During The Chris Matthews Show, Joe Klein not only labelled certain Christian conservatives charlatans, as Noel Sheppard pointed out, but then he widely claimed that Christian conservatives didn't give a hoot about abortion and same-sex marriage. Here's what Klein claimed about half-way through the show:
"If you look at actual polls of Christian conservatives, abortion is way down there, homosexuality is practically non-existent but 75 to 85 percent say that the thing that concerns them the most is the impact of the culture on their children and they’re absolutely right."
Laura Ingraham of course pasted Klein for his charlatan comment but one wonders where in the world did Klein get these facts? He didn't say but our own Tim Graham guessed it came from following poll of questionable merit here.
The following is the full word-for-word exchange between Klein and Ingraham:
Chris Matthews: "I’m gonna ask you about the usual set of issues they care about, abortion, gay marriage, that kind of thing. Do you think they have, you voted that they don’t think they still have this hard veto they had the last couple of times?"
Joe Klein: "Not a hard veto. I mean maybe over Rudy Giuliani but not over, not a hard veto."
Matthews: "Not on McCain?"
Klein: "Probably not. But you know in these cases you have to separate the shepherds who are mostly charlatans from the flock. If you..."
Matthews: "You want to name charlatans here?"
Klein: "I’ll go, I’ll start with those two, that, that McCain mentioned. I’ll go to Lou, Lou Sheldon and, and Jim Dobson and all the rest of those guys. If you look at actual polls of Christian conservatives, abortion is way down there, homosexuality is practically non-existent but 75 to 85 percent say that the thing that concerns them the most is the impact of the culture on their children and they’re absolutely right."
Matthews: "Laura, power of the Christian right?"
Ingraham: "I think you raised a great point on the culture and the idea that the Christian right is some just monolithic group and you can say, ‘Oh it’s the Christian right. Well there are Catholic conservatives, there, there are Christian conservatives who are evangelical, there are the fundamentalist community, the Method-, I mean there are all sorts of different people out there that make up this religious coalition."
Klein: "And there are Jewish conservatives..."
Ingraham: "Exactly."
Klein: "...like Jack Abramoff."
[Matthews laughs]
Ingraham: "Well that, that, that’s lame."
Matthews: "He’s a credit to every side."
Ingraham: "And by the way what Joe just said about James Dobson is reason, I have hope, despite everything that’s happening on immigration that the Republicans will still keep winning because as long as you keep offending people who think Jim Dobson has done some good things then you guys aren’t gonna ever win the heartland. He has a lot of people supporting him."
Klein: "‘You guys?!"
