MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski asked the co-host of "Morning Joe" Monday if Republicans holding the line on the debt ceiling are "so stuck to their little contract and the Tea Party that they cannot even think outside the box for the good of the country."
Somewhat less surprising, Joe Scarborough gave a pretty good answer (video follows with transcript and commentary):
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Usually you’re good at seeing someone’s angle. