Chris Matthews is Vewy Qwanky.

And remarkably he manages to get the root cause of his existential bellyache both right and completely backwards.

Matthews has, on many occasions, professed his great and gooey man-love for George W. Bush.

A kind of relentlessly-affected, Joe-Tap-a-keg, regular-guy-with-loins-afire crush on Baron of the Lazy Dubya Ranch and his straight-shootin’, tough-talkin’ ways that sent Matthews into fluttery paroxysms of whatever the non-distaff equivalent of a Noonan Swoon might be whenever Dubya threw him a boy-wink.

But the days of lazing bask and besotted in Dubya’s alleged universal likeability, brilliance, and Brokeback Mount Rushmorehood are over. The long, tanning weekends basking in the “sunny nobility” of the Bicycle Chief are ended, and all of Chris’ friends who have been trying to tell him that Dubya’s was a bad seed -- no good…just a user…who only wanted him for one thing -- turned out to be right.

Dubya has du-du-dumped him! And this time it’s for really, really-real! And no crying pillow is safe as Matthews takes it all in stride with the cosmopolitan good grace of a jilted 17-year-old on a Mad Dog drunk.

With a microphone...

IMUS: "I had a conversation with Andrea Mitchell yesterday, from there, she had just landed in Beirut with Secretary Rice, they were going somewhere–they were going wherever they’re today, at the West Bank. I said, "Why don’t you go over to Syria and talk to that clown?" and you’re right–they, you know…"

MATTHEWS: "It’s all ideology with this crowd. All they care about is ideology. The President bought it, hook, line and sinker. He had– but you know, it was just put into his head, sometime after 9-11, and his philosophy is what he has given it. He didn’t have to have any philosophy when he went in, and they handed it to him. These guys– the guys–you know, the guys that you used to make fun of at school, pencil necks, the intellectuals, the guys you never trusted. All of the sudden he trusts the intellectuals, the guys you knew at school, yeah, they’re a bunch of pencil necks and now he buys completely, their ideology, because he didn’t have one of his own coming in.

That was his problem.

I don’t know what Bush stood for, except I’m a cool guy and Gore isn’t, and that was our problem. We elected the guy because he was a little cooler than the other guy, and, I hope the next election, it isn’t a problem of who goes to bed with their wife at 9:30 at night, or who knows how to tell a joke on a stage. But it’s who had the sense of strength that comes from having read books, most of their life, tried to understand history.

Uh, no Chris. “We” didn’t elect him, and “we” never thought having a halfwit sock puppet as the leader of the free world was a particularly good idea.

In fact "we" are the ones who have been practically running naked through the streets with our hair on fire for the last five years trying to get schmucks like you to spit the Dear Leader’s dick out your mouth for two minutes and wake the fuck up. Trying to get one or two of the hair-sculptures in the MSM to bother to notice that Dubya has been an unmitigated disaster at...everything.

Trying to figure out who cancelled the News and left us with in the hands of the Hannah Barbarians of Fox and CNN.

But Matthews is on to his fourth gin-and-tonic and second box of Kleenex and like every freshly screwed and eschewed simp, is only just warming to his Operatically Magniloquent Rant Against His Evil Ex!

Every mistake we’re making in the Middle East right now, was made years and years ago by the British, by the French, but the mistakes they made in Vietnam were made by the French before. In Algeria the French made all the mistakes we’re making now. If you engage in an invasion you will face resistance from the local people based upon religion, and that, and nationalism. You will then have to put down that insurgency, and you’re going to have to use cruelty and torture to get information, because it’s the only way to get intel in a counter insurgency. Every single thing that’s happened to Iraq was predicted by history. It’s a standard pattern.

Ten, twenty years from now, when kids are reading this in high school–They are going to say, ‘Why were the Americans so dumb?’

Uh, no.

Again, hate to stop you mid-blubber, but there is no fucking WAY that I can let this pass.

“Americans” aren’t dumb you overfunded meatbrick.

“Americans” don’t still think there really are WMDs in Iraq.

“Americans” don’t think Saddam was the mastermind of 9/11.

“Americans” don’t think the Earth is 6,000 years old.

“Americans” don’t think that global warming is just stuff a bunch of corporate-hating tree-huggers made up.

