Chris Matthews Claims the Country is "Lurching to the Right"
By Heather Wednesday Oct 28, 2009 8:00am
Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.
Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…
Buchanan: Immigrants…
Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?
Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?
Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.
Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.
Matthews: Ugghh…
Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…
Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?
Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?
Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.
Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.
Login or Register to post comments.
I said it b4 and I'll say it again. he's a shill.
However, we can't deny that because of the progression from a moderate to conservative media, people identify with what they know. We can't do anything about those people that only follow mainstream media. They are likely to be swayed by powerful (though foundless) arguments aired by conservative pundits and guests.
Seeing that the healthcare debate has turned to a conservative lean and the economy has not really improved while Obama has been in office, I can see undecideds pushing this poll in that direction.
1-year poll shows changed views on Obama
You guys and a fawning media of which Chris Matthews was the poster boy for, heaped way too much praise and adoration and hyped up the expectations far beyond his capabilities just because of his charisma. Big mistake.
Obama will suffer as a consequence but he'll rise again, just not with the same irrational expectations heaped on him. In the long run, a good thing for him. It was just never going to be a huge lurch to the left no matter how bad Republicans screwed up.
some on the left may be guilty of that but the right really built up obama so he could easily trip and possibly fall. they (r) used linguistics that made it seem like he was able to walk on water.
this was used to get the response from the right/(I) that they wanted.......criticize him for everything. the right is going to show the american people and the world he's less than perfect. those of us more within the logical spectrum understand obama is only human and has intentions of "change" it doesn't mean he can/will. all this ongoing everyday negative linguistics is also directed at smearing the BUSH legacy onto president obama. president obama is the right/fox pinata so they confuse/deny the BUSH legacy.
Not even a small lurch to the left. Obama seems to agree with probably over 90% of the things Bush did
where did you get that number.....just asking? i'm here to learn.
Your owners paid to have a poll done so you could read it and try to jerk the country to the right. Nobody is listening to the corporate bullshit any more well except the people that watch fox and the other TV corporate owned and operated propaganda outlets!
Remember republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
this guy has a job because...?
It's too early for this stupid
trying like hell to keep the Left vs Right bs going in the debate when their really is not much of a wingnut party to begin with
They really aren't a viable party, even with their so called "Grass Roots" (aka corporate astroturf)
It's also called trying to stay relevant on a useless television program.
;)
but, what do you expect from a guy who listens to freaking Pat Buchanan every day?
Why is that tool on MSNBC so much?
I want Levi Johnson's Playgirl nude photos to come out the same day Palin's book makes its debut. Which would get more attention? They both sound like porn to me.
Why the fu*k does Matthews think anyone cares what Buchanan has to say about anything? Is Buchanan blackmailing NBC and they have to put him on? Is he holding someone hostage?
If you pose the question, are you a dirty hippy or a god fearing American, you can pretty much guess the outcome.
It's like when people pose the idiotic question, "Do you love America?"
Both are stupid questions that do nothing to further and to ameliorate the political discourse among Americans, nonetheless, ensuring that real policies and ideas are never addressed or debated -- i.e. health care reform, single payer, financial regulation, etc.
is retarded. Seriously.
Like I said above he is just desperately trying to remain relevant in a quickly changing news world. Of course he has no news, and he is trying hard to avoid admitting that.
- are doing the same the for TV they did to newspapers. Both are in a race to the bottom.
Almost everyone I know has blown off cable "news" and fled to the net. The Beltway Bubble exists. It is real. Matthews and his ilk believe their own bullshit. They try to pretend the netroots don't exist, except for Rachel Maddow. They do so at their own peril.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lClaQLsBb-4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-LBIuDngTg
More nonsense. My experience from talking to many self identified "conservatives" has revealed most of them don't even know what that term means. Of course, this same crowd identifies as "liberal" someone who doesn't agree with them.
I've read a definition of Libertarians as someone who believes in less government than you do.
