The Republican National Committee (RNC) is currently having its annual winter meetings, and what better way for MSNBC to discuss its progress than to bring on two liberal reporters to discuss the gathering.
During her January 23 Jansing and Co. program, host Chris Jansing invited on no Republican to discuss the RNC meetings, instead opting to bring on MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid, who herself is a former Obama campaign operative, and The New York Times’ Nick Confessore -- no conservative he. Jansing began the segment by discussing abortion and concluded that a big part of the GOP strategy was “how to blunt the Democrats' successful ongoing narrative of the war on women.”
Throughout the segment, the MSNBC host failed to mention that it was her very own network that helped Democrats push the “war on women” narrative, and ran almost daily segments on the topic leading up to the 2012 election. After Jansing asked MSNBC regular Joy-Ann Reid to determine which political party had the upper hand in the “war on women” narrative, Reid chose to define the GOP in very inflammatory terms involving a 40-year-old pop culture reference [colleague Chris Matthews would be proud]:
If you think of the Republican Party as kind of a three-legged stool, the business wing of the party, the religious right and kind of what you might sort of broadly call sort of the Archie Bunker wing, the kind of angry white male wing of the party.
Ms. Reid is no stranger to attacking the GOP as a party of angry white men. In the past she has claimed that black and Hispanic Republicans were mere “window-dressing”, that CPAC attendees sympathize with slavery, and defended the infamous Newsweek cover of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann during her 2012 presidential run.
Unsurprisingly, Jansing felt no need to push back at her colleague’s nasty characterization of the GOP. Instead the MSNBC hose seemed to accept Reid’s narrative and easily moved on to talking abortion with Confessore. It would be nice for a change for MSNBC to actually invite a conservative on when having a discussion about the state of the Republican Party.
Instead, MSNBC seems happy bringing on guests who have no actual knowledge or interest in the future of the GOP to slam a sect of the party as the “angry white male wing of the party.”
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
Jansing and Co.
January 23, 2014
10:00 a.m. Eastern
CHRIS JANSING: Good morning I'm Chris Jansing. Republicans are huddled in Washington for the RNC winter meetings, strategizing for 2014. A big part of that strategy, how to blunt the Democrats' successful ongoing narrative of the war on women. Step one, get more vocal about abortion. Republicans even delayed yesterday’s RNC meeting so people could go to the March for Life. And the RNC is actually considering a new resolution demanding candidates speak up about their anti-abortion views. The resolution also asks the RNC to support Republican pro-life candidates who fight back against Democratic deceptive war on women rhetoric by pointing out the extreme positions on abortion held be Democratic opponents. And the number two in the Republican in the House, Eric Cantor pledged legislative support for abortion issues, saying it's one of the top priorities in Congress.
ERIC CANTOR: Last year the House for the first time passed the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. This remains a top priority for me and for my colleagues. I'm also proud to announce that next week the House will vote once and for all to end taxpayer funding for abortions.
JANSING: Now Democrats think women's issues give them the upper hand. The head of the DCCC Steve Israel says and I’m quoting him here. “Republicans have turned the floor of the House into the battleground for their relentless war on women’s health care and freedoms. Every time they launch another extreme attack against women’s rights, they lose more ground with women voters. So Democrats think they're ready, and they point to Terry McAuliffe’s victory in Virginia. The governor beat out Ken Cuccinelli in part by painting his views on women's issues as too extreme. I want to bring in our company, Nick Confessore, is political reporter for "New York Times," Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of TheGrio.com and MSNBC contributor. Good having you both here. So what do you make of this back and forth? Clearly both sides think the war on women is a winning issue for the Joy-Ann.
JOY-ANN REID: Well, it's interesting because if you think of the Republican Party as kind of a three-legged stool, the business wing of the party, the religious right and kind of what you might sort of broadly call sort of the Archie Bunker wing, the kind of angry white male wing of the party. The two that are not the business wing have been the ascendant parts of this party. And I think the religious right for probably twenty or thirty years has felt that they’ve gotten the short end from Republican leadership. There’s issues that have been pushed to the back burner because they’ve been seen as social issues, wedge issues that are not good for the party. But I think now there's sort of a free for all. The vacuum of leadership in the party has really left the business wing as the odd people out and this is the time that the religious right are reasserting themselves. There have been abortion planks that are put forward. Laws that are attempted to be put on the floor of the House of Representatives. There have been 205 separate abortion-related laws passed in the states by states that are controlled by the Republican Party. The religious right believes that this is a winning issue.
JANSING: Well, they believe, that the problem has been messaging, not the issue itself. And Rick Santorum talked about this. I'm going to quote from him. Because he said that they've had sort of trouble communicating their views, a la Todd Akin Richard Murdoch. So Santorum said “If we nominated a bunch of people who only care about cutting taxes, then you’re going to get people who say some really stupid things, who aren’t comfortable in their own skin when it comes to these issues. Let's quit running from these issues and start teaching our candidates how to talk about them.” And I don't know, nick, does he have a point? If this is going to be your issue, figure it out play it to your best advantage.
NICK CONFESSORE: Absolutely. Look, this is an issue where framing is everything in politics especially in this issue. What the RNC is saying right is silence is not a strategy for their candidates. They're going to get beaten up on this issue, but they're saying is let's go on the offensive, let’s find where we have public support, let’s frame our message and teach it to candidates so that the abortion debate in these races is not turning on transavaginal probes and rape. Let's make it about restricting abortions in the late term.
