On this evening’s Hardball, Chris Matthews made this incredulous and puzzling statement:

Some people think [the Republican presidential race] has come down to McCain, Romney, and — just because Giuliani hasn’t been beaten yet — Giuliani.

Watch it:

Note to Chris: Giuliani has not only been beaten, he’s been crushed. To recap: Giuliani finished fifth in Iowa with 4 percent, fourth in New Hampshire with 9 percent, sixth in Michigan with 3 percent, sixth in Nevada with 4 percent and sixth in South Carolina with 2 percent.

UPDATE: Tim Grieve has more.

The Senate passed a revised defense policy bill today “that authorizes a 3.5 percent pay raise for troops while sidestepping a veto showdown with President Bush over whether the Iraqi government should compensate victims of state-sponsored abuse during the Saddam Hussein-era. The 91-3 vote sends the $696 billion measure to Bush for his expected signature.”

In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition of Florida this morning, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney compared individuals who consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict central to the challenges in the Middle East to appeasers of Hitler in the 1930s.

In his remarks, Romney dismissed those who counsel diplomacy in the region — specifically the Baker-Hamilton Commission — as naively thinking “everything would be fine in the Middle East” if “we could just settle things between the Palestinians and the Israelis”:

“The consequences of that accommodation of his [Hitler's] press releases was devastating to the entire world, and most devastating to millions of Jews,” Romney said to about 200 people at a Republican Jewish Coalition of Florida function. “Today we have individuals who believe that the cause of the challenges in the Middle East is the conflict in Israel with the Palestinians, and that if somehow we could just have the Baker-Hamilton Commission imposed and we could just settle things between the Palestinians and the Israelis, why everything would be fine in the Middle East.”

Comparisons to Hitler appeasers do “not resonate with the American people.”

In 2006, after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared Iraq war critics to those who believed Hitler “could be appeased,” a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 61 percent of Americans said it was “not appropriate” for the White House to compare the Iraq war to the fight against the Nazis.

Romney isn’t the first presidential candidate to make such a comparison during this election cycle. At the GOP/YouTube Debate in November, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) attacked Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) call to bring “our troops home” as the “kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement” that “allowed Hitler to come to power.”

Digg It!

In Democratic presidential debate last night, CNN once again failed to ask any questions about global warming. Perhaps not surprisingly, last night’s debate was sponsored by the coal front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). Watch an ad for the debate:

ABEC also co-sponsored November’s CNN/YouTube debates in Nevada and Florida, at which no questions about global warming were asked.

These debate sponsorships are part of the coal industry’s aggressive “$35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.” ABEC has spent $1.3 million alone “on billboard, newspaper, television and radio ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.”

What is ABEC receiving in return for its support of CNN’s debate? Besides branding on tv and newspaper ads, ThinkProgress has learned that at November’s Democratic debate in Nevada, ABEC was given a special area near the debate’s entrance to hand out “clean coal” brochures. No other organizations were allowed to distribute materials in that prime area.

UPDATE: DeSmogBlog has also obtained an ABEC request for proposals for PR assistance in Nevada, in which it hopes to “image and credibility of ABEC” and increase “public awareness of the importance of coal to America’s energy mix.” One of the key ways it hopes to achieve these goals is through a “comprehensive presidential outreach program.”

In his latest column, Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria claims:

[E]vents on the ground have changed dramatically, and their rhetoric feels increasingly stale. They’re fighting the Iraq War all right, but it’s the wrong one.

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to “ending the war” and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

Zakaria adds, “John McCain deserves credit for supporting the surge.” In response, Matt Yglesias writes: “Ah, those sad, sad, Democrats. So unaware that the war’s over. The dude who killed at least fourteen and wounded seventeen in Tikrit must, like the Democrats, have been wearing partisan blinders when he failed to acknowledge the surge’s success in bringing the war to an end.”