They identify with empty slogans like pro-country and pro-troops, but will oppose a war if the president is in the wrong party. They say they're pro-family, but who isn't from a family? They talk about National Interest when in a Democracy you have competing interests. They say they're for the free-market, but would outlaw marijuana, and allow a few corporations to so dominate the market that it's no longer free.
consistency on the major issue in life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-LBIuDngTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_qrxesgTlo
Just on the word itself, "conservative" seems like something positive someone would want to identify with without really knowing the context at hand, or what it means at all. But I think some even knowingly refuse to admit the opposite. I have a neighbor who insists she is conservative, hates Al Gore and Obama, yet is pro choice, gay rights, and, let's just say, has a very, very, as a married woman, "liberal" personal life from what I can tell. I think with her it comes down to racism and personal wealth (ie not giving her money to "lazy _______").
that our illustrious "congress", at least those in the MAJORITY would grow a set and call these fucks for what they are.
I believe the republicans are following their age old philosophy of repeating lies until they become the truth. Nobody is calling on their lies and ol' Joe Schmuck is too goddamned lazy or stooopid to do any investigation for themselves and they choose to believe and SPREAD THOSE LIES to Jim Schmuck.
The democratic party - as shitty as it has become -- had better realize that they must deal with the crazies and do it as this gentleman does and as Rep. Alan Grayson. These people that spew this venom are batshit crazy and will stop at nothing until we do not have a black president. And I mean by any means they want to get rid of him. You have the bat shit crazies like Limbawl, Hannity, Beckkk and Bill-o the ass-hole and then you have the plain old treasonous people like Murdoch who passes himself and his propaganda organization off as a news source---and he is getting away with it! People in the spotlight and in power must get off their asses to inform Joe and Jim of what is going on.
I write letters to the editor but only the right side gets published in the KC paper. I e.mail and call our senators and reps as well as the president. We need a lot more people doing that and signing petitions that are on the blogs. Our voices MUST be heard.
Why doesn't MSNBC just take Pat Buchanan's sour puss and make it into their little corner-of-the-screen logo? He's on as often as it is, anyway... damned liberal media!
Buchanan every weekday and McCain on Sundays. You can set your watch by that schedule.
every weekday night now in prime time. Unimaginative propagaters of niche cable audiences. America's Biggest Losers.
The networks.
the polling data suggests liberals should be wary of patting themselves too much on the back for bringing the country around when a lot of what has happened is the country doubling over because the Republicans kicked it in the balls.
This Chris Matthews is one pretty funny guy. When does his HBO comedy special air?
HA!
to be liberals by another name, from the con perspective the country is actually majority "liberal" according to these numbers.
Hopefully this poll will convince the cons to double down on their purity campaign. Once they've purged the movement of all the RINOs, they can really get to settling who really represents the movement,
the beltway elitists- or the talk radio populists. The beauty is they will forever blame each other for the sorry state of the Republican party.
When asked about "issues," the majority of Americans declare themselves liberal. When asked to label themselves, the majority of Americans provide a different answer.
I agree with the comment that this kind of ideological poll needs to be taken with a bunch of grains of salt. Mainly because people either have a poor understanding of terms and/or they have a kneejerk negative reaction towards the opposite term. What is true is that the term liberal still carries the weight of two decades (at least) of bad-mouthing from the right-wing.
On the other hand, "conservative" covers everything from the extreme cultural issues fanatics to the
wishy-washy neo-libertarians. They all sort of unite under the "government is the enemy" banner, but that doesn't always carry over to particular elections. Especially when they're faced with the reality that government is bad only when it's poorly run. Which has become a Republican specialty.
I've conducted survey-style research and I can tell you first hand that polling results are entirely dependent on how the questions are worded, yet you NEVER see the actual question when the pundits (mis)interpret the results.
For example: If we ask 100 people if they "support efforts to overturn the second ammendment to ban assault rifles," the vast majority would say "hell no" because people generally dislike changes to the bill of rights. But, if we ask, "do you support limitations on the type of assault rifles made available for sale in the United States," the majority would say "yes." The two questions are essentially asking the same thing, yet framed slightly differently, and the result would be completely opposite.
It's all in the question, yet we never actually SEE the question.
If Tweety would show the question, I promise his "lurch to the right" would disappear.
He actually thinks his off-the-wall political perspective is adherent and in line with a moderate audience. I've become so disenfranchised with his pointless drool, that I now find myself switching over to Shep Smith until Olbermann and Maddow come on.
I'm not obsessed with TeeVee, I only watch it through a teevee tuner card while surfing blogs and net news.
