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Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday amazingly asked, "Since when does Scott Walker represent 'the people'?" Such happened during a heated discussion on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group" about the goings-on in Wisconsin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The McLaughlin Group is still an easy place to identify Newsweek as a liberal rag. Over the weekend, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift offered several liberal howlers as the Group handed out year-end honors and dishonors. On "Worst Lie," Clift insisted: "The worst lie, that Obama’s policies didn’t work -- the recovery plan, the car, the auto-car bailout, and TARP, which began under President Bush – all worked quite well."

Win or lose when the votes are counted on primary night, one thing is certain, Sarah Palin gets headlines. As analysts ponder the results, inquiring minds search for answers. What is she up to? Is she collecting chits for a 2012 presidential run? Or is she just having fun building the family bank account and jerking the chain of more traditional politicians? Her endorsement track record so far has been mixed, though her choice for the Senate in Alaska, Tea Party favorite Joe Miller, has a narrow lead in the GOP primary over incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Palin's win-loss ratio...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, on this weekend's syndicated The McLaughlin Group, slighted conservative pro-life women everywhere when she applied California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's "so yesterday" description of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's hairstyle to women who hold anti-abortion views in the Republican Party. Clift, in a segment about the primary victories of both Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman began actually crediting Sarah Palin as "Saint Sarah" for the wins as she claimed that the former Alaskan Governor is "emboldening conservative women" and "reshaping the religious right" but then went on to question if pro-life women candidates could win...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, on this weekend's syndicated The McLaughlin Group, slighted conservative pro-life women everywhere when she applied California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's "so yesterday" description of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's hairstyle to women who hold anti-abortion views in the Republican Party. (Snip) Incidentally, The Washington Times' Monica Crowley had to correct Clift as she pointed out her liberal spin wasn't even entirely accurate as Whitman is, in fact, "pro choice."

The ferocity of the criticism of President Obama for the failed Christmas Day bombing offers a glimpse into what might happen if a real attack occurred. At least half the country—those with political allegiance to red-state America—wouldn't rally around the president the way everybody did on 9/11, despite President Bush's considerable shortcomings, in the chaotic hours that followed the attacks. It would be another chance to score political points. It took Obama 72 hours to calibrate his response and get past the images of playing golf and eating snow cones. Democrats are always put on the defensive by Republican attacks...

If you're curious to see how the mainstream Washington, D.C. press views the global warming debate, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift may have tipped off the public off. On the Nov. 29 edition of "The McLaughlin Group," host John McLaughlin asked about the prospects of a Copenhagen climate change treaty and its possible impact on the U.S. economy. MSNBC and "The McLaughlin Group" regular Pat Buchanan gave some spot-on analysis on global warming alarmist about former Vice President Al Gore and how it pertains to the climate change issue. "Well, I don't think it's going to have any impact, John, because I...

November 16, 2009 Payback Time: Why Right-Wing Men Rush to Palin's Defense Eleanor Clift ItÂ’s nothing new when liberal women complain about sexism, but when conservative men take up the banner, calling NEWSWEEK sexist for portraying Sarah Palin on the cover in her jogging clothes, that catches my attention. Why do right-wing men rush to SarahÂ’s side to defend her? My theory is that this is payback time. TheyÂ’ve been called sexist and racist, and subjected to media ridicule of their allegedly retro views. Palin is their way to push back against the elites that have marginalized them. For the...

Who would have thought 55 days into this administration we would be asking the question, what did he know and when did he know it? Word that a provision in the stimulus bill gave the green light for AIG to hand out bonuses using taxpayer money sent the media bloodhounds hot on the trail of whoever is the culprit. For a time, it looked like Senate Banking chairman Chris Dodd would take the fall, but after 24 hours of twisting in the wind, Dodd said the change that exempted past agreements to pay bonuses was made at the request of...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift disclosed on the McLaughlin Group -- seemingly without any compunction for how she was outing her fellow journalists as behaving the same way as Barack Obama's campaign staff, but I suppose we already knew that intuitively -- that John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for VP was greeted by “literally laughter” in “very many newsrooms.” From the show taped on Friday at Washington, DC's CBS affiliate and airing at various times over the weekend around the nation, mostly on PBS stations: ELEANOR CLIFT: This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a...

