Should GOP candidates take advice from Chris Matthews? The liberal host on Tuesday night cheered Jeb Bush for standing up to conservatives, touting the likely 2016 candidate for having "guts." The MSNBC anchor pleaded with Bush to keep it up. In a closing commentary, Matthews lauded: "I'm watching Jeb Bush show a lot of guts out there, defending national education standards, and the opportunity for people who came to this country illegally, to become Americans."
The host admitted that those positions are going to "be a challenge out there on the stump and all of those town meetings coming down the road, but I hope he sticks to his positions." The Bush campaign team would be unwise to think that Matthews can be counted on for support. In 2014, the excited anchor announced that Hillary Clinton might win 60 percent of the vote in a "sweeping" 2016 landslide.
Clearly, Matthews doesn't have the best interests of Republicans at heart.
The journalist concluded his comments abut Bush by saying he "wants to believe there are conviction politicians out there." Yet, Matthews attacked the actions of another possible 2016 contender, Scott Walker. In 2012, he insisted Walker was "picking on the unions that didn't endorse him."
Apparently, not all "conviction" politicians are created equal.
A transcript of the February 3 segment is below:
7:59
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this: Few sounds are that as dispiriting as that of a politician pandering. You watch them out there performing like Governor Christie's hula hooping the issue of measles vaccination. And though they are doing it not because they believe what they're doing, but merely to please or in this case not please some group in their party that wants, in fact, demands to be appeased. I could say they all do it, but it embarrasses just the same. Those of us who believe in electoral democracy are the ones diminished by a governor who knows better appealing to those who don't. Remember the Senior George Bush telling the evangelicals that he has been born again. Couldn't he have just simply said that he practiced his religion as he was raised to practice it, and no further information is going to be forthcoming, That there are no religious tests in the Constitution and he believed in honoring that principal? Would that have cost him votes? If so, God help us.
I'm watching Jeb Bush show a lot of guts out there, defending national education standards, and the opportunity for people who came to this country illegally, to become Americans. Both are going to be a challenge out there on the stump and all of those town meetings coming down the road. But I hope he sticks to his positions, because those of us -- a lot of the people who watch this program want to believe there are conviction politicians out there, even those we disagree with. Otherwise, an election just becomes a bidding war among those so desperate to win that they'll say anything the crowd demands.
