Back in the 2012 Republican presidential primary race, Chris Matthews slammed former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as a "theocrat" and a "Cro-Magnon" man. On tonight's Hardball program, however, the MSNBC host was actually cordial and low-key. In fact, at no point did he rudely interrupt Santorum mid-sentence or badger his guest by trying to talk him into a corner with a gotcha question.
That said, as you can see from the agenda of questions transcribed below, Matthews by no means abandoned his liberal conventional wisdom nor his left-wing bias. What's more, for his part, Santorum gently but firmly pushed back against some of Matthew's talking points about immigration and the liberal media's fascination with the Confederate flag issues (emphasis mine):
MSNBC
Hardball
July 6, 2015CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Hardball. Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania made a strong showing when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2012. He outlasted everyone except Mitt Romney. He won 11 states including a win in the Iowa caucuses. Polls showed he had the strong support in the campaign of conservatives. And yet, four years later he's struggling to crack the pivotal top ten in a crowded GOP field.
According to the average of the five most recent national polls, the criterion Fox News is using for that first debate in August, Santorum ranks just shy of the cut-off point. But is Rick Santorum being underestimated? I'm joined right now by the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum. Senator, thank you for joining us. Boy, you've got a tan.
RICK SANTORUM: You bet, Chris, good to be with you.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this, uh, are you going to take the little kid's table? Are you going to go to that forum that Fox has offered the people that don't make the top ten sometime in the afternoon between 1 and 3.
SANTORUM: Yeah, I'm really not going to worry about that, Chris. I'm going to work hard --
MATTHEWS: Well, are you gonna do it?
SANTORUM: I have been working hard. You know, I'll take every opportunity, like coming on to Hardball for example.
MATTHEWS: Well, that's a good answer.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Let's talk about your bracket. You represent the cultural conservative aspect of the Republican Party's traditional values. Where do stand on the issue of same sex? It looks like, I mean I look at the party platform, it's pretty strong. The last time around, when you were running again, constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. If that goes, do you go?
[SANTORUM's answer]
MATTHEWS: Do you think that's coming? Do you think they would, that the Court would ever take the overreach of saying you have to have gay marriage in the Catholic Church? How would they do that? How would that actually happen?
[SANTORUM]
MATTHEWS: Well, that could mean they could force the Catholic Church into having female priests, too. I just don't think they can go that far. I just don't think they can.
SANTORUM: I don't think that's the same issue. I think this is a very different issue.
MATTHEWS: Anyway, this weekend Jeb Bush responded to comments that Donald Trump made about Mexican immigrants in this country being rapists and bringing drugs and crime and all that, we know that quote, let's watch.
JEB BUSH: His views are way out of the mainstream of what Republicans think. No one suggests that we shouldn't control our borders, I mean, everybody has a belief that we should control our borders, but to make these extraordinarily ugly kind of comments is not reflective of the Republican Party.
MATTHEWS: Who wins this argument within your caucus within the Republican party?
[SANTORUM]
MATTHEWS: I wish your party dealt with it. Why didn't your party deal with it [immigration reform] in the House of Representatives and get it behind us, put in teeth in terms of illegal hiring and that kind of thing, move ahead instead of just letting it sit there for a guy like him to exploit. Isn't that the problem? The House hasn't acted?
SANTORUM: Well, I always go back to the president and when he had two years of a Democratic Congress and could have done anything he wanted and never even introduced an immigration bill. So to point to the Republican Congress when the president had 60 votes in the Senate, was able to pass a health care bill but he didn't propose an immigration bill and to blame Republicans on that, I think, is just a little bit disingenuous.
The bottom line, we do need to do something on immigration, and if you look at my position on immigration, it says that we do need to use E-verify and we do need to eliminate folks who are working here illegally and, you know, we have to enforce the law when it comes to the border.
These are just sort of basic things that enforcing the law and protecting American workers and that's where I come from, that we have seen wages flat line for the last 20 years for most workers in this country and we've seen a record number of immigrants come into this country and it's not a coincidence that the two are tied together.
MATTHEWS: Let me think. That you're thinking aloud and smart on this. Let me ask you a couple questions on the Supreme Court, you've questioned it. I think what you've said about the Supreme Court coming up with rights that aren't in the Constitution is fair, except that the Supreme Court in the Brown case back in '54 said there was something essentially unequal about separate-but-equal. In Roe v. Wade they found a penumbra of privacy. This isn't the first time the Supreme Court has found something in the Constitution that they say is inherent in our rights, in our Bill of Rights that they could then illustrate or bring to life. But what are you going to do about it?
I mean, Trump's out there, I'm sorry, Ted Cruz is a lawyer, went to Harvard, whatever law school, and he's coming out saying retention elections. I mean, dammit, these elections are now costing presidential candidates billions of dollars a year. You're talking about judges running for reelection?!
I think it, well, I'm going to have him on Wednesday, I think it's ludicrous. How could we have judges running around the country running for reelection on the Supreme Court. What a hoot! Your thoughts?
[SANTORUM]
MATTHEWS: You're right, they [the Court] didn't settle it [the abortion debate], and Ruth Ginsburg and some other people agree on the liberal side of things. Let me ask you about that flag flying down there still. You say you're not a South Carolinian, you don't want to get involved. But as a flag, what does it say to you? As an American, what's that Stars and Bars [sic*] say to you?
SANTORUM: Well, you know, I was in Charleston at the time this all came down. In fact, I sat in Mother Emanuel church on the Sunday following the shooting, and what I saw was something incredible, remarkable, which was a healing process going on where faith and the people, these people of faith reached out and used reconciliation and forgiveness to bring a community together. And everybody wants to talk about what's going on two hours away in Columbia instead of what went on that really did, you know, bring this country together and bring this community together.
I've been in Charleston a lot since then and the sense and the feeling in this community is strong than it's ever been unified and I dunno, I guess that I'm a little bit discouraged that the media wants to focus on a flag instead of the tremendous reconciliation that has occurred here in the city of Charleston.
MATTHEWS: But if they keep that flag up, you won't get reconciliation, will ya?
SANTORUM: I don't know. What I've said--
MATTHEWS: I think you'll get trouble.
SANTORUM: --is that the people of South Carolina, I think the people of South Carolina will make the right decision and, you know, they'll go on from there. I'm not concerned at all about what happened in Charleston having a positive effect, not just in South Carolina but throughout the country.
MATTHEWS: You know, I think that flag's coming down this week. Anyway. Rick Santorum, thank you so much for coming on. You're always welcome here sir, even if you're not welcome over at that other place when they're just limiting it to ten guys.We have more room over here.
SANTORUM: I'll be happy to come back, Chris. Thank you.
MATTHEW: Thank you, Rick Santorum.
*Matthews here confused the Confederate battle flag with the First National Flag of the Confederate States, which was nicknamed the "Stars and Bars."
