Chris Matthews: Sen. Sessions Is the Voice of the Confederacy; GOP Wants to Make Kagan Into a 'Voodoo Doll'

Chris Matthews keeps painting the Elena Kagan confirmation hearing as a "culture war" between the Obama nominee and the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. As Newsbusters reported on June 28, Chris Matthews seemed to spin Monday's standoff between Sessions and Kagan as a battle between the senator's rural, unsophisticated Alabama roots and Kagan's Northeastern liberal academic background.

Well, Matthews showed up in even finer form on Tuesday. Describing Kagan as a liberal Obama prototype from the "high academia" of the Ivy League, Matthews proceeded to frame her opponent, Sen. Jeff Sessions, as the voice of the Confederacy.

Remarking that the hearing has become like a "red state-blue state" battle, Matthews claimed that "listening to Jeff Sessions is to listen to the, really, the Confederacy; to listen to, really the conservative view of the Deep South."

Matthews also oddly added that Republicans want to make Kagan into a "voodoo doll" (repeating himself from the night before), an image associated more readily with New Orleans, Louisiana, than Sessions' boyhood town of Hybart, Alabama.

Matthews pushed his "culture war" theory on the 11 a.m. hour of MSNBC live news coverage. "Here we have a woman who has been very careful to guard against the charge of partisanship," he said referring to Kagan, "obviously under strong assault in that regard from the red state senators like Jeff Sessions who would love to have a culture fight right here on television, right?

As in, Sessions and his Republican cohorts would rather have a spat with Kagan because of a culture rift, than because she is a Supreme Court nominee.

Matthews and his guest, liberal Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), also expounded upon the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court. In fact, Matthews admitted that he was "rocked" by how radically-right the Court has become in the last 50 years.

Referencing recent Court decisions on gun rights and campaign financing, Matthews lamented that "common sense" prescriptions of gun control and campaign finance reform are dying.

"I think that conservatives would agree with that, that there's a movement so abruptly to the Right on issues like gun control...the power of corporations," Matthews opined.

Matt Hadro is an intern in the Media Research Center's News Analysis Division.