaster week on Wall Street. Have we hit rock bottom or is the worst still to come?
    • Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney try to 'out tough' each other on border security
  • Beltway Boys contact information beltway@foxnews.com
  • The program airs on FOX News Channel Saturdays at 6 and 11:30 p.m. ET

CNBC's Tim Russert Show (Tim Russert)

  • Meme:
    • Lil Timmah can't find any guests so he has to pull ones out of the vault, including dead ones!
  • Topics:
    • An encore hour with three Hall of Fame New York Yankees
  • Guests
    • Yogi Berra
    • Whitey Ford
    • The late, great Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto.
  • CNBC's Tim Russert Show airs Saturday at 7pm, 10pm & 1am ET

Fox News Watch (Eric Burns)

  • Meme:
    • Just how Nixonian can they paint Karl Rove?  Enquiring minds want to know.
    • There's something out their to panic about and the media might not be overhyping it enough?  Say it ain't so!a
    • Someone at Newsweak dared to point out what a lying, steaming pile their global warming article was.  Can't have that!
  • Topics:
    • The media bids a fond farewell to Karl Rove
    • Are the media saying enough about the problem with Chinese imports?
    • Newsweek attacks… Newsweek?
  • The program airs on FOX News Channel Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. ET and Sundays at 2:30 a.m. ET
  • Fox News Watch contact information Newswatch@foxnews.com

Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page

  • Meme:
    • JER leading with the presidential horse race?  Is Rupert already having an impact on their priorities?
    • Karl Rove is leaving?  Who knew?
    • Notice how Fox doesn't list the footbath issue?
  • Topics:
    • Opinion Journal web page: Romney, Rove and Feet
      • Mitt Romney and his early-state presidential strategy: Is he the real GOP front-runner?
      • The Bush White House after Karl Rove
      • The debate over Muslim footbaths in public universities.
    • Fox News Channel web page
      • Did the Iowa straw poll shake up the field of GOP presidential contenders?
      • With its chief strategist gone, where does the Bush White House go next?
  • Guests
    • None listed
  • Journal Editorial Report (at Fox News) contact information - jer@foxnews.com
  • The program is from The Wall Street Journal and airs on FNC Saturday at 11 p.m. and again Sunday at 6 a.m. ET

NBC Meet The Press (Tim Russert)

CBS Face The Nation (Bob Schieffer)

Fox News Sunday (Chris Wallace)

CNN Late Edition (Wolf Blitzer)

ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos)

 

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