"It's hard being a member of the mean party," says Bob Borochoff, a lifelong Republican who was on Capitol Hill this week asking legislators to support bills that will benefit disabled people like his son, Bradley, and returning veterans suffering from mental illness. There's no shortage of horror stories when it comes to health insurance, but Borochoff's tale on behalf of his son took him on a political journey, as well, and his disillusionment is emblematic of the uphill climb the Republicans face in November. Borochoff's tidy life as a restauranteur and happily married father of three, including newborn twins,...

If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in "The Godfather," where the watchword is, "It's business, not personal." Notables who abandoned her for Obama will get the Big Chill. "He's dead to us," a Clinton aide was quoted saying of John Kerry, who along with Ted Kennedy was turned off by the perception of race baiting that led up to the South Carolina primary. A major donor, conflicted between the two candidates and apologetic over his backing of Obama, found Hillary less than sympathetic. "Too bad for...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

In a recent interview in the Sunday "NYTimes" magazine, Eleanor Clift, says, re: Terri Schiavo, that her parents and supporters "did not want to accept that she could not be rehabilitated. They found enough people to fool them into thinking she could." This, of course, is completely wrong! Forget "rehabilitation." What Terri's parents and her supporters tried to stop was the MURDER of Terri Schiavo. Alas, they failed -- with no help from people like Eleanor Clift.

Torn by her liberal guilt of being forced to choose between a woman or an African-American man to have a shot at making history, Eleanor Clift lost it on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" as she called the choice a "tragedy." The "Newsweek" editor claimed liberals, particularly women, were confused as to whether to dump Hillary for Obama as she blurted: "Women have waited decades to see the first woman president and it's actually something of a tragedy that a talented African-American guy comes along at the same [time.]" The following is the full exchange as it occurred on the March...

Trouble in HillarylandBill steps on Hill. Will Edwards benefit? Dec 14, 2007 | Updated: 1:03 p.m. ET Dec 14, 2007 A senior Democratic senator fretted in a holiday receiving line that "this celebrity thing" could run away with the presidency. It's dawning on the Washington Establishment that their candidate could lose, swept away by a charismatic upstart and a talk show host. Word is even leaking out from Chappaqua and Harlem that the big gun is confiding to who knows whom that not all is not well in Hillaryland. And whose fault is that? Hillary was doing pretty well on...

For right-wing conspiracy theorists, this is the belly of the beast—a dinner at the Four Seasons in New York for the 20th anniversary of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Portentous Ivy League professors, Upper East Side gazillionaires, Precambrian media pooh-bahs; Dan Rather and Al Franken and Paul Pelosi, spouse of the Speaker-elect. Almost all in attendance cheer the results of the midterms while bemoaning the demise of old media. Suddenly, shimmering over the tabletops, comes a vision of what was and might yet be again: in full plumage, arriving and departing separately per their...

April 13, 2007 - It’s been years since I appeared on “Imus in the Morning,” and it was only once. He made fun of me before I went on, about how I begged to be on his show, and continuing the mocking banter after the interview ended. I protested that I never asked to be invited on, much less begged, but he apparently counted inquiries made by the public-relations department at NEWSWEEK as my personally craving airtime with him. I shrugged it off as nothing personal and wasn’t surprised that I was not asked back. Advertisers no doubt took note...

The administration has a stake in convincing the public that what happened in Haditha was an isolated incident and that it does not reflect a broader message about a war gone bad—or a war that should never have been waged in the first place.

May 26, 2006 - Hillary Clinton told the National Press Club that she’s been thinking about issues related to energy for 30 years, ever since she edited a classmate’s paper on OPEC at Yale Law School. Funny she chose to reveal that little tidbit just days before Al Gore’s documentary on global warming opens in theaters. Gore traces his interest in climate change back to when he was an undergraduate at Harvard. Gore thought he owned the issue, but Hillary was said to have dazzled the audience with her sweep of knowledge, down to and including a description of the...

A pro-choice Republican who spoke with NEWSWEEK but didn't want her name used said she is more worried about Alito after hearing him testify, and wishes the Democrats would spend their time finding a candidate to beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries "or we're going to get four more years of judges like this." [snip] "Any activist will tell you they'd rather have the issue out there than to have it resolved," says this pro-choice Republican, who has worked on the Hill and for various Republican interest groups. "If Roe were overturned, we'd be electing Democrats as far as the...

