MSNBC's Chris Jansing on Wednesday didn't exactly press Jimmy Carter as
she interviewed the ex-President, wondering if Mitt Romney has "gone
too far" with conservatism "to be trusted."
Carter appeared to disagree with his former presidential speechwriter,
Chris Matthews, who smeared the former Massachusetts governor as a KKK "Grand Wizard" on Monday. Carter asserted he'd be "comfortable" with a "moderate" like Romney. Not seeming to accept this, Jansing pressed, "Do
you think that he has gone too far into the conservative positions and
do you think that that makes him difficult to be trusted?"
Later,
Jansing offered this softball about the 2012 race and negative
campaigning: "Do you think that we say every year that the election has
never been this negative, the tone has never been this divisive, but is
it true?"
Carter piously asserted, "We didn't dream of running a negative
commercial on television that would destroy the character of our
opponent."
Of course, Carter's people did do exactly that. During the 1980 campaign, a Carter aide trashed the Reagan campaign as racist:
The Reagan speech was the application of what was euphemistically
dubbed the Republicans’ “Southern strategy” to crack the Democrats’
120-year-long hold on America south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Carter aide Andrew Young, himself a former civil rights worker (and future mayor of Atlanta), would have none of it.
He called out Reagan’s camp.
“If he had gone to Biloxi, and talked about state’s rights, if he had
gone to New Orleans, or Birmingham, I would not have gotten upset,”
Young told the press.
“But when you go to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Chaney,
Andy Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed — murdered — by the
sheriff and the deputy sheriff and a government posse protecting state’s
rights, and you go down there and start talking about state’s rights,
that looks like a code word to me that it’s going to be all right to
kill niggers when he’s President.”
A transcript of the April 25, 2012 segment can be found below:
CHRIS JANSING: A lot of comparisons have been made between the
reelection efforts of President Jimmy Carter and President Obama from
how each is dealing with a tough economy to high gas prices. I sat down
with the former President in Chicago to get his take on politics 2012.
Give me your assessment of what you think President Obama's reelection
chances are and what do you think of Mitt Romney?
JIMMY CARTER: Well, I've just said that I think that President Obama
will be re-elected. I believe that. I think of all the Republican
candidates who are prominent, I think Romney would be the one that I
would rather see have a slight possibility to be president.
JANSING: You would be comfortable with a Romney presidency?
CARTER: I would rather have a Democrat, but I would be comfortable. I
think Romney has shown in the past in previous years as a moderate, a
progressive, that he was fairly competent as a governor and also running
the Olympics as you know. He's a good solid family man and so forth and
has gone to the extreme right wing positions on some, maybe, very
important issues in order to get the nomination. What he will do in the
general election, what he'll do as president I think is difficult to
know.
JANSING: Do you think that he has gone too far into the
conservative positions and do you think that that makes him difficult to
be trusted?
CARTER: I think he has gone too far in the conservative positions to
suit the average American and that's why I think President Obama is
going to be reelected. In historical terms, looking back all all the
elections with which I am familiar both candidates have tended to come
to the middle as they get into the general election. Romney already has a
reputation of being changeable in his positions. And so I think that's a
stigma that he already has been able to weather and at least in the
Republican primary. If he moves back more to the central position on
some major issues, I am not sure that he can suffer any more as being
changeable. So I don't know how to predict it, but I stick to my
prediction that President Obama will win.
JANSING: Do you think that we say every year that the election
has never been this negative, the tone has never been this divisive,
but is it true?
CARTER: It is absolutely true. We didn't dream of running a
negative commercial on television that would destroy the character of
our opponent. It would have been suicidal for the ones who did that.
And we didn't raise money from special interest groups. Do you know how
much money that I raised and Reagan raised and President Ford raised
for the general election?
JANSING: What was the total?
CARTER: Zero. We didn't raise a penny from private contributors or
from corporations or from special interest groups. I think the massive
infusion of money into the political arena has been the major cause and
depending a lot on it on the negative advertising and the stupid Supreme
Court ruling of a little more than two years ago saying that
corporations are people has exacerbated or made worse an already
existing bad situation.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
