A “Hardball” reprise of yesterday’s topic du jour. Per Blankley’s comments, I’m wondering: Who was the last president whom both sides agreed was completely legitimate? You have to go back to Bush 41, no? Clinton never won a majority of the vote; Bush 43 lost the popular vote in 2000 and then, according to nutroots lore, won in 2004 because Diebold rigged the vote in Ohio or whatever. And now we’ve got The One, whose sinister plot to falsely establish citizenship evidently extends to planting fake birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers in 1961. If Palin wins in 2012, it’ll be fun to see what conspiratorial delegitimizing detail the left comes up with. No doubt Andrew Sullivan is already on the case.

The fact that Matthews has run with this two nights in a row means, I guess, that MSNBC has finally replaced “Rush Limbaugh is the head of the GOP” as its chief line of attack against Republicans.