WHEN ROVE GETS LARYNGITIS, JUAN WILLIAMS LOSES HIS VOICE

Steve Benen, Marc Ambinder, and Media Matters are linking a Fox News clip from Wednesday in which Juan Williams says,

You think about everything from campaign finance to immigration and on, and there's John McCain, working across party lines. Senator Obama doesn't have a record. Now, he can make the claim and he can hold himself up as pure and trying to reach to a new generation of post-partisan politics, but he has to do so largely based on rhetoric and wishful thinking because he doesn't have the record.

Ambinder's gloss on this:

You can bet that a big McCain talking point in the fall will be almost exactly as phrased ... by Juan Williams.

Er, Marc -- it was already phrased almost exactly this way -- by Karl Rove, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in February:

Mr. Obama hasn't worked across party lines since coming to town. Was he a member of the "Gang of 14" that tried to find common ground between the parties on judicial nominations? Was Mr. Obama part of the bipartisan leadership that tackled other thorny issues like energy, immigration or terrorist surveillance legislation? No. Mr. Obama has been one of the most dependably partisan votes in the Senate.

Juan Williams: Yes, that is Karl Rove's hand up his back, and those are Rove's hands moving his lips.