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" Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, of course, is what Richard Strauss would have come up with had he composed Also sprach MinniePearl. We will begin by dipping first into Disco Dave&amp;#039;s Disco Dance Party, where the following remarkable colloquy took place between the Dancin&amp;#039; Master and Colin Powell. First, the general. There&amp;#039;s also a dark \u2014 a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the Party. What I do mean by that? I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that? When I see a former governor say that the president is shuckin&amp;#039; and jivin&amp;#039;, that&amp;#039;s a racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president&amp;#039;s first debate where he didn&amp;#039;t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn&amp;#039;t say he was slow, he was tired, he didn&amp;#039;t do well, he said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there&amp;#039;s a third word that goes along with it Birther, the whole Birther Movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the Party? I think the Party has to take a look at itself.  And then, having been presented by someone who allegedly one of the most influential Republicans in American life with an extensive brief that, root and branch, the party has been taken over by nasty racist bastards, here is the Dancin&amp;#039; Master&amp;#039;s follow-up question: GREGORY: A couple of other foreign policy matters, what should the force \u2014 the U.S. force in Afghanistan look like after next year?  I have two questions here. Question The First: is there a more overrated person in American politics than Colin Powell? I mean, it&amp;#039;s not like the Republican party was taken over by nasty racist bastards some time in the past four years. It&amp;#039;s been a generational process, going back at least to the conscious decision made by Republican leaders in the mid-1960&amp;#039;s to ally themselves with the powerful remnant of established American apartheid, particularly in the South. This all took place while Powell was rising, first through the military and then through the Republican political establishment. Earlier in the interview, he claimed pride of place by declaring himself a member of the Republican party of Ronald Reagan, who kicked off his campaign talking about states rights in Mississippi, and who fought for tax-exemptions for segregated &amp;quot;Christian academies,&amp;quot; and of the Republican party of the elder George Bush, who had no compunction at all about letting the late Lee Atwater scrape the country&amp;#039;s racial wounds raw in order to win an election. Of all the people that come to mind, he was uniquely suited to push back against the rising power of polite white supremacy within the conservative movement generally, and the Republican party in particular. As far as I know, he did nothing of the sort. The &amp;quot;dark vein of intolerance&amp;quot; has been in plain sight since 1964. Where you been, General? (People act like his apparatchik&amp;#039;s performance selling the phony case for war in Iraq before the UN was an anomaly. It was of a piece with his whole career.)  Question The Second: Does David Gregory get paid well for missing the point so badly?  We&amp;#039;ll return to the Dance Party later, but there was a lot of wonderful blithering to be found over on This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs. It was a veritable Mardi Gras of fashionable Beltway Centrism, a celebration of how we can&amp;#039;t do any one thing, so let&amp;#039;s think long and hard about doing everything so that we don&amp;#039;t really have to do anything at all. Riding the lead float were irrelevant Republican Jon Huntsman, marginalized gun-totin&amp;#039; Democratic turncoat Joe Manchin, retired race-baiter Bob Corker, and Jack Reed from Rhode Island, who was picked last when they were choosing up teams because he occasionally acts as though the actual merits of an issue might be more important than with whom he&amp;#039;ll have dinner over the weekend. Naturally, the talk turned to guns, and Manchin feels very strongly in many directions. George, basically we have a cultural \u2014 we have to change the culture of mass violence we have. If you think it&amp;#039;s only about guns and that would change the culture, you&amp;#039;d be wrong. If you think it&amp;#039;s only about the lack of mental illness coverage that we give, and you would be wrong there. And if you think it&amp;#039;s only about the media with the video games \u2014 it takes an all-in approach. I have linked up with and I will be with John McCain introducing a bill that Joe Lieberman, our dear friend... (Wait, no, stop. Cough, hack, wheeeezzzze! Common sense got caught in my throat there for a minute. Do continue, though.) ...has been championing for a long time, which basically puts a commission about mass violence together. You bring experts from all different fields. You bring people such as myself that are NRA members that have been sportsmen all of our lives, and look for a commonsense approach to how we change the culture of violence in America. And that&amp;#039;s what needs to be done. How long are we supposed to pretend that the NRA really cares about the plight of the mentally ill in America? For that matter, how long are we supposed to pretend that the NRA is really bothered by the fact that young children are exposed to shooting games that glorify the use of actual firearms? I&amp;#039;m sorry, but Manchin and his &amp;quot;fellow sportsmen&amp;quot; have had more than enough time to wrench their organization away from the sociopaths who run it, and more than enough time to turn it back into a genuine interest group, and not a front for the weapons industry. Here&amp;#039;s what let&amp;#039;s do. Let&amp;#039;s put the assault-weapons ban back in place. Let&amp;#039;s ban the high-capacity magazines. Let&amp;#039;s establish a rigid and effective system of background checks. Let&amp;#039;s close the gun-show loophole. Once we do all that, then we can have the commission on mass violence, where we all tug