Here are the questions this time:
1) Thank you very much Congressman, you doing okay tonight?
2) Clearly the President caved, why?
3) What would you have like to have seen the President do? Because even Mitch McConnell said on Saturday, he said listen, the President is the one who decides this. If he agrees with us then most of the Democrats will fall in line. What would you have liked to have seen from the President?
4) Congressman I want to ask you this. Really it’s about the President’s political future, whether or not it has helped him, but let me read this first and then you can answer. Your colleague in New York Gary Ackerman said the Republicans invited the President “to negotiate as a strip poker table and he showed up half naked.” And then liberal columnist Paul Krugman calls the deal “an abject surrender.” Would the President be better off running as a conservative in 2012?
5) It’s not that he’s too conservative, but do you feel he is strong enough when it comes to these issues, fighting for what Democrats want.
6) You think this won’t matter by 2012, that he’s not going to be hurt by this politically?
7) There is this chart that has been going around showing that Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to want their representative to compromise. Democrats twice as likely as Republicans to want their representatives to compromise, all right to get things done. And then that Republicans are twice as likely to want the representatives to stick to their principles. Would it be better for the country if Democrats were more like Republicans or perhaps if Republicans were more like Democrats?
8) It’s not done until it’s done. You know how that is. There are still more votes to be taken.
Quite a contrast isn’t it? When interviewing Sen. Paul, Don Lemon spoke for Democrats and for the “frustrated” American people about the need to compromise. When interviewing Rep. Grijalva, he seemed to be speaking for frustrated Democrats who want the President to fight harder and compromise less.
The framing of the entire Rand Paul interview is why won’t you intransigent Tea Partiers compromise now that you’ve made your point. On the other hand, the interview with Rep. Grijalva is about not giving in so easily.
It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that Don Lemon has a horse in this race or, more precisely, a jackass.
