A shame that Barney Frank retired from Congress. We could really use him as the face of the Dem party.
On this evening's Hardball, Barney, AKA Mr. Congeniality, let it be known that he thought of Tea Party members as "dumb animals."
This wasn't some off-hand slip of the tongue. To the contrary, Barney had clearly concocted his line with malice aforethought and went out of his way to work it in. Frank mentioned that Mitch McConnell said that if President Obama used executive orders to do certain things [i.e., grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants], Republicans would see it as a "waving a red flag" in front of a bull.
Followed Frank: "Describing your own party as a dumb animal that goes into a frenzy when it sees a non-threatening inanimate object, I guess to some extent that's right. I guess that's the way I thought about the Tea Party."
Come back, Barney: all is forgiven. With you in the House and on TV every night, there's no telling how many more seats Republicans might pick up.
BARNEY FRANK: Can I just say, that one thing that McConnell said that I thought was extraordinary. In self-denigration, he said when the president talked about doing some things by executive orders, as far as the Republican party was concerned, it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Describing your own party as a dumb animal that goes into a frenzy when it sees a non-threatening inaminate object, I guess to some extent that's right. I guess that's the way I thought about the Tea Party. But I'm interested to see Mitch McConnell joining that characterization.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think you out-thought him.
