Friday night fight II

Round one was a red on red affair. For round two, we have some blue on blue action.

In the bottom feeder bracket, Sen. Chris Dodd takes on Bill Richardson’s asinine call for Pervez Musharraf to resign in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination.

Dodd did not spare even Bill Richardson, who said yesterday after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan: “President Bush should press [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf to step aside, and a broad-based coalition government, consisting of all the democratic parties, should be formed immediately. Until this happens, we should suspend military aid to the Pakistani government.”

Though Richardson often touts his foreign policy experience — he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Bill Clinton — Dodd dismissed Richardson’s proposals in strong terms.

“I think that is a dangerous idea, and I am sort of surprised Bill Richardson would make that recommendation,” Dodd said. “Can you tell me who is going to then be controlling the keys to the nuclear weapons in Pakistan when Musharraf is not there? And if you can’t answer that question, then be careful what you wish for.”

Dodd went on: “The idea of dumping Musharraf and cutting off aid, which I think Bill Richardson also suggested, is the worst possible thing we could be doing right now. That is the height of danger.”

Call that one for Dodd in a TKO. Richardson should leave public life after making that comment. It’s about 10 times worse than anything any other candidate said on the issue.

In the heavyweight division, it’s a three-way. Barack Obama declared that Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize force in Iraq made her somewhat responsible for Bhutto’s murder. John Edwards calls that line “ridiculous.”

In a wide-ranging, free-wheeling interview with Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards with ABC News Friday afternoon, the former North Carolina senator labeled “ridiculous” comments made by the Obama campaign that seemed to link former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq, embraced Sen. Barack Obama’s politics over Clinton’s, and said an anti-Obama flier from a pro-Clinton union was “misleading” and “deceptive.”

He went further.

Edwards also detailed his conversation with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf from Thursday in which he told that country’s leader he needs to allow “independent international inspectors into Pakistan to determine the facts of what happened around the former prime minister’s assassination. That kind of transparent process is the only way there’s going to be any credibility.”

Hillary agrees that there should be an “independent international” investigation of some kind. Obama was on CNN’s Situation Room earlier tonight and said that he does not.

My question is, who will conduct the “independent international” investigation? There’s been an “independent international” investigation into the Hariri assassination for, what nearly 3 years now.

A liberal blogger surveys the scene and asks, if Hillary’s Iraq vote makes her complicit in Bhutto’s death, aren’t Edwards, Biden and Dodd just as guilty as she is?

You’d think so, which is probably why Edwards called Obama’s line “ridiculous.” If he had voted the other way on Iraq, he probably would have sided with Obama.

Edwards also said Obama is “living in never-never land,” but not for his naive foreign policy views. Edwards says Obama is living in a fantasy because Obama actually thinks American corporations should have some say in what the government does to their industries. Edwards would prefer to fight-fight-fight and dictate terms. To corporations, not to actual enemies of the country.

Friday morning at a forum for undecided voters in Independence, Iowa, Edwards repeated his implicit criticism of Obama, saying any candidate who thinks he or she can invite corporate America to the table and achieve real results for Americans “is living in never-never land.”

So he believes Barack Obama lives in never-never land?

“If he believes that, yes,” Edwards said. “It’s a little hard for me to tell sometimes based on the way he talks about this. I’ve heard him say he would give stakeholders a seat at the table. I assume he’s talking about oil companies, drug companies and insurance companies.”

And Obama swings back.

In response, the Obama campaign pointed to an interview Edwards gave to the liberal website MyDD.com in Feburary, where Edwards was asked if he’d bring into the healthcare debate “both corporations and labor and healthcare groups and doctors” and he responded “I think you try to bring everybody to the table. You want their participation, you want to make the system work for everybody.”

Bottom line: None of these people should be president.

• Bobby Jindal: Paternalistic, big-government liberalism is the biggest loser here
• Chris Christie: “I’ll be here to welcome” Obama when he comes to tour the NJ coast again next week
• MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

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