Big Lies: Who told the worst political untruth of 2005? It’s a shame the list of contenders is so long. Web-Exclusive Commentary By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Updated: 6:51 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2005 - Every holiday season, we on "The McLaughlin Group" hand out news awards. Some categories, like "Biggest Winner," are easy (My choice was Chief Justice John Roberts, with the oil companies as runner-up). Others are a struggle to fill, like who to insult with the “Overrated” award. In compiling this year’s list, I had the highest number of entries for the category, “Biggest Lie.” I chose the...

Will the Virginia governor slow Hillary’s march toward the Democratic nomination? If Hillary Clinton had asked my advice, I would have told her that cosponsoring a bill to make flag burning a crime is one step too far on her journey to the middle. Obviously, she feels strong enough in her appeal to Democrats that she can afford her Sister Souljah moment without endangering her core support. Clinton learned a valuable lesson during the ’92 presidential race when her husband took on the black rapper for her lyrics, an act of defiance against his party’s entrenched liberal base. Given her...

Dec. 2, 2005 - It’s hard to know which to admire more, the choreography or the chutzpah. White House spinmeisters put up banners that blared PLAN FOR VICTORY in case anybody missed the message in President Bush’s latest iteration of his Iraq policy in a speech on Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy. The photo the following day on the front page of The New York Times showed Bush bathed in the Navy colors of blue and gold and heroically positioned as though standing on the bridge of a battleship. All he needed were some stripes on his sleeve and...

When Democrats said we should pull out our troops from Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney and others were quick to label them defeatists. When the administration floated the idea this week of bringing home a third of the troops by election time next year, it was presented as good old patriotism. As the church lady on “Saturday Night Live” used to say “How convenient!” The striking change of tone is all about politics, and perhaps that’s how it should be in a democracy.[snip] Public support for the war has collapsed. The administration wants to avoid an embarrassing debate over who...

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift has a new article out, and she once again doesn’t have anything good to say about President Bush. In fact, she now believes that his presidency is in such a state of disarray that Bush needs to “change direction, the way President Bill Clinton did after losing both the House and Senate in 1994.” Clift seems to forget that this change of direction didn’t help the Democrats win back the Congress in 1996, which put Clinton in a position where he was forced to accede to most of the Republican demands in 1997 which included tax cuts...

By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Nov. 4, 2005 - Democrats shouldn’t filibuster Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court unless he really bungles the hearings. The votes aren’t there, and moderates don’t have the stomach for an all-out war over spousal notification. By a margin of nearly 3-to-1 according to a Pew Research Center poll, the public sides with the position Alito took in 1991 when he upheld as constitutional a provision in a Pennsylvania law that required women to notify their husbands before obtaining an abortion. Alito is not a wild-eyed originalist who channels the Founding Fathers, but he is...

Sept. 30, 2005 - Publicly Republicans are putting on a happy face, but they’ve moved on. They’re going to take care of themselves. Tom DeLay is yesterday. Forced to step down as House majority leader, he’s a symbol now, a symbol of the same cronyism and corruption that unseated the Democrats in ’94. The only difference is it took the Republicans a single decade to achieve the level of arrogance that it took four decades of Democratic rule to reach.

If there’s an upside to Katrina, it’s that the Republican agenda of tax cuts, Social Security privatization and slashing government programs is over. President Bush’s disapproval rating now stands at 52 percent, and two in three Americans give him a thumbs down on handling hurricane relief. At the heart of the problem is Bush’s disdain for government. It may be too much to predict an upsurge of progressive government, but the environment and issues of poverty, race and class are back on the nation’s radar screen. The proper role for government will be debated as we move toward the next...

Last week, on the McLaughlin group, Eleanor Clift opined that "we have a mercenary army." We're not gonna revisit the idiocy, and the military bashing, of that statement. But on this week's show, having successfull inserted one foot all the way down her esophasgus, Clift went for the Daily Double. She informed us that the images from New Orleans prove that we have "apartheid in America."

I didn’t see the movie “The Day After,” which depicts the desolation and desperation in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Staring at the images from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is like watching that disaster movie in real time. People trying to survive, scavenging like wild animals, dead bodies stuffed in corners of the Superdome, the governor of Louisiana fighting to hold back tears. Where is Rudy Giuliani when we need him? We’ve had four years since 9/11 to prepare for a crisis with mass casualties, yet we seem totally unprepared. To be sure, there are countless unsung...

