There was a fascinating example of far-right ideology on “Hardball” yesterday, when Chris Matthews asked Melanie Morgan — unhinged, even by contemporary far-right standards — to respond to how right Dick Cheney was about Iraq before he became Vice President. C&L has an excerpt, which is worth watching, if for no other reason because Morgan helped highlight a twisted worldview for a national television audience.

After Matthews asked Morgan to explain why 1994 Cheney was right while 2002 Cheney was wrong, Morgan refused to engage and suggested Iraq was somehow involved with 9/11. She also attacked the host for bringing up the subject.

Matthews then asked Naomi Wolf to weigh in.

Wolf: It gets back to what I was saying earlier about the nature of lying. Let’s not forget that they got us into this war on the basis of a series of lies…. This weaving out of lies was a pretext for an invasion that served their own political purposes. In the wake of the invasion, they were able to terrify the American people, subjugate the American people, drive through a series of laws that dismantled key checks and balances, allowed overreaching executive power, and completely eviscerated what the founders set in place, thus weakening America.

Morgan: Keep attacking, keep attacking Naomi, because you’re going to look great in a burka. You’re going to look super in a burka.

Perfect. Wolf makes a substantive point about American laws, institutions, and traditions, so Morgan insists Wolf’s criticism will lead to radical Muslims seizing control of the United States, forcing women into burkas. This, in effect, encapsulates too much of the left-right debate of the last eight months.

Indeed, Glenn Greenwald explained the broader dynamic perfectly the other day.

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States — the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain — actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and “our women” will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have — not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

And their key political beliefs — from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home — are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the “base,” a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion — a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed.

This description may sound hyperbolic, but a surprising number of high-profile conservative voices actually believe that we’re this close to an invasion and the replacement of our constitutional system with a radical Muslim theocracy. If you disagree — about the nature of Islam, or the war in Iraq, or the president’s national security policies, etc. — then you are necessarily helping advance the Islamists’ drive for international hegemony.

It’s precisely why Morgan, instead of responding to Wolf’s substantive points, quickly leapt to her reflexive conclusion: criticizing the president will contribute to the downfall of the United States and the imposition of sharia law.

Morgan probably didn’t intend to be helpful, but she captured the gist of this worldview surprisingly well.

About a month ago, Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had a rather heated discussion on “Meet the Press” about Iraq. In one contentious exchange, Webb told Graham, “You know, you haven’t been to Iraq.” Graham snapped back, “I’ve been there seven times.” Webb, a decorated veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy, replied, “You go see the dog and pony shows. That’s what congressmen do.”

Jonathan Finer explained today that Graham isn’t the only one basing opinions on scripted tours.

Policymakers should be commended for refusing to blindly trust accounts from diplomats, soldiers or journalists. But it’s worth remembering what these visits are and what they are not. Prescient insights rarely emerge from a few days in-country behind the blast walls. […]

It goes without saying that everyone can, and in this country should, have an opinion about the war, no matter how much time the person has spent in Iraq, if any. But having left a year ago, I’ve stopped pretending to those who ask that I have a keen sense of what it’s like on the ground today. Similarly, those who pass quickly through the war zone should stop ascribing their epiphanies to what are largely ceremonial visits.

The next time you hear a pol saying, “I’ve just returned from Iraq and I saw…” keep Finer’s piece in mind.

After Bush won a second term, he entered 2005 in a relatively strong position. He boasted about having “political capital,” his approval rating was around 50%, and he looked at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and saw a very friendly Republican majority in both chambers. Everything was how Bush and his team wanted it.

And then the president kicked off a campaign to privatize Social Security. The more Americans learned about the plan, the more they hated it. After a few months of seeing Bush barnstorm the nation to sell his idea, Americans supported his handling of Social Security even less than his handling of Iraq. Bush’s poll numbers collapsed, and never recovered. It was, by some measures, the president’s jump-the-shark moment.

Even the most sycophantic of Republicans quickly realized that Bush’s Social Security policy was poison to be avoided at all costs. Given the public’s response, a candidate would have to be a blithering fool to embrace a plan that everyone loathed.

