One of the most vociferous opponents of the proposed Park 51 Islamic community center and mosque that will be built two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City is Fox News contributor and conservative personality Laura Ingraham. Earlier this month, Ingraham appeared on Good Morning America and told host George Stephanopolous that there’s a “disconnect between how elites” think about the proposed mosque and how the rest of the country thinks about the project. Ingraham complained, “600 feet from where thousands of our fellow Americans were incinerated in the name of political Islam, and we’re supposed to be cheering this?!” She even went as far as to say that the “terrorists have won” because Park 51 is going to be built:

INGRAHAM: There’s a disconnect, George, between the elites and the way they think about this, and, I think most New Yorkers, and most of the country. I know Michael Bloomberg was out there saying, “Well, our values need to be properly represented to the world, and if this mosque isn’t going to be built, what is that going to say? The terrorists win!” Well, I say the terrorists have won with how this has gone down. 600 feet from where thousands of our fellow Americans were incinerated in the name of political Islam, and we’re supposed to be cheering this?!

Watch it:

However, as Salon’s Justin Elliott’s research uncovers, Ingraham wasn’t always fearmongering about the proposed cultural center and mosque. On December 21, 2009, Ingraham hosted Daisy Khan, a co-founder of Park 51 and the wife of its Imam, Abdul Rauf. Despite using the sensational and inaccurate misnomer “Ground Zero Mosque” (Elliott believes it to be the first use of that phrase to describe the center) and raising various questions about her husband, Ingraham is courteous to Khan, does not appear to categorically oppose the existence of a mosque near Ground Zero, and tells her that she “can’t find many people who really have a problem with” the building of the mosque. Ingraham even went as far as to tell Khan, “I like what you’re trying to do”:

INGRAHAM: I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it. [Mayor] Bloomberg is for it. Rabbis are saying they don’t have a problem with it. [...] I like what you’re trying to do and Ms. Khan we appreciate it and come on my radio show some time.

KHAN: Yeah, we need the support of people like you seriously.

INGRAHAM: Alright, you take care.

Watch it:

It appears that a campaign of hatred aimed at the mosque — and heavily assisted by the network she contributes to — has changed Ingraham’s mind. Fortunately, there are conservatives who have not joined the Islamaphobic campaign to try to stop Park 51′s construction. This morning, former Bush advisor Mark McKinnon noted that trying to prevent peaceful Muslims from worshiping near the site of Ground Zero will only serve to enforce “al Qaeda’s message” that the West is at war with Islam.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has been widely condemned for telling BP executives yesterday that he is “sorry” for the Obama administration’s “shakedown” of their company, which resulted in a $20 billion escrow fund help Gulf families suffering from the oil spill. While the Republican leadership realized the potential political fallout and quickly distanced themselves from Barton’s comments, right-wing pundits rushed to Barton’s defense:

– PAT BUCHANAN: “Barton made a very courageous statement in my judgment. … To have anyone stand up and even indirectly defend [BP] and say that they were a victim of a shakedown shows some political courage.”

– INGRAHAM: “I think Joe Barton, before he apologized, had a legitimate point.”

– NAPOLITANO: “That is a classic shakedown. The threat to do something that you don’t have the authority to do. ”

– KILMEADE: “One Congressman calling the BP compsensation fund a ‘shakedown,’ but does he have a point?”

– GINGRICH: “The president is directly engaged in extorting money from a company.”

– VARNEY: “It is Hugo Chavez-like, is it not? To sieze a private company’s assets.”

Watch a compilation of conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, Fox News analyst Laura Ingraham, Fox News Business host Andrew Napolitano, Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Fox News Business host Stuart Varney, and right-wing radio host Mark Levin:

Levin went on to say that GOP leadership’s treatment of the Barton incident made him fear the “Republican party in the House will not have the courage to do what needs to be done should it win the majority in November” to resist the “increasingly tyrannical administration.”

Earlier this month, three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) was denied his party’s nomination by conservatives angry at Washington and Congress. Bennett’s loss raised questions of whether Utah’s other longtime senator, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), was “next in line for a pink slip.”

