David Broder, who has repeatedly attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for saying the Iraq war “is lost,” said today on XM radio that it is “really doubtful” President Bush will be able “to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq.”

UPDATE: Broder also responded to recent criticism of him online: “I am not a fan of the blogs, and the blogs are not fans of mine.”

UPDATE II: Broder stands by his April 26 column on Reid, “The Democrats’ Gonzales”:

David Broder said he wouldn’t change anything in his April 26 column, which angered many readers and caused 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to write a letter criticizing Broder in Friday’s Washington Post. [...]

The columnist also said he was “not surprised” that his Thursday piece drew such a negative reaction from the 50 senators and most of the many readers who flooded WashingtonPost.com with comments. “This war is so unpopular and for very good reason,” said Broder. “I’ve written many columns critical of this administration’s actions in Iraq, and most of the response of readers to those columns has been: ‘Right on.’”

Greg Sargent has more.

ThinkProgress is launching a blog fellows program. It’s part time work (~20 hours/week) for six months, you receive a $3000 stipend, and you don’t have to live in Washington DC. The deadline for applying is this Sunday. Details HERE.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) led a panel discussion today at the American Enterprise Institute discussing “options for restoring civility in American politics.”

Lieberman and Boehner both decried the harsh incivility in politics today while portraying themselves as paragons of independence and cordiality.

Lieberman described his own politics as “stand[ing] up for what I believe is right and…work[ing] across party lines to get things done.” As for the rest of politics, “The majority of people are sick of it. They think our political system is sick.” Lieberman blamed “attack ads, the kind of divisiveness of the cable news coverage of politics, talk radio,” and bloggers who “have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity to it.”

Boehner agreed, saying he has worked to “find ways of disagreeing without being disagreeable.” He asked innocently, “Where does all the partisanship come from?” and answered it by lamenting how blogs and other outlets have put “more information out in the public realm than there ever was, and some of it is to drive one point of versus other, dividing people more and more.” He called this the “breakdown of America.”

Watch it:

Iraq, more than any other issue, has contributed to the divisiveness in politics today. And on that issue, Lieberman and Boehner have acquiesced to a failing, unpopular Bush policy while demeaning those who sought to change it:

Lieberman:

Critics of Bush’s Iraq war strategy are engaging “in a kind of harassment.” [4/12/07]

Ned Lamont’s primary win “will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England.” [8/10/06]

Boehner:

[The war critics' plan] provides a road map for terrorists. … It is a danger to both our troops engaged in combat and to the long-term security interests of American families. [3/22/07]

Unfortunately, the Democrats latest plan is an old twist on an old adage: failure at any cost. … Democrats are using the critical troop funding bill to micromanage the war on terror — undermining our generals on the ground and slowly choking off resources for our troops. [3/8/07]

People who oppose escalation are taking the “bait” of “al Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers” by using Iraq to “divide us here at home.” [2/13/07]

Digg It!

Transcript: Read more

“I like Hillary,” writes the mighty Atrios, “I just don’t really like the people she surrounds herself with (with some notable exceptions). As the campaign goes on it’ll be harder and harder to rationally distinguish between the two.”

I’m not sure I really grasp the content of the distinction. Mark Penn doesn’t become a person’s political guru by accident. It’s worth noting that the general approaches of the sort of political consultants who might do work on a presidential campaign are sufficiently well-known that, by hiring the strategist who determines the strategy, the candidate is, in fact, determining in advance which strategy he or she will be advised to adopt. In short, you don’t run a certain sort of campaign because you hired Penn, you hire Penn because you’ve decided to run a certain sort of campaign. This phenomenon become famous with regard to Bob Shrum, but it’s more-or-less true for everyone in the business.

“Over a dozen years, I have had many such conversations with Hagel, but not for quotation. This time, I asked him to go on the record about his assessment of what the ‘surge’ has accomplished. In language more blunt than his prepared speeches and articles, he described Iraq as ‘coming undone,’ with its regime ‘weaker by the day.’ He deplored the Bush administration’s failure to craft a coherent Middle East policy, blaming the influence of deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams.”

Number of lawyers and judges who have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, according to the Iraqi Lawyers Association. “Hundreds of legal workers have left the country because of threats and persecution. This is delaying judicial processes and denying thousands of people their legal rights.”

“Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States accepted several thousand Iraqi refugees a year; since then, and amid heightened security requirements, that number dropped to several hundred. So far this year, just 68 have been resettled.” In total, “an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes during the four years of war.” (via CQ, sub. req’d)

On Friday, Randall Tobias, the Bush administration’s senior foreign aid coordinator, stepped down after revealing that he had “been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.”

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that one person close to Tobias said, “I’m sad today. … The president loves him and Condi absolutely loves him.”

But that love was not shared by the employees who worked under Tobias at USAID. A Dec. 2006 poll of 368 USAID foreign service officers found that just “21 percent thought Tobias had been doing a good job in getting resources for the agency and its workers”:

The agency also suffered under Tobias’s leadership. Zero percent said morale was “excellent” under Tobias, and just 12 percent said it was “good.” Sixty-eight percent said that overall conditions for the foreign service are worsening:

Tobias also oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any U.S.-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.” Aid groups bitterly opposed the policy, charging that it “was so broad — and applied even to their private funds — that it would obstruct their outreach to sex workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus.”