And yet, here’s Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani stressed his desire to have private forces shape the country’s economy in education as well as in health care and Social Security. He said he supported President Bush’s unsuccessful proposal to allow people to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private accounts.

“I would have preferred, over my lifetime, if I could have invested some of that Social Security money myself,” said Giuliani, 63. “I think I would have done much better than the government did. I believe young people today, a lot of them feel that way. I think people who want a private option should be entitled to have it.”

Maybe Giuliani realized recently that he doesn’t want to be president after all, so he’s throwing the race on purpose.

Obama campaign to limit his participation in future Dem debates — because the voters “are the ones who ask the toughest questions.” That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was on CNN yesterday, positioning himself as a critic of the president’s Iraq policy.

KIRAN CHETRY: It seems you’ve been painted as being a huge supporter of the president’s Iraq strategy. Is that an inaccurate portrayal?

MCCAIN: It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, “This is going to fail.” We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

Poor John McCain. All he did was support the current Iraq policy every step of the way for five years and, for some reason, foolish Americans have come to believe he supports the president’s strategy. How terribly unfair.

Look, this notion of who qualifies as a “critic” of the White House’s war policy came to a head recently when far too many news outlets falsely characterized Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack as opponents of the war. Their support for Bush’s strategy was given greater weight because the media and the GOP establishment told the public they have been war “skeptics.” They’re not — O’Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion, endorsed the so-called surge, and have consistently opposed withdrawal. (Ironically, Jon Stewart, the fake newsman, was one of the few to get this right.)

Similarly, we now see McCain characterizing himself as “the greatest critic of the initial four years.” Perhaps it’s best if we establish some kind of criteria for who counts as a “critic” and who counts as a “supporter.”

Did you:

* endorse the invasion?

* buy into the Cheney vision of a quick, easy-to-resolve conflict?

* support the administration’s position on every piece of Iraq legislation since 2002?

* consistently support the status quo? (“I’m confident we’re on the right course” — McCain, March 7, 2004)

* endorse the escalation policy?

* oppose any and all measures to include timelines, scheduled withdrawals, or enforced benchmarks?

If you’re McCain, the answer to all six questions is “yes.” With that in mind, you don’t get to call yourself “the greatest critic” of the president’s policy.

When it comes to Democratic presidential candidates, I more or less look at single-payer healthcare the same way I look at gay marriage — it’s something the top-tier candidates should support, and probably want to support, but hold back for political reasons. The unstated position seems to be, “I like the idea, but the country’s just not there yet.”

At YearlyKos, Barack Obama went a little further than his most competitive rivals, acknowledging that if we were starting a healthcare system from scratch right now, he’d gladly support a single-payer system, but given the healthcare structure that currently exists, he doesn’t see that kind of overhaul as feasible. It’s not the ideal answer for proponents of such a plan, but at least he acknowledged the merit of the idea.

John Edwards, who, by some indications, has offered perhaps of the best healthcare plan of any candidate, has decided to take a far different approach.

Edwards is also careful to temper his progressivism with more centrist positions. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Edwards … even demonized single-payer health care: “Do you think the American people want the same people who responded to Hurricane Katrina to run their health-care system?”

I can hope Edwards was misquoted, because that’s a remarkably bad answer to an important question.

For one thing, Edwards is parroting Mitt Romney’s position, almost word for word. Romney, in the midst of blasting Democratic healthcare reform measures, told a New Hampshire audience a few weeks ago, “I don’t want the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup running my health care system.” Edwards, apparently, agrees.

This should be obvious by now, but the problem with a breakdown like Katrina is not with government; it’s with incompetent government. P. J. O’Rourke once joked, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work — and then they get elected and prove it.”

The point isn’t that FEMA is incapable of responding to a natural disaster. Bush helped turn the agency into a joke, but FEMA used to be extremely well run and fully capable of helping areas in need of assistance. To hear Edwards and Romney tell it, government can’t respond to a hurricane, so it certainly can’t bring access to quality healthcare to Americans. In reality, it can do both with competent, quality leadership in positions of power.