On her radio show today, Laura Ingraham asked Hatch whether he “would be re-elected” if he “were up for re-election in November.” “Yeah,” said Hatch, saying that he agreed with voters who believe that “these people in Washington are running this country right into the ground.” When Ingraham reminded Hatch that he was “part of Washington,” he denied it:

INGRAHAM: But aren’t you part of Washington?

HATCH: Hell no. I’ve never been. I’ve never considered this a job. I’ve had, people have asked me, they said, “say Senator Hatch, don’t you just love being a U.S. senator?” My constant answer is this. No, I don’t love it at all, but I’m good at it. And I’m here for a reason. And all I can say is I’ve never changed my reason. Now, I am fair. I’ve got a reputation for being fair and honest and decent. But the fact of the matter is, if you get Orrin Hatch on your side and he really gets, he really gets his back up, watch out. It’s just that simple and I’ve done it time after time after time.

Listen here:

Hatch’s claim that he’s “never been” part of Washington is laughable. Hatch, who was first elected in 1976, is the longest-serving senator in Utah history. He has been chairman of both the Judiciary and Labor committees and even ran for president in 2000. He participates in elite Washington events like the Gridiron Club and made an appearance in the movie Traffic in a scene re-creating a Georgetown cocktail party. In 2002, Hatch released a book, Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator, in which he admitted that living in Washington had “changed” him:

“You’ve forgotten us, Hatch,” one man screamed. “What are you, Hatch? Yelled another. “You’re sure not one of us anymore.”

I felt awed, overwhelmed for a moment by the force of their belief. Were they right? Had I really changed that much? Had I abandoned what — and whom — I stood for?

I thought back to the woman with the five dollars, whom I sometimes imagine sitting in judgment over everything I do as a senator. It’s not like that, I wanted to say — I haven’t forgotten you. Sure, I’ve changed. I’ve spent a quarter of a century in Washington, and over time you learn things. I’m more open to different ideas than I once was, more interested in the substance of a proposal than its author.

In the book, Hatch also said that he believes it is “important” for members of Congress to “move your family to Washington” because their “presence during the week is critical to keeping a sense of balance and perspective.” Indeed, Hatch’s family is now part of the Washington establishment. His son Scott is a partner in a Washington lobbying firm, Walker, Martin & Hatch, that was reportedly started with the senator’s “personal encouragement.”

Noting that Hatch has “been a Senator longer than I’ve been alive,” Matt Yglesias writes that Hatch is “a long-serving veteran legislator with a record you can defend or attack. But he’s definitely part of Washington.”

This morning, the Fox & Friends crew whined about how the Obama administration “continues to bash President Bush.” It’s a “tactic that has apparently run out of gas,” co-host Steve Doocy said, likely referring to a recent Politico article titled “Democrats’ Bush-bashing strategy goes bust.” Fox then invited contributor Laura Ingraham to comment on the matter:

INGRAHAM: You know when it looked really ridiculous is when President Bush was standing so graciously next to President Obama and President Clinton at the White House. He couldn’t have been more gracious, he couldn’t have been more kind, couldn’t have been more generous.

After everything they’ve said about him and after all the times they’ve trashed him in the past several months, that shows you the character of that man. And I think that’s why a lot of people in these polls are now saying, “Well, maybe that Bush guy wasn’t quite as bad as we thought.”

Watch it:

Ingraham is living in a fantasy world. According to the latest polls released this month, Bush’s job approval ratings have hovered consistently in the low 30s, only a tiny bit above the high 20s he left office with.

Moreover, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted earlier this month, a majority of Americans (51 percent) still blame Bush for our nation’s economic woes. A separate Quinnipiac poll said voters blame Bush more than Obama (55-20 percent) for the current economic conditions. And, in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 67 percent of respondents said Bush deserves a “great deal” of blame for the country’s economic situation.

And of course, while it’s inconvenient for the right wing to acknowledge this, the reason the American public holds such a consistently negative view of President Bush is because his policies did in fact sink this nation into a fiscal mess.

On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months to the roughly 100,000 Haitians living illegally in the United States. The announcement was made after lawmakers from both parties called to grant the status that is available to a small number of federally-designated countries suffering armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances.