No, it is “Conservative Republicans” who believe this insane, idiotic shit, not “Americans”.

It is Republicans who demonstrate again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again that they are, in fact, abundantly stupid and hateful enough to believe the same boldface lies told by the same treasonous liars over and over and over, and how fucking dare you try to “we” the rest of us into the cesspit with the swine that cheered this disaster of an Administration on for the last six years.

Because as we on the Left (who have been Right all along) all know, in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you no longer be both.

But let the suppurations continue...

They committed the same mistakes that all the Europeans had done before. And it’s like these guys, everything is a surprise. The insurgency was a surprise. The no WMD was a surprise. Everything that happens, now he’s out there now, taking the Arabs side against this, that’s a surprise. Some of these guys are anti-Semitic. That’s a surprise? Everything is known, and the big thing about this crowd that came in around Bush’s.. they must have known it, but they didn’t want to know it, and Bush didn’t have the academic background to challenge them.

And I don’t know what this guy’s– The Vice President is. The Vice President is, you notice how he hides during difficult times. He’s in his bunker. He’s in his undisclosed location…

Of course he hides. He’s a coward and that’s what cowards do. And because he doesn’t want to remind the Chris Matthews' of the world of that last, unhappy reality they don’t want to face: That Bush doesn’t run this country -- Cheney does.

Which is where Matthews performance as the faithful, long-suffering wife now suddenly shocked and furious to find her Romeo is a peevish, abusive void, breaks down.

Going all the way back to the Potemkin “search” for the perfect VP candidate by Cheney…that ended up with Cheney as the only choice, to the original round of tax cuts for the wealthy…that was followed by a proposal for a second round of cuts for the wealthy, to shich Bush objected until Big Dick slung his decomposing arm around the boy and took him for a little walk around the block.

When they returned, Dubya was all for that second tax cut.

And the third.

And the fourth.

To letting the President tool around on his Big Wheel unawares while D.C. has a terror alert because of an unidentified plane over the city.

To Cheney blowing off White House protocol for alerting the press and his "boss" should he, say, shoot an old man in the face.

The press -- Matthews and most of his Sunday flea market included -- have spent the last six years practically laughing us all to death over how funny it is that Dubya says stupid things, and does stupid things. And ain’t it cute and “plainspoken” and Texan that he falls of his bicycle, can’t do simple math or remember what he said yesterday. That he aggressively over-enunciates or simply mispronounces the big words like a drunken eight-year old. That he just fucking lies. That he whines and bitches like a spoiled pussy when he gets caught lying.

And that he does it all with the biggest “Fuck You All” smirk in American history plastered to his face.

Then when the rumors get too thick that Cheney is pulling the strings Cheney comes oozing out of Dis to let Dubya order him around in front of the camera until the press dutifully returns to talking about Dubya's "strength" and "independence" again.

Because for five years, people like Matthews have been on strike. Have refused to see or speak the truth about the halfwit Dauphin from Crawford and his malevolent Regent.

It is a major part of why I believe David Brooks is such a malignant little hack; the constant spinning of ludicrous theories out of air and spittle arguing that Bush didn’t know. Bush didn’t mean it. Bush wasn’t told. No one could have anticipated the ________. His aides deserted him. His base failed him. He is, in fact, a Sekrit Fucking Genius.

It is also why Bobo is constantly getting his nuts sliced off, dipped in scalding chocolate fundu-style and mailed back to him COD in his endless, losing razor-fight with William of Occam.

So while I’m glad that Matthews has apparently decided to rouse himself from his potato-coma and notice that Dubya is and always has been a reeking disaster, he seriously needs to be walked out of his plush digs by security guards with a pink slip in one hand and his Matthews Meter in the other.

By EOB tomorrow.

The fact that in his chosen profession of journalist, his professional judgment has led him only now to faintly detect the faint outlines of the biggest story of the decade – namely that the President of the United States is, at minimum, dangerously incompetent, has committed a host of crimes and atrocities while under the influence of fascists, and is possibly insane – while legions have been screaming for the last five years to pull his head out of his ass and for God’s Sake Notice should automatic mean walking papers and the ritual immolation of his MSNBC ID.

And as far as a replacement, I can only think of 40-50 million people who would qualify as lavishly-paid pundits on the only score that matters:

They got it right.