Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, couldn't contain his
excitement over Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as he brought on
David Axelrod to praise, to the White House advisor's face, the rollout
of the Supreme Court nominee as he cheered: "It was a brilliant piece
of work....it couldn't have been done any better," and then later
gushed that Barack Obama "wowed us!"
Matthews also
claimed the only opposition to Sotomayor was made up of the "crazies,"
and "whack jobs," like Rush Limbaugh as Matthews told Axelrod "The only
critics of this nomination with any kind of violence are that R.N.C
crowd: Rush, Newt and...Cheney."
The following exchanges aired on the May 26 edition of Hardball:
CHRIS MATTHEWS TO AXELROD: You know since you fellows came to the White House I've been looking at the patterns, the, the team of rivals aspect of bringing Senator Clinton aboard as Secretary of State. The, sort of, the Reagan model of getting things done as quickly as you can because you only have so much mandate. And then I've looked at the Chicago model, which is to act as if there's only one governing party and then basically do warfare with the crazies out there,let me put it more lightly - the troublemakers. The Cheneys, the Newt Gingriches, the Rush Limbaughs. Here, I've noticed in all the criticism today - I'm sure you've gone through it - the only critics of this nomination with any kind of violence are that R.N.C crowd: Rush, Newt and Limbaugh, I mean and, and, and, and Cheney. It just seems like you guys are brilliant at picking fights with people that don't matter, that aren't in government, aren't in the Senate, aren't in the Congress. And you brilliantly say, "There's only one governing party, it's the Democratic Party of Barack Obama and we got these crazies out there we love to fight with." Here you are doing it again. Nobody in the Senate has taken a real shot at this nominee. The people who've made all the noise are the people on the outside, who many people think are the whack jobs! ...
MATTHEWS: Well I thought it was a brilliant piece of work today, the way you brought her out. I thought that biography of her, the way it was presented - my own view - was it couldn't have been done any better. We now know so much more about this nominee than we've ever known about any nominee in the past and we know it all in one day. Thank you very much, great work today.
DAVID AXELROD: Alright Chris. Thanks Chris.
MATTHEWS: I mean that! I think it was well done.
...
MATTHEWS: Certainly the President kicked things off today with an amazing camp-, look at that, it's like a campaign announcement at a Democratic Convention. He brought her out, he wowed us! The ballyhoo boys did a good job, as I said to Axelrod a minute ago. This was well-developed. The question is will the landing be as good as the take-off. The take-off looked pretty good.
-Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.