You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (304)

PLAYS: (649)

Here we go again with that magical, mythical political "center" that the TV talking heads love to chatter endlessly about. Chris Matthews asks his panel what the next move should be for President Obama and of course in the world of the D.C. Villagers, he needs to move to the center, as though he’s not there already. Matthews actually has the gall to call him a progressive and ask if he can “pretend to be a centrist”. Way to push that phony right-wing talking point Chris.

Matthews: Let’s go to the bottom line, we took it to the Matthews Meter—twelve of our regulars—what’s the smartest political move for Obama right now; play to the center or to the left? Well no contest here, eleven say play to the center. Just one said go left. Joe and Katy you’re both in the meter and both of your are in the eleven.

Kay: It is a bit different from Bill Clinton who moved to the center and that benefited him and clearly you know everyone in Washington is talking about that and is that the way the President should go if he has such a drubbing in the mid-term elections.

Matthews: Yeah.

Kay: But I am… I do think he’s got to keep the base happy in order to keep the base stimulated, particularly in these mid-term elections.

Matthews: Do you think he’s as good at faking it as Bill Clinton was? Can he pretend to be a centrist?

Kay: This is the other reason… I also think he’s not an angry populist and this is the other reason for him not to try and play that card because when he did try to do it and started railing against the banks, it isn’t something that sits easy with him.

Matthews: Okay.

Kay: He is a fundamentally, kind of reasonable, rational, lawyerly type guy…

Matthews: But he is a progressive?

Kay: …and taking on the… I think he is a progressive… but taking on that mantle of populism is not something that’s suited to him.

Matthews: Can he sell himself as a non-transformative, regular guy president who just goes with the flow like Bill Clinton did?

Rather: No. First of all, he isn’t Bill Clinton—totally different kind of political candidate and political leader. He’s got to be true to himself. Listen, particularly in this era, two most important things are authenticity. You’ve got to be authentic. In the television age if you aren’t authentic and you aren’t very often it’s going to show through. The second thing is to have a conversation with people. He may be in his speeches a little too speechifying, preachifying in his speeches; authenticity, having a conversation with the constituency, the broad constituency of the country are the most important things going. And I come back to he has to show some guts and some steel—he’s got to.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (312)

PLAYS: (754)

The panel on the Chris Matthews show seems to forget the media’s part in selling the Iraq invasion during this discussion on KKKarl Rove’s new book. They’re more than happy to tell us now that it was some sort of common knowledge that the Bush administration and Cheney wanted to go in there no matter what, but that sure as hell isn’t what they were peddling before we invaded. Someone needs to ask all of them to watch Buying the War from Bill Moyers Journal and see if that helps them to remember the part they played in fear mongering and how the media is just as responsible as the Bush administration for scaring the hell out of the public and that the Congress would not have voted the way they did without the media's help scaring the hell out of them just before they were up for reelection.

It doesn't excuse the Congress for going along, but this bunch has got a bad case of selective memory about what actually happened in the lead up to the invasion and their part selling it. If the public had known what they're saying here was some sort of common knowledge, the fear mongering by the Bush administration might not have worked.

Matthews: Welcome back. Former Bush political mastermind Karl Rove is out with his book; the first of a line of memoirs coming to the Bush team, including Bush and Cheney themselves. They’ve got books coming. Rove writes that he regrets not making a stronger defense of Bush when WMD’s were not found in Iraq. But at the same time Rove seemed to confirm the suspicions of many Iraq war critiques. Here’s what he wrote.

“Would the Iraq War have occurred without WMD? I doubt it. Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the WMD threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam.”

Matthews: Dan what I read into that, perhaps too tightly was a sort of veiled admission that WMD was merely the sales case in the war with Iraq, to get into that war and they had other reasons for going; they wanted to go anyway whether they found weapons or not.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (44)

PLAYS: (73)

What in the hell were the panelists on The Chris Matthews Show smoking this weekend? They're still trying to pretend like the Democrats are going to be able to get the Republicans to work with them on health care. I'm in the camp with Lawrence O'Donnell who said he thinks the bill is dead when he was subbing for Ed Schultz. Even though they pointed out that the Republicans have absolutely no incentive to work with the Democrats we got these tidbits of "wisdom" from them.

Bob Woodward thinks they need a panel or some sort of commission and should just start over. John Heilemann cites some polls and says there's no incentive for them to work with Democrats. Katy Kay thinks they need to start again on the issue of cost. Gloria Borger says the Democrats had better get their act together before the summit later this month (too late now Gloria). And even though she admits it's not likely the House will vote yes on a bill where they give up everything they wanted in their version, she says the President needs to do some "triangulation" and cut a deal which leaves them behind. How that's going to get them to vote for it is beyond me. Woodward follows up with saying again they need to start over and get something bipartisan passed after the election.

If we end up with more Republicans in the Congress after the election, again, why he thinks they're going to cooperate later is beyond me. Katy Kay says they just need some better messaging. If the Democrats were going to get something passed they'd have done it already. Right now they don't even look like they care if they get blown out in the next election. It's a little late for that better messaging Katy.