our forelocks about videogames, and then we can determine as a nation to spend whatever tax dollars have to be raised to do better by our citizens with mental illness. But let&amp;#039;s do the gun part first. What say you, Senator Joe? You in? Jon Huntsman, of course, is one of the utter political failur...er...important centrist figures behind the No Labels scam, and The Clinton Guy pointed out to him that No Labels may be the only organization in America that hasn&amp;#039;t yet taken a public position on the issues arising from the Newtown massacre. Huntsman responded with what may be the most No Labelish answer in the history of No Labels. Well, this is not about finding the endpoint for a specific policy issue. This is about creating a pathway that speaks to problem solving. So the whole attempt here, George, is to create a new attitude that speaks to problem solving. It&amp;#039;s not about ideology, it&amp;#039;s about extreme partisanship. That&amp;#039;s the problem today, so Joe and I have come together. We both have a background as governors. We know what it means to make progress for the people you represent, what it means to be problem solvers. So our attempt here \u2014 and you ask the specific question about what to do about it \u2014 well, you can&amp;#039;t do anything about problem solving unless you get a group of people together on Capitol Hill who are dedicated to putting country first and making decisions that are right for the future as opposed to the next election. You see, we&amp;#039;ll get around to contributing to the national debate over why America is so giddy over firearms once we find a way to craft a political solutions without any, you know, politics. This was very depressing, which is why I was so happy when the Storytime With The Magic Dolphin Queen broke out and she told us all a wonderful story about...pirates! Arrrrgh, Squire Trelawney, she&amp;#039;s my ship now! STEPHANOPOULOS: Meanwhile, I don&amp;#039;t see as the broader question of the Republican strategy. Peggy Noonan, I was struck by your Wall Street Journal column yesterday, which may be a little of odds with sitting down. I&amp;#039;m not sure. You say pirate time for the GOP, wave a sword, grab a rope and swing aboard the enemy&amp;#039;s galleon. Take the president&amp;#039;s issues, steal them. They never belonged to him. They are yours. Elaborate. NOONAN: Go for it. First of all, don&amp;#039;t be the depressed gray-suited gaggle that comes forward in the halls of the House once a day to speak in a sort of a almost furtive and sad manner about what&amp;#039;s going on. No great themes ever emerge, nothing ever seems to get said. Look, this is a time to remember in a way the joy of politics. The Republicans are in a bad position right now. They just lost a big election. They are a bunch of folks in Washington, the president is one man with a mike. That man, the president, can always overpower them. My feeling is this is a wonderful time to be daring and surprising. Go to the populist right on economic issues, on things issues like breaking up the banks and the carried interest loopholes. Go for immigration, don&amp;#039;t wait for the president. Apparently, that Krugman kid in the back of the class thought this was supposed to be a comic story and laughed at an inappropriate time, like when the Story Lady said that part about Republicans breaking up the big banks which, I admit, I thought was part of the plucky comic relief myself. I know. I&amp;#039;m just here to amuse, Paul. Story Lady is not amused. Things were not as lighthearted over on Face The Nation, where former Congress Of Vienna special correspondent Bob Schieffer managed to pry the reclusive John McCain out of seclusion and somehow cajole him into appearing on television, where McCain could explain how much he&amp;#039;d always liked Chuck Hagel until Hagel took a job with the guy who prevented McCain from snaring the office that was his by right of droit seigneur of all Green Rooms. Why, that uppity youngster didn&amp;#039;t even ask McCain&amp;#039;s permission before appointing a Secretary Of Defense. Where does he get off, anyway? He&amp;#039;s a veteran, he&amp;#039;s a friend. By the way, on this process, usually with the previous presidents, both Republican and Democrat, when they&amp;#039;re considering nominations, they call in the other side and say \u2014 you know, the key members on the other party and say, hey, I&amp;#039;m thinking about nominating Mr. X, what do you think about it? There has been none of that with this administration. But more importantly than that, I honor Chuck Hagel&amp;#039;s service. He&amp;#039;s a friend. My questions about him, and they will be raised in the nominations, are what is his view of America&amp;#039;s role in the world? Whether he really believes that the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War. That clearly is not \u2014 that&amp;#039;s not correct. That&amp;#039;s \u2014 in fact, it&amp;#039;s bizarre. Why would he oppose calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization? Same outfit that&amp;#039;s on the ground now in Syria killing Syrians, same outfit that was exporting the most lethal IEDs into Iraq killing Americans. So these are legitimate questions that need to be asked. I honor his service. We are friends. But I have an obligation to the men and women who are now serving in uniform. If John McCain can&amp;#039;t be president, then by god, John McCain will have his wars. This is the way things are supposed to be. We conclude with a return to the Dance Party where the Dancin&amp;#039; Master decided to get his teeth into the entirely phony issue of &amp;quot;diversity&amp;quot; in the president&amp;#039;s new cabinet. He did in part by constructing a question entirely out of HBO miniseries. Haley, it is interesting to describe as a band of brothers cabinet just go around not a team of rivals.  And if the president wins the Game Of Thrones, he may well find himself with a Boardwalk Empire and then we&amp;#039;ll all have to buy guns and move to a compound in Idaho. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17154/sunday-talk-shows-on-guns-011413/?click=news>