Cokie Roberts, during the panel discussion on ABC's This Week:
[G]oing off this week to a vacation in Hawaii ... does not make any sense whatsoever. I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time.
Aside from the blatant East Coast bias here, isn't this rather condescending to Roberts's viewers? Exactly how many ordinary voters has Cokie Roberts talked to to determine that they view Hawaii as a "foreign, exotic place"? (Does Roberts think it is, or is she more sophisticated than that?) And in what bizarre conception of reality is Myrtle Beach emblematic of wholesome Middle America?
One other note from This Week: Bobby Jindal is a very effective, eloquent surrogate. Bill Richardson, not so much.
--Josh Patashnik