DOWNLOAD (70)

PLAY (248)

Ouch. What can I say except the truth hurts. Of course there was just enough time for David Gregory to get a shot in at Democrats right before being saved by the bell and ending the conversation. Heaven forbid the panel is allowed to spend too much time talking about how Republicans are devoid of ideas. The difference David Gregory is who Democrats want to cut taxes for and it is not their only idea. I think the American public figured out over the last eight years, not just the last four months that most of the ideas the Republicans do have about how to run the country are bad ones.

MR. GREGORY: I want to talk some Republican politics here in our remaining moments. Michael Steele, head of the RNC, he got in more hot water this week. Gave an interview with GQ and talked about abortion, and his is how the conversation went. He was asked, "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose an abortion?" Steele says, "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice." "You do?" Steele, "Yeah. Absolutely."

David Frum, does that represent the Republican Party?

MR. FRUM: It should represent a view within the Republican Party. It should be permissible to say such a thing. Look, we need--I, I speak as a Republican. We need Michael Steele. He is exciting, he is warm, he has a marvelous TV presence. It--that's, that's the face that our party should be presenting to the country, and we need to support him. And the very fact that he is opening up the debate, talking with the constituencies that need to, need to be reached, these are valuable and fresh things. And I, I am just sick about the kind of level of, of attack he has taken, because we need him.

MR. SMILEY: I'm glad--I'm, I'm glad, David, that Michael Steele is there. I could never imagine 10 years ago that we'd have two parties, both headed by black men. But it's important to understand two things, very quickly. Number one, it's about the policy, not the personality. You can't put a colored face out and think that black people and brown people and women are coming just because you got a colored face out front. Number one, it's about the policy. And number two, all this infighting I think still underscores this party doesn't know who they are, where they're going or how they're going to get there.

MR. FRUM: Well, but both of those are positive things. He's not a black face, he's just a different face. We need different kinds of people. And it isn't that you think you put a black face on the party and you'll get black voters. You put a different face on the party and you'll get different voters.

MR. SMILEY: But the policy, but the policies have to change, too. That's my point.

MS. KAY: But...

MR. FRUM: And--but the first step to making the policies change is saying it's possible, there's room. And his kind of knocking down the walls is saying we can have a wider discussion in the Republican Party than we've allowed ourselves.

MS. KAY: Isn't...

MR. GREGORY: Katty:

MS. KAY: Isn't it even a bigger problem, the question of leadership within the Republican Party, is that I haven't heard a sensible Republican idea on this economic crisis, apart from reducing taxes, over the last four months.

MR. FRUM: The payroll tax holiday is a great idea.

MS. KAY: You--they have to come up with...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. KAY: They have to start coming up with ideas that the American public is interested in. You've got some younger Republicans saying, "We need to get back to talking about health care, we need to get back to talking about education, the kinds of things that the American public are talking about, and not just talking about cutting taxes."

MR. LIESMAN: That's the parody of the Republican Party that goes around in economic circles. "Well, you have cancer, cut taxes." You know, that's the, the, the solution of the Republican Party to everything.

MR. GREGORY: But the payroll tax idea, Republican idea was also shared by some Democrats, as well.

MS. KAY: Right.

MR. LIESMAN: It's a big danger, though, David, which is that if you watch the savings rate go up, the fear is that people will get this money from the government and they will save it instead of spend it, which is the argument for government spending at this moment.

MR. GREGORY: All right, lot, lots more to talk about. Unfortunately, we're out of time.

DOWNLOAD (62)

PLAY (163)

During a discussion on how the stimulus bill got passed where Chris Matthews wants to frame the discussion on whether there was a "win" or a "loss" for President Obama, Andrew Sullivan calls out the GOP for their hyprocrisy on when they're concerned about fiscal responsibility.

Matthews: The Republicans have taken a rather unusual position here. Well maybe not unusual but certainly a stark one Andrew. They're voting "No". That's a bet.

Sullivan: They're also saying "We are the party of fiscal conservatism". Now they managed....

Matthews: Since when though?

Sullivan: I think like ten minutes ago. I mean they spent for future debt of this country, they added thirty trillion dollars in a period of boom. We are now in the swiftest down turn in employment in decades and they're quibbling over something like four hundred billion dollars worth of spending. It doesn't make any sense. The hyprocrisy of these people, their ability to turn on a dime and not even acknowledge their own responsibility. If they hadn't spent the amount they spent in the last eight years we wouldn't have this crisis in the sense we'd have much more leeway to spend our way out a recession.

The one moment you don't want to be a fiscal conservative is when the global economy is headed down into a down draft. And yet that's the one moment these Republicans pick to allegedly stand up for their principles. It's insane I think and frankly all these news cycle spins, that's the old politics. The new politics is we're in a terrible economic crisis. Have we done enough to get ourselves out of it?

DOWNLOAD (53)

PLAY (113)

From the Chris Matthews Show, Oct. 19, 2008.

Chris asks his panel of Kathleen Parker, Andrew Sullivan, Katy Kay and Mark Whitaker if the Republican party is out of ideas.