From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On Rahm Emanuel’s Politics—

MORT KONDRACKE: [W]hat Rahm Emanuel said today, I thought this was a Bush-hating rant that was really unworthy of somebody of Rahm Emanuel’s intelligence.
You know, he was,a 13 years old when Watergate took place. I was here, I covered it and the idea that Alberto Gonzales’s misbehavior in anyway matches that of John Mitchell or that you can compare, say Josh Bolten and Bob Haldeman is ridiculous . . . I mean, that is just plain ridiculous — historically ridiculous and he ought to know better. . . .
FRED BARNES: Look, Rahm Emanuel, I agree with Mort, Rahm Emanuel, I think, is one of the smartest, cleverest Democrats out there, there’s no reason why he should give a speech like this. . . . And for him to put out some speech reflecting the base, as Mara says, is really disgraceful. He’s smarter than that, he’s better than that.
KONDRACKE: Yeah. You know, the polls suggest that the Democrats are about as popular as George Bush is — no more. So, whatever they’re doing is not really working to elevate their case with the general public. And Rahm Emanuel said something to the Los Angeles Times which suggests that Dick Cheney was kind of right about the Democrats playing politics with the war.
He said, “It bewilders me why these Republicans have tied themselves so closely to the president. God bless them. Our goal is to keep giving them votes” on the war to embarrass Republicans to tie bush to — Republicans to Bush and the war. And that’s political. You know, that’s not a way of winning the war or developing a better policy for the war, that’s just playing politics with it.

—On McCain’s Chances—

BARNES: I think Mara’s right. I think he is recovering. You know, we overestimated, at least I did, how strong he would be because it’s usually the next guy in line in the Republican party who gets the nomination — it was Reagan did, and Dole did and so on, and McCain was the next guy in line. Well, it turned out in his case; it wasn’t a guarantee of the nomination because he’s a guy who has alienated so many Republicans over the years, particularly since Bush became president. . . . I think he can win them back because, for the most part, he supports Bush on the issue that matters the most common, the war on terror, and he’s also — while he’ll never it can satisfy Conservatives on something like tax cuts, he’s never voted for a tax increase. He’s for a flatter tax and I think he stands a pretty good chance of winning back a lot of Conservatives.