Hugo Chavez Wins Reelection in a Landslide Victory

Hugo Chavez has won big in Venezuela.

Naturally, the righties cannot make heads or tails of this: Don't those foolish Venezuelans know how enslaved they are by this evil leader who believes Venezuela's oil wealth should be used to help those with nothing, instead of those with everything?

"Venezuelans Vote on Chavez & 6 More Years of Marxist Idiocy" screams the headline at Gateway Pundit:

60% of Venezuelan voters choose the Marxist Anti-American Chavez.

It seems to be a popular move this year to run an Anti-Bush, anti-US military campaign. It worked for the democrats, too.

Listen, it's not the Venezuelans' fault. Clearly, they didn't know that they were supposed to vote for a pro-Bush, pro-US military candidate. They were confused, poor souls, and thought they were voting in their own personal and national self-interest. The righties will just have to do a better job of teaching them that democracy means you vote for the candidate favored by the U.S. Republican Party, no matter what country you live in.

Gaius thinks Venezuela's media coverage can't be trusted, because their MSM is too supportive of the government:

Massive amounts of conflicting information coming out of Venezuela right now about the election. (T)Hugo's reliable major media is dutifully reporting the official government line that Chavez is winning. Other sources say not so fast. [...]

And no, he doesn't see the irony of criticizing Venezuela's media for reliably supporting the government while criticizing the U.S. media for not reliably supporting the government.

Gaius continues:

We'll have to see what the election monitors have to say, but something is weird about those high numbers given the enormous turnouts in anti-Chavez demonstrations.

Uhhhh ... maybe those enormous turnouts were manufactured? It certainly wouldn't be the first time.