A Popular GOP Talking Point Bites The Dust

You hear it all of the time from right-wingers: this latest economic crisis is all Bill Clinton's fault.

In fact, a conservative friend of mine regurgitated this talking point to me just the other day. The argument goes something like this: What caused the financial crisis was a government push to make housing more affordable to riskier borrowers (i.e., minorities), and it was the Clinton Administration who pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to those people. Rush Limbaugh spews this crap constantly, which should have been my first clue that it is all horseshit. From McClatchy:

* * * Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data. ***

It's worth reading the entire article, especially if you have family or friends who are Rush Limbaugh fans.

Meanwhile, the nutjobs continue to show up at McCain rallies. Here is what Pastor Arnold Conrad said during the invocation at a McCain rally in Iowa on Saturday:

I would also add, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and election day.

OK, so Pastor Arnold is an idiot, but my question is this: Why the hell is McCain even holding a rally in Iowa? I know it's supposed to be a Red State, but according to a Survey USA poll that came out this weekend, Obama currently enjoys a 13-point lead there.