To answer that, I decided to check in on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night. As I've written before, I'm using what I call the "Hannity Test" to gauge Romney's progress in the GOP race. The basic idea is that Romney, because of the party base's deep suspicion of him, needs Republican opinion leaders to vouch for him, and to play along with the rationalizations he's desperately trying to sell to GOP voters.

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"If Obama's such a genius, he would've not lost two-and-a-half million jobs. He would've cut the deficit in half, like he promised!" And he never would have mispronounced "corpsman," Hannity exclaims, over and over and over again. 

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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Palin also spoke out against the "last choice" plan suggested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this week. "That plan of McConnell’s makes no sense because it cedes power to Obama," she said of the proposal that has split Democrats and Republicans. (Our own Andrew Leonard explains why "McConnell's debt ceiling plan gives Washington a way out of its mess. But the Tea Party will never go for it" -- as Palin's Hannity appearance confirms.)

Palin also told Hannity that she'll announce her decision about a White House bid in late August or early September.

Watch Palin's appearance below, via Mediaite:

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Leaving aside the rehashed argument that "Teletubbies" "Sesame Street" is a liberal attack on family values, can we talk about how Ben Shapiro's first sentence on the show was, "Yeah, I kind of want to take them out back and cap 'em." What? Hopefully, he is talking about Big Bird and Elmo and not the children that Hannity said were going to hate the conservative author/pundit after his book comes out. Family values!

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This has all the makings of a beautiful friendship, you might find yourself thinking. But sadly, that was not the case. At the end of the protracted conversation, Hannity called Choudary "one sick, miserable, evil S.O.B." -- though he still had the good manners to thank him for coming on.

Yes, the clip is 15 minutes long. No, it isn’t pretty.

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Obviously, as a longtime, prominent Democrat, Doug Schoen is doing everything he can to help out in the upcoming midterm elections. For example: He's a special guest at a fundraiser for a congressional candidate from New York this Sunday. The candidate is Republican John Gomez. As Media Matters reports, Gomez may not be a Democrat, but he's a part of Schoen's real family: Fox News.

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Like, after outlining her history of being generally fanatical about "moral" issues, Hannity asked her to blame her own positions on Democratic attacks: "Do you think this is an attack on religion? On your religious beliefs?"

"They're trying to paint me as an extremist," O'Donnell answered, "so that people won't pay attention to my message." Her real message is about the Constitution.

And why did she say all those nutty things, on TV? She was young!

"In my 20s I had a newfound faith and, going on these shows, I looked at it as a ministry opportunity -- that was what I did in my 20s. But that was a long time ago. My faith has matured."

"My faith has matured" is probably the right line for someone who previously preached the sort of fundamentalist Catholicism that most American Catholics would probably find a bit extreme (while being unmarried and childless at 40!).

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"And while I'm sure Chris Wallace is disappointed, I imagine O'Donnell will continue to make Fox appearances. They'll just be with Hannity, instead."

I didn't think I'd be proven right within 24 hours, but here you go:

Days after canceling appearances on two Sunday talk shows, Christine O'Donnell will sit down with Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, the network announced Tuesday.

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"If there's a team, no one has asked me to join. As a conservative, I normally write more favorably about Republicans than Democrats and I routinely treat conservative ideas as superior to liberal ones. But I've never been part of a discussion with conservative writers about how we could most help the Republican or the conservative team."

This assertion of political purity struck me as false, coming from a journalist who has appeared repeatedly as a speaker at Republican Party events across the country -- a breach of the political boundaries of "traditional journalism" that few, if any, of the writers on Journolist, for example, would ever contemplate.

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But I have to say, it's disappointing the focus has been on Fiorina's diss of Boxer's hair. The real political story was insulting her female GOP "colleague" Meg Whitman for going on right-winger Sean Hannity's show the day after Whitman's primary win in the governor's race. It highlighted the Whitman/Fiorina feud -- we can't have TWO female Republican Silicon Valley CEOs running for top state offices in California; they must scratch one another's eyes out! And if it's up to Fiorina, she might.

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The complaints also named Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Oliver North Jr., who run Freedom Alliance and the Freedom Concerts that have raised millions of dollars over the past decade.

Freedom Alliance has often boasted of its high ratings from charitable watchdog groups, specifically citing the four stars awarded by Charity Navigator to bolster its credentials as a benefactor of military veterans and their families. That generous assessment was particularly valuable because another major rating agency, the American Institute of Philanthropy, has long treated Freedom Alliance with deep skepticism.

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Responding to the complaints against the Freedom Alliance filed last Monday with the Federal Trade Commission and the Internal Revenue Service by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- alleging both consumer fraud and abuse of tax-exempt status -- the group's chairman, Tom Kilgannon, replied that there is "absolutely no merit to the scurrilous charges." His brief statement went on to promise that "the smear-mongers who have launched this politically motivated witch hunt against Freedom Alliance will be proven wrong as we aggressively defend ourselves in the days and weeks ahead."

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Similar accusations were aired recently by right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel, who complained that the "Freedom Concerts" sponsored by the Freedom Alliance and headlined by Hannity were not donating all proceeds -- estimated at more than $10 million -- to scholarships for the children of wounded and killed service members, as advertised. But now CREW, which had been investigating the same allegations independently before Schlussel posted her warning, has completed its own probe and filed legal actions before the two federal agencies.

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The notion is so ahistorical, so obviously a propaganda feint in the culture wars, that it's just impossible to take seriously. It's 911-Truther-style poppycock for conservatives not quite crazy enough to be Birthers. Though I'm sure there's a lot of crossover.

But, you know, I live in Berkeley -- heck, I was practically born in Berkeley, and when a colleague told me that "Generation Zero" blamed "the hippies" for causing the crisis, I felt a certain responsibility to push back, or at least become more informed. So I watched a 10-minute clip from Fox's Sean Hannity introducing the documentary.

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First, Nyhan  cites a Media Matters clip documenting Hannity's attempts to blame President Obama for our current economic ills. "This is Obama's economy, now," he declaims.

Let's take a trip on the wayback machine, to the summer of 2001, when George W. Bush was struggling with his own down economy.

Sean Hannity, August 17, 2001: "[T]his is still the Clinton economy, in case you forgot."

Sean Hannity, August 20, 2001: "[W]e have the Clinton economy, the Clinton slowdown ... We are living under the Clinton economy, and the slowdown that started in the spring of 2000."

Et cetera.

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Hannity: Do you believe she is aware, conscious and responsive?

Hammesfahr: Terri is completely aware and conscious and responsive. She is like a child with cerebral palsy. We have kids in the Pinellas County school system every day that are much worse than her, that we're educating.

Hannity: Doctor, wait a minute. I've got to get this straight here. You were nominated to get a Nobel Peace Prize in this very work. Are you saying that this woman could be rehabilitated?

Hammesfahr: Absolutely.

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Eventually, Hannity will "be bigger than Limbaugh," Michael Harrison, the publisher of the radio industry's Talkers magazine, predicted to People magazine earlier this year. It's not difficult to see why. While no less partisan, Hannity's scrappy, boy-next-door delivery would seem to have a broader appeal than that of the more dour Limbaugh.

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