I must confess that I do enjoy seeing Tweety bully and beat up on defenseless wingnuts once in a while. He becomes Billo for the day on MSNBC.
Yes, Chris. Between you and reality.
Not like he is part of the system or anything participating in interviewing the parade of right-wingers.
you have a nothing show become worse. Notice how he has all but copied keith's show and it's layout?
Anyone remember when music was played for 20 or 30 seconds at the beginning and end of a news show with opinion, and never on actual news? Now we have elevator music that would make a dead man come underscoring these shows.
How can you watch? I know, "I get paid to poke myself with an icepick, I get paid to poke myself with an icepick....."
in my opinion especially since moving out west the country does seem more on the right. there's a lot reasons in my opinion but perpetual prewarhyperbole/ war(s) and the damage from unregulated capitalism. the middle east conflicts have been a (frog in boiling water syndrome) especially since late 80's early 90's. then everyone was chasing money/buying home(s). different financial bubbles burst then BUSH came on the scene.....with the (false) patriotism nonsense/'with us or against us'. following 9-11 people were pressured by those wrapped in a flag/lapel flag pin......if you were against the war you were also against the troops.now people are more fearful losing their homes/home value and their jobs. those that are doing okay don't want the debt from the rescue/stimulus even though they may have gotten in and out of this housing market at the correct time. i probably didn't explain this very well but i believe there has been a very effective movement to the RIGHT by social engineering in order to have perpetual war. this country was going to get that oil before china did. LIBERAL became a dirty word because it was explained/code for unpatriotic. the right learned a lot of lessons after the vietnam war. control/fragment/confuse the masses. overall people don't like/want war but corporations/global elite do.
has the same expression on his face that Pat always has. Hmmm, maybe they were seperated at birth....
They both look like they need to do poopies and haven't been able to for a long time.
40% conservative
vs
the rest of it is moderate and liberal = %60
Sorry, Chris, FAIL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDCYFshhSkQ
He swings like a pendulum from one side to the other. The fact that he had Buchanan on and treats him as a relevant voice demonstrates how out of touch he is. The left cheers him when he nails someone. But, Matthews is like a clock thats right twice a day, but wrong 99% of the time. Once, long ago, when he was working to build a reputation, he actually did some thinking. Now, he lives off his media fame. He has gotten intellectually lazy. Matthews is like a lot of the old TV guys. It's as if the more time they require in the makeup chair, the less time they have to acutally prepare well researched arguments.
Matthews' show is a diversion masquerading as a news show. Matthews is a Beltway insider masquerading as a news journalist.
ARGH!!! He (Chrissy) is such a 100% candy.a§§. I have a hard time watching him, and his BFF 'Pat' any more. Such a waste of time.
I have called him out on cherry picking polls with poor sampling just to make the country look more conservative. Remember when he quoted a poll suggesting that twenty something New Yorkers favor McCain over Obama! yeah right, the election sure proved that.
Here is even more of his fails.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200908040041
Matthews is just hopes that American's are too stupid to understand the polls, so he can use the statistics however he wants.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darr...
Matthews is just hopes that American's are too stupid to understand the polls, so he can use the statistics however he wants
Sadly, he's probably right.
He's too egotistical to be taken seriously.
Tweety is the one lurching to the right and his illusion that the rest of the country is lurching with him is simply wishful thinking.
Lurching alright! into complete insanity from these endless senseless polls....
Conservative doesn't mean Republican.
Hell, the Repugs of the last 30 years have been anything but conservative!
The poll is probably right, the US is a conservative country in comparison to most of the other industrialized democracies.
After all the Dems are a center right organization these days, you'd be hard pressed to call them progressive in any sense of the term.
Conservative is more like it.
in how many instances does "conservative=embracing some sort of religiosity to mask hypocrisy, hedonism and hate"???
When I watch one of Mr. Matthew's videos on this website, I feel like he just drank an entire pot of super caffeinated coffee. He's always all over the place -- talking over guests, going from one topic to the next at break neck speeds, letting comments go un-checked, leaving it there, etc. I never find that his clips provide any substantial perspective on an issue. It's like if he quit talking, he would cease to exist. And, I feel somewhat bad for saying this, I wish he would just be quiet and stop with his show.