But not every lawmaker is satisfied with the decision. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called the measure “amnesty” last week, saying “illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation, but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers, and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians.” On the Fred Thompson show yesterday, King appeared to walk back his deportation comments while still rejecting Temporary Protective Status:

KING: Well, the first thing that happened was we hadn’t even gotten through the after shocks and people were still crying out from under the rubble and the open borders amnesty crowd jumped on that and used the Rahm Emanuel axiom, which is never let a crisis go to waste. And it began to call for Temporary Protective Status for the illegal Haitians that are in the United States, which about thirty, thirty thousand of them have been processed for deportation but not sent. And maybe there’s another hundred thousand of them here. And my objection to that is that, first, the Department of Homeland Security suspend the deportations to Haiti. That is the proper thing. We can’t be sending people back into a chaotic atmosphere. By the same token, we don’t need to be knee jerking a decision that grants amnesty to people that have contempt for American laws. So, I say take a deep breath on that. Don’t deport them. But don’t give them Temporary Protective Status because those who are here illegally from Haiti if they get TPR, it’s almost an automatic green card, which is a path to citizenship. We shouldn’t award people who broke American laws because there’s a disaster in Haiti.

Listen here:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) attacked the extension of TPS yesterday as well, telling right-wing radio talker Laura Ingraham that it “has nothing to do with trying to help the people of Haiti during this tragedy. It looked like a convenient way to be compassionate.” Listen here:

As the Wonk Room’s Andrea Nill pointed out last week, “Allowing undocumented Haitians who are already living in the U.S. to legally work would help them earn the honest wages they need to send back money to their families and get their country back on its feet.” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) wrote on CNN last week that “it makes no sense to tell Haitians already here that they can stay in the U.S. in the wake of the earthquake, but cannot legally support themselves.”

Wednesday on Fox News, host Bill O’Reilly praised First Lady Michelle Obama, whom he had met at the White House holiday party the previous evening. “The President and First Lady were very gracious to me,” he said, adding that he was “impressed” with Michelle Obama. “She’s charismatic, articulate, and beautiful,” O’Reilly said of the First Lady. Last night on Fox, when right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham teased O’Reilly for “gushing” over Michelle Obama, O’Reilly called her a “blind ideologue“:

INGRAHAM: I’m gushing over your gushing last night about the Christmas party. I’m still trying to get over that.

O’REILLY: Wait, a minute. I’m going to call you — I’m calling you out on this. [...] I thought she was very nice at the party. [...] You are a blind ideologue who even if somebody’s nice to you, won’t admit it because you’re talking about a Kool-aid drinker. [...] You have an IV attached to your arm on the Kool-aid.

Watch it:

Conservatives turned out on Capitol Hill today for a “Code Red Rally” to “kill” health care reform legislation, organized by groups such as the right-wing Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The Tax Day Tea Party website promoted the event by appealing to Americans to make a “sacrifice” right before Christmas and promised plans for a controversial “die-in“:

We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. [...]

We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas. But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us.

ThinkProgress attended the rally and the subsequent dispersal to Senate offices, and we observed no die-ins. One activist we spoke with confirmed that the original die-in strategy wasn’t going on, but didn’t seem to know what had happened. However, the events of the day did take up the mantle of co-opting Christmas as the season to “kill the bill.”

At a small gathering this morning in Upper Senate Park, Tea Party activists sang The 12 Days of Christmas, refashioned with lyrics about the problems under President Obama. Later on at a larger gathering organized by AFP, both Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham invoked Christmas as a reason to defeat reform. Watch it:

In the morning, there was also a vehicle driving around Capitol Hill with a large “Kill the Bill” sign and a “Merry Christmas” banner (as well as a crossed-out photograph of two men kissing). At the rally, there were several Christmas-themed signs, including one saying that “Obama Claus” was going to “redistribute your presents,” placed next to pictures of Obama as socialist and fascist figures:

AFP staffers were also handing out a list called “The 12 Days of Christmas: Health Care Edition” about what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) gave the country, including “a doctor shortage” and “what women don’t want” (view a larger image here):