The Old Hard Right has truly gone soft.

On MSNBC this morning, Pat Buchanan was quizzing Andrea Mitchell about Hillary Clinton.

One of his questions: “What are her feelings right now?”

No word if Buchanan’s also curious what kind of tree Hillary Clinton would like to be.

Boy, Barack Obama can be ruthless when disposing of Hillary Clinton…

Heck, he scored 4,209 points in one season, Chris Matthews!  Oh, sorry, wrong Chamberlain.  Thought you meant Wilt the Stilt.  Never mind.

Regarding Scott McClellan, many folks are using the before-after technique of analysis — what McClellan said before his book, from the White House microphone, versus what he says now.

Credit the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz with employing that same technique, but this time on someone who’s embraced McClellan with his own microphone.  From Kurtz’s column today:

McClellan granted his first cable news interview last week to Bush-bashing MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, while Bill O’Reilly accused the ex-spokesman of initially blowing off his Fox program in favor of “far-left venues.” Olbermann hailed the book, “What Happened,” as “a primary document of American history” that contained “poetry.” Talk about role reversal: It was Olbermann who said in 2005 that “whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.” (Gannon, a conservative blogger with an X-rated past, now says, “Scott McClellan’s credibility is zero.”)

Interesting equation in today’s Howard Kurtz story on MSNBC going left.

Do these two elements add up?

This:

Olbermann has also unloaded on the presumed Republican nominee, sometimes with the on-screen headline “Double Talk Express.” When McCain missed a vote on legislation to expand educational benefits for veterans, Olbermann accused him of “political opportunism.” When the Arizona senator suggested that as president he would regularly answer questions before Congress, Olbermann said: “John McCain would last 11 minutes doing it before he swore or punched somebody or stormed out or all three.”

And this:

But news and opinion often seem to merge on primary nights. MSNBC’s coverage is anchored by Matthews, a onetime Democratic operative, and Olbermann, the “Countdown” host who recently finished one anti-Bush commentary by instructing the president to “shut the hell up.”

On election nights, Griffin says, Matthews and Olbermann “put on different hats. I think the audience gets it. . . . I see zero problem.”

Zero problem, perhaps, if there’s zero problem with a presidential nominee being called the worst person in the world?

CNN’s Rick Sanchez, discussing Teddy Kennedy:

SANCHEZ: According to doctors, that condition put Kennedy at greater risk of having a stroke. Speaking of doctors, let’s bring in our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He’s good enough to join us now. We got him on the phone. Sanjay, I’ve got a question for you.

VOICE OF DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Rick.

SANCHEZ: This word seizure, when I hear seizure, I have a picture in my mind of my wife having postpartum eclampsia and literally shaking uncontrollably in front of me, which is a scary thing to see. Is this the thing that could have happened to the senator as well?

And a follow-up: Dr. Gupta, does this look infected to you?

A touching Tucker Carlson anecdote in The Hill today:

Carlson comes with quirks. For one thing, he never locks his car even though a woman once stalked him and another accused him of rape. The stalker wrote a letter to his daughter, then 6, that said, “Your father has to kill me or I’m going to kill you.”

But the unlocked car? He once found a guy asleep and wrapped in newspaper in the back seat of his Volvo station wagon. “I beat on the windows and made him get out,” he says.

And what happened to the guy in the car?  As fate would have it, that guy went on to host a little show on TV called “Countdown With Keith Olbermann.”

A Wolf Blitzer question on “Late Edition” yesterday:

“What do you think about this whole notion of the president right now…?”

No word on whether he planned this follow-up: How’s the weather?

Congratulations Larry King on your contract extension. We all hope we’ll look this good when we turn 77.

Fun tidbit in The Cable Game:

CNN’s Fredericka Whitfield, reporting on the spate of shootings in Chicago, said, in the course of her report, that these shootings underscored the need for “more sensible gun control laws.”

Well, obviously something bad is happening in Chicago-all these people, 31 in all, getting shot, with six dead. But how does one automatically conclude that we need gun control. The CNN clip showed Chicago Police Chief Jody Weiss complaining about AK-47s in the hands of criminals.