Excerpted from article: "A group that supports the U.S. military is demanding an apology from Newsweek magazine's Eleanor Clift, who recently characterized America's armed forces as a "mercenary Army." Her comments -- made this past weekend on the syndicated TV program "The McLaughlin Group" -- were "unfounded and grossly inappropriate," said the Freedom Alliance. In an Aug. 30 letter to Clift, Freedom Alliance President Tom Kilgannon asked her to retract her comment and apologize to the armed forces and their families. Clift made the comment during a discussion about military recruiting efforts: "But I think what we're coming to grips...

Hillary Clinton wants to be the darling of the left and the candidate of the center, and why not? More than any other Democrat, save one—her husband—she knows what it takes to win, and she fully and completely comprehends the opposition. Liberals went ballistic this week when Clinton called for a ceasefire among Democrats at a much ballyhooed appearance before the DLC, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that helped elect her husband president. Clinton’s “Rodney King Moment,” is all about 2008, says a former John Kerry adviser: “What she’s saying is, ‘Why can’t we all get along and support me?’”...

MIDI - ELEANOR No matter what crimes we find...you're lip-locked on her behind Eleanor, really, it's not becoming She'd be a real disaster...what is Hillary after? The tripe you write is very mind-numbing Eleanor Clift, it will not sell...what you're writing has a smell Like her lapdog you are spinning Eleanor Clift, you're on your knees...Hillary you want to please You look up and see her grinning You say the war we're losing...like Teddy, too much boozing Your words hurt those defending our nation Kool-Aid you've found delightful...that woman's really frightful It is time you take your medication Eleanor...

Out of the Shadows Why the Deep Throat disclosures are good for the media—and could help Hillary Clinton shape a bid for the White House WEB EXCLUSIVE By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Updated: 4:50 p.m. ET June 3, 2005 June 3 - At a Memorial Day picnic in Washington, the talk inevitably turned to Hillary Clinton and her likely run for president. “What motivates her?” one man wanted to know. He wouldn’t think of asking that question about any of the male contenders for president. Wanting to hold the highest elective office in the land is a given for them, but...

May 20 - A Jewish friend after making her first trip to Israel said, “This would be a great place if they could figure out how to separate government and religion.” I was reminded of her sentiments this week as the U.S. Senate began debate on two of President Bush’s judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, hostages in the ongoing culture war between born-again religionists and the more-or-less secular society the Founding Fathers envisioned. When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist accuses Democrats who oppose Owen and Brown of wanting to “kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees,” he...

Whatever happened to liberal compassion? by N. Beaujon April 26, 2005 Given that liberals are the most spoiled demographic on earth and “Democrat” is just another name for an overindulged, entitled pedantic, whatever happened to liberal compassion? The Party of Do-Gooders has turned into a pie-throwing, salad dressing slinging, venomous, hate mongering mob whose only agenda seems to be to antagonize conservatives and humiliate people of faith. I guess it’s easy to be “compassionate” when everything’s going your way. Yesterday, Howard Dean (and we all know who he is) had another emotional vomit session and squealed that Republicans were “evil”,...

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth stopped by NEWSWEEK's Washington bureau this week to explain their version of what happened in Vietnam 35 years ago and why John Kerry doesn't deserve three Purple Hearts. None were on the Swift Boat Kerry commanded, but they had charts to illustrate their contention that Kerry's boat did not come under fire and that two of his wounds were self-inflicted, one when he hurled a grenade at a rice bin too close to his position. A generation of reporters far removed from any war experience listened respectfully to their story. Between the fog of...

Nation's Longest Running Column Changing Guard; Jack Anderson Retires; Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift Share Byline WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2004--"Washington Merry-Go-Round" by Jack Anderson and Douglas Cohn, the nation's longest running newspaper column, is changing bylines. The column, founded by Drew Pearson in 1932, was carried on by Jack Anderson, who joined Pearson in 1947, and by Douglas Cohn, who joined Anderson in 1999. Anderson, 81, who is suffering from Parkinson's disease, has retired from the column, and is being replaced by Eleanor Clift, who has served as "Washington Merry-Go-Round's" political correspondent for several years. Cohn and Clift, who...

