President Bush -- Is There Nothing He Can't Do?

Get a load of the lede in this Hotline article on the “rally” for Martha Coakley campaign today:

As audience members streamed out of Pres. Obama‘s rally on behalf of AG Martha Coakley (D) here tonight, the consensus was that the fault for Coakley’s now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person — George W. Bush.

Yes, it’s all President Bush’s fault that a tone-deaf candidate who thought she merely had to show up and “Ted Kennedy’s seat” would be hers without a fight is trailing in most polls.

More from the Hotline:

“People are upset because there’s so many problems,” Rosemary Kverek, 70, a retired Charleston schoolteacher said as tonight’s rally wrapped up. “But the problems came from the previous administration. So we’re blaming poor Obama, who’s working 36 hours a day … to solve these problems that he inherited.”

[Update: 36 hours a day? As Greg Gelfond quipped on Twitter, Obama has brought hope and changed the solar cycle! — Ed]

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), speaking with a gaggle of reporters after the event, said that while state Sen. Scott Brown (R) offers voters a quick fix, in reality, the problems created by “George Bush and his cronies” are not so easily solved.

I’m pretty sure that President Bush also caused Kennedy not to be able to remember the first name of the person he was campaigning for, as well.

Meanwhile, even though President Obama’s fans were happy to see him live, to a man, they know the real reason why they were there today:

[youtube bzoJ0Ag0Co8]

Elsewhere, the New York Times fires up the airbrushes:

Bob Kerrey thinks Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown doesn’t believe in evolution:

“If he’s running against 60 votes and wins, that is not good,” said Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska. “It says that in Massachusetts, they are willing to elect a guy who doesn’t believe in evolution just to keep the Democrats from having 60 votes.”

The Kerrey “evolution” quote was originally published in a New York Times article but it seems to have disappeared, although several papers and bloggers still show it in their reprints and blogs. Here’s the current quote in the New York Times article:

“If he’s running against 60 votes and wins, that is not good,” said Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska.

Maybe the New York Times had second thoughts about printing the quote but, if so, it should share its reason with the Austin American-Statesman, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the other papers and bloggers who are still running the original article with the extended Kerrey quote.

Like Jonah Goldberg at the first link, I can’t find anything regarding Brown’s view of evolution, creationism, or related subjects. So does Brown believe in evolution or is this Bob Kerrey’s last minute scare tactic, and why did the New York Times pull the quote? Because Kerrey never said it?

– DRJ

UPDATE: Ever-vigilant commenter and blogger Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R., notes the Brown campaign’s clever response:

Brown spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom comments to NRO: “Scott Brown believes in evolution but in the case of Bob Kerrey he’s willing to make an exception.”

Obviously, anything can happen on Tuesday, but the cheerful, breezy tone of that last comment, versus the lead-weighted, gaffe-a-minute tone of the Coakley campaign and its surrogates and supporters in the last week speaks volumes.

Update: Byron York notes that Marcia Martha Coakley has had the luxury of having two Democratic presidents campaign on her behalf the weekend before the polls close. Who was the more effective pitchman?

Having watched Clinton’s Boston speech from inside the room Friday, and Obama’s speech on television today, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that Clinton just blew Obama’s doors off.

York adds that “for all his reputation as a great orator, Obama just doesn’t look very good outside the comfort zone of his teleprompter and a carefully scripted event.”

Admitting “I’m here to support Coakley over Brown, but I don’t know Brown’s policies” doesn’t help matters. Which may explain the president’s strange obsession with Brown’s choice of transportation, rather than focusing on issues. But like Joe Biden, Creigh Deeds and John Corzine, to borrow a line from Hawkeye about Frank Burns in an episode of M*A*S*H, the president shouldn’t get too close to his fellow comrades in Big Government — the dullness may rub off.

Update: Welcome Cornerites!