While nowhere near as bad as O'Reilly or Beck, his show does not perform any service to the viewer. It does not provide any deep perspective on issues nor does it provide any real news. It's just recycled hackery. I don't understand why it is even on the air because it has no purpose other than allowing out-of-touch windbags a place to spew their rhetoric.
Kinda like what I'm doing here!
After almost 30 or 40 years of making liberal a "bad" word, of course, it should come as no surprise that the average American wouldn't want to be associated with the word. "Liberal" has this now inherent negative connotation where if a person is a liberal then he must be some commie, hippie, hater of Amurika. I really think it's time for liberals and those who share those liberal beliefs -- but not economic liberalism or neo-liberalism-- to take back this word and redefine the inherent meaning of the word, liberal. We can't allow the talking heads on TV to define what liberal means for the masses and for us.
well put and i agree. i'm sure you have noticed the right trying to reintroduce "conservatism".
Can Buchanan make any sort of statement without mentioning Reagan or Nixon?
He can't. The right always have to prop up Reagan's corpse when all else fails.
the originator of this nation's economic chaos: St. Ronnie. How dare they trot him out as an inspiration, teh basturds!
Note that Gallup is now owned by a right wing relative of the original George Gallup. If you overweight the South in your polling you will get results showing that the US is tilting right.
Last night we had a link to a Zogby poll that showed he is also to be ignored: one of the questions was:
"Federal Communications Commission Chief Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd wants the FCC to force good white people in positions of power in the broadcast industry to step down to make room for more African-Americans and gays to fill those positions. Do you agree or disagree that this presents a threat to free speech? "
When the pollsters are asking questions like that, there is no good data to be had.
love how validity and reliability have flown right out of the window?!?
*yawns* Yes Doom and Gloom for liberals! I don't even watch Matthews anymore. He seems to go whichever way the wind blows. Even If people don't identify with the term liberal, given how the fright-wing has made it such a dirty word i'm sure they indentify with the term progressive. If liberals don't have any political influence and we are a marginal "20%" why do the fright-wing complain and whine about liberals all the time? Gallop and Rassmussen are right-leaning polling organizations anyway
Actually it was sold again. Just in case you wonder where Gallup's bread is buttered:
"Jim Clifton, a former SRI executive and now the president and chief executive of Gallup, said the ratio of public opinion polling to market research polling was 50-50 when his group bought Gallup. Now, he said, 30 percent of the work is in public opinion research, and the rest is work for health-care companies, hospitals, banks and insurance companies, trade associations and newspapers. But he said the commitment to public opinion research remains the same."
Many longtime Gallup employees disagree with that view, and in recent months four top executives have left and formed their own polling companies. One hundred and fifty people were working at Gallup's headquarters when the company was bought in September 1988; now there are fewer than 60.
''When they bought Gallup, what they were really doing was buying the name,'' said Neil Upmeyer, a former vice president of public affairs research and one of several senior employees to leave the company recently. ''My feeling is that six months from now, there won't be anything left of Gallup as it used to be.''
''The culture inside Gallup has changed,'' said Andrew Kohut, who was president of the Gallup Organization before the acquisition and division president afterward, until his departure.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/us/gallup-s...
Yes, since FOX and the AM screamers have so effectively vilified the word, "liberal" it is not surprising they choose "conservative" over "liberal" when given those two options. However, as has been proven, if you ask them their views on social issues, these same "conservetives" actually swing left.
Also, Tweety is always wrong, so there you go.
He thinks that if you wish for something hard enough it will fall out of the sky and land in your lap. Seems to be a common affliction of the mentally disconnected.
Is just another self appointed expert in the elitist world of the Beltway. He has no genuine intention to tell us the reality of our political system, so they prostitute themselves to their corporate pimps by making up ridiculous stuff that appeases them. The MSM---what a joke.
You ask any of those people what they think of various issues like health care and abortion rights and you'll find most of them have liberal views on a lot of topics if not a lot more then conservative views and that's because everyday average people have no idea what conservatism is these days..I ran into this daily in my old job where young people would proclaim they were conservative but then would say they are fine with gays having equal rights thought abortion was okay with limitations that everyone should have health care and that the rich should pay their fair share..
He helped those eight years.
Login or Register to post comments.