Some folks just need to get a grip. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift has this to say about Abu Ghraib: "If ever there was a moment for John Kerry to come out swinging, this is it. It is the biggest story of the war, and he is essentially silent." The biggest story of the war? Bigger than the lightning-fast military victory last year? Bigger than the deaths in battle of Uday and Qusay Hussein? Bigger than Saddam's capture? For that matter, bigger than the continuing insurgency or the mystery over weapons of mass destruction? Abu Ghraib is a big story, to be...

Some members of the press are so anxious to remove George Bush from office that they've already got him halfway out the White House door. Newsweek columnist Eleanor Clift, for instance, claimed on Sunday that Bush's challenger, Sen. John Kerry, has now earned the title, "President of Democratic America." "The focus is on Kerry," Clift told NBC's "McLaughlin Group." "And he's got to say what he's going to do. He's now President of Democratic America." Now that he's become president of the Democrats, Clift said that Kerry's next task is to reach out to independents and Republicans so he can...

Fox has just confirmed that Ralph Nader is running for President as an independent. In response, Eleanor Clift said that Nader is most likely to hurt Bush by taking votes from people who would otherwise have voted Republican.

The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W. Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" landing last spring on the USS Abraham Lincoln. There is another chapter to Kerry's war history that Republicans are examining, and that is his leadership in 1971 of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some GOP strategists...

Oct. 24 — Welcome to Rumsfeld’s reality. It’s a brave new world in Washington now that Donald Rumsfeld has revealed the true nature of the conflict in Iraq. Americans didn’t sign on for a “long, hard slog,” as Rumsfeld put it so memorably in a memo to his top generals. RUMSFELD’S WORDS CONFIRM what critics of the war have been saying. The invasion of Iraq was a costly diversion from the broader war on terrorism, and not the central front as President Bush has claimed. Rumsfeld frets that the religious schools known as madrassas are turning out terrorists at a...

Oct. 17 — Too bad President Bush didn’t attend the 14th annual Courage in Journalism awards luncheon in New York on Thursday. He might have come away with a higher regard for the profession when he has lately disparaged for the “filter” it imposes on news. THE International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) honors women journalists around the world for the work they perform under the most daunting conditions. Among this year’s winners are Tatyana Goryachova from Ukraine, who had acid thrown in her face because of articles she had written about government corruption, and Manelos Monzon of Guatemala, whose house...

Normally a president gets a boost in the polls when he addresses the nation from the White House. But President Bush's numbers dipped after he went on television to announce he was asking Congress for an additional $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq. That's on top of $79 billion already appropriated this year to cover the cost of the war. NO WONDER the voters are gagging. They don't blame Bush for terrorism or the weak economy, but they sense that he's adrift, that he has no exit plan for Iraq or solution for our economic woes other than letting the...

Weird Practices in Alabama by L. Brent Bozell, III Posted Sep 13, 2003 In the minds of the national media elite, Alabama is a strange place that erupts in the news only when some backward action happens. Perhaps it's an abortion clinic bombing, a remembrance of past segregation and racist violence, or some rerun of the strange ways those Bible-thumpin' Christians act. Enlightened journalists no doubt still chortle at the memory of the 1960s singer-satirist Tom Lehrer worrying about when "Alabama gets the bomb." The state's Chief Justice, Roy Moore, brought the national media circus to town by plopping a...

The Lies of Hillary exposed on The Big Show at 8pm Sunday with John Gibson.

Rick Santorum stirred up a hornet’s nest with his remarks on homosexuality. But the GOP—and the White House—still love him. Whenever a politician talks about men on dogs, it’s a mistake. Whatever the context, it’s trouble. But Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum didn’t seem to notice, not even when the reporter said she didn’t come to interview him about bestiality. “It’s sort of freaking me out,” she said. THERE’S A FINE LINE between stupidity and bigotry, and Santorum managed both in a flight of prejudice in which he equated homosexual sex with incest, polygamy, bigamy and adultery. He was commenting on...

The U.S. just as dishonest as the North Koreans? Newsweek's Eleanor Clift applied Clintonian logic on McLaughlin Group over the weekend as she argued that because North Korea switched from plutonium to uranium, they violated “the spirit of the framework, but not the technicality” while the U.S. “didn't deliver on our end either,” so, she argued, “all the fault's not on their side.” Clift contended about North Korea: “This may be a technicality, but they did mothball their plutonium program. And what they did was start up a parallel program with uranium, which violates the spirit of the framework, but...