On Tuesday's The Last Word on MSNBC, liberals were once again hearing allegedly "coded" messages. During a discussion of Rick Santorum's GOP primary victories in Alabama and Mississippi, guest and talk radio host Mark Thompson absurdly seemed to suggest that Santorum's announcement speech that he gave in Pennsylvania back in June 2011 contained a "coded message" aimed at winning Alabama nine months later by appealing to racist sentiments.
After host Lawrence O'Donnell asked if he had seen "anything surprising" in Tuesday's election results, Thompson began his ridiculous analysis:
No, not at all. When Rick Santorum first announced he was running for President, in his announcement speech, he was criticizing President Obama for saying America wasn't as great as it was until there were programs like Medicare and Social Security. But in that criticism, he said directly to the President, he said, "Mr. President, America was great before 1965."
Without aknowledging that a number of Great Society social programs were passed in and around 1965, he added:
I called that out as a coded message. You know, I go to Selma every year, and 1965 is a sacred year in the history of this country, and a never-forgotten year in terms of the history of Alabama. When he said that, I knew exactly who he was speaking to in that coded language. So I'm not surprised at all that he won Alabama.
Moments later, O'Donnell seemed to accept Thompson's theory as he asked if there was "another code" in Santorum's criticism of former President Kennedy. O'Donnell:
Mark, before we go to break, another code that I'm wondering about, when he started trashing JFK, that sounded very strange to me because JFK has an 85 percent approval rating in this country now. But is that, was that also coded for the South, for these states?
The left-wing radio host responded:
I believe so. I think much of what he said has been coded for the South, including what he said about us. I'm a blah man. I mean, he says these things, and it gets that message over, and it gets him responses. In terms of whether he can carry it outside of the South, I think that's what Rush Limbaugh is trying to find out for him.