Indeed, I wonder how far Edwards and Romney are prepared to take this little comparison. Do they want the same people who responded to Katrina running Medicare and providing healthcare to seniors? How about S-CHIP and providing access for children? How about Social Security? Should all of them be privatized because the Bush administration is incapable of governing?

Maybe Edwards was misquoted. Maybe he was kidding and was taken out of context. I’d love to hear an explanation. In the meantime, when leading Democratic candidates repeat misguided Republican talking points on healthcare reform, it’s a problem.

A thought from TPM Reader RC …

I noticed several similarities between Rudy Guiliani’s performance after the 9/11 attacks and Crandall Creek Mine owner Robert Murray’s performance after his mine caved in.

Rudy had the guts to go to Ground Zero and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Likewise, Murray had the guts to go right down into the bowels of his mine and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Both men came across as don’t-worry-everything’s-under-control-type guys. Both were very reassuring.

Here’s my question: If Guiliani’s performances in front of the media’s cameras and microphones following 9/11 were sufficient to qualify him to be our president, then didn’t Murray’s recent performances in front of the media’s cameras and microphones at least qualify him to be our vice-president?

How about a Guiliani/Murray ticket?

Just an idea.

Yesterday we learned that there’s a shortage of Purple Heart medals for injured veterans.

Today we learn there’s a shortage on ammunition, too.

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff’s departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

In August 2001, the president read a memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush didn’t much care, telling his CIA briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

In August 2007, the president read a style article in a mid-size newspaper about the clothes he wears in Crawford. About this, Bush cared very much.

What really gets George W. Bush riled up? Calling him a fashion victim.

Last week, Marques Harper of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a short piece about the president’s sartorial style on his Texas ranch, where Bush is spending a two-week vacation. The article was reprinted Tuesday in a Waco, Tex., paper, and the leader of the free world was not pleased.

Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.

First, this comes just days after Karl Rove told Rush Limbaugh about the president’s healthy, above-the-fray attitude about criticism in the media. Rove boasted, “The president is very good about saying, ‘Look, we came here for a reason. We have an obligation on the country,’ and press on by it. I’ll be hyperventilating about the latest attack on him by somebody, and he’ll say, ‘Don’t worry. History will get it right and we’ll both be dead.’ So it’s a good, healthy attitude about how to take it.” I guess that doesn’t apply to his fashion sense.

Second, the article itself was entirely benign, noting that Bush has “opted to look more like ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ than a sweaty, tough ranch hand.” This mild remark in a brief article was enough for the spokesperson for the President of the United States to call a style reporter for a mid-size newspaper to convey the disappointment of the leader of the free world.

And third, I’ve heard rumors that George W. Bush is a charming fellow who’s easy to get along with. Policies aside, he’s supposed to be a “great guy.” I don’t buy it. Incidents like this one make the president sound temperamental and immature.

Indeed, if we take the White House pitch at face value, Bush is a tough guy, hardened by war, and unconcerned about pettiness — unless the Austin American-Statesman says something vaguely derogatory about his clothes?

By this point, we know all about the partisan, political briefings the White House conducted in government buildings for government employees, despite clear prohibitions by the Hatch Act. The defense from the Bush gang is that the briefings had nothing to do with political corruption; they were just informal meetings about key congressional races for the Republican Party, intended as “team building” and “morale boosting” exercises.

To hear the White House tell it, administration officials who received the briefings were never encouraged to do anything with the information; Rove & Co. just wanted officials at agencies — ranging from HHS to the State Department to NASA — to be aware of vulnerable Republican and Democratic incumbents. It was an extravagant “FYI,” intended to improve bureaucrats’ self-esteem. (“I was feeling kind of discouraged about being stuck in an ineffective and incompetent bureaucracy, but now I know that the White House is focused on Michigan’s 9th congressional district. Wow, I feel better already!”)

The reality, of course, is that these briefings were part of a legally-dubious scheme that not only violated the Hatch Act, but also led to fairly obvious abuse of federal tax dollars.

Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.

Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings — all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006. […]

During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.

Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance in mind.

Ya think?

It all ties into the Bush gang’s Kremlin-like abuses — using the power of the state as a tool of the ruling party.