Have liberals blacked out the sex-and-perjury impeachment of Bill
Clinton? MSNBC's Chris Matthews appeared on the Charlie Rose show on
PBS Thursday, and Rose asked him about how Sen. Blanche Lincoln had a
"secret weapon" in her primary race in Arkansas. Matthews responded by
laying it on thick about how great Bill Clinton is. Surely viewers
giggled as Matthews talked about Clinton giving Lincoln "the full Bill."
Boy, that hug, that goes down in history, he had the French cuffs, looked like a million bucks, he put the full Bill around her. It was really an embrace. And you notice it was gender, because when she came out of that hug she was actually just overwhelmed physically, it was like you could see in her face, "I can`t believe the guy likes me that much and wants to help me that much." It was great. It was very real.
Matthews even claimed Clinton was a terrific asset in "culturally
conservative Democratic" areas - as if being a "cultural conservative"
isn't at odds with what Bill Clinton represents. But Matthews is still
channeling the more-conservative-than-Obama line from 2008, and then he
broke down and said Clinton is great anywhere he goes:
The big message coming out of this is, if you`re running, if you`re Joe Sestak running for the Senate this fall, you want him in western Pennsylvania, you want him in the culturally conservative Democratic areas. You want him in New Hampshire, another state where Bill Clinton is enormously popular is Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. If you`re running in Ohio, you want him there. You want him in Missouri, Kentucky - all that sort of state - you want him. In fact, you want him almost anywhere.
There were some other notable tidbits sprinkled in:
Carly Fiorina's Deal with the Pro-Life Devil? "Fiorina, I
don`t think can win a general election because she`s pro-life. She may
have taken that position - opposition to Roe versus Wade, opposition
to a woman`s right to choose an abortion. But she now has to stand by
that politician in the general. I think that might a Faustian deal
for her. That may be a real problem. They haven`t elected a pro-life
candidate for high office since Deukmejian way back in the 1980s."
Teddy Roosevelt's the only iconic figure on Mount Rushmore?
Asked why a poll found John F. Kennedy should go on Mount Rushmore,
Matthews explained: "I think it`s because his life had the arc of a
hero, very much like Teddy Roosevelt. Who people think of when they
think of Mount Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt, he`s the one up there that`s
really iconic." Once again, Matthews ignores that many see JFK as the
original TV-era cheating-horndog president.
Crist will win, and caucus with the Democrats like Joe Lieberman.
"I think Charlie is going to beat the band. He`s going to win the
general anyway...Yes, he will be the senator, and I think he will
organize for the Democrats."
Democrats won't lose big in the Senate. "So they can win four
or five seats as well as lose six or seven, so I think they can get
away with only losing two or three seats in the Senate. In the House, I
think they face - they`ll lose 40 seats is tough. I think they`re
going to be pretty good - Rahm Emanuel will be pretty good - - they
will be putting in the sealers. They will be holding off what they can."
Sarah Palin is an effective demagogue. Matthews previewed his
"Rise of the Right" documentary by repeating the lines about how the
tea-party movement is anti-government: "Sarah Palin is the queen of
this group, the leader of this group. She represents the ability - if
you listen to her, she`s very attractive and comes off in a traditional
way as sort of an attractive woman from the west.
"But if you listen to her, her agitation is brilliant. She gets
people mad at their government, she gets people mad at them, the Obama
crowd. She uses sarcasm, that demagogic language, which is very
effective. If you listen to her rallies those people are angrier when
she's done. She's very good at it and very smart at how to lead that
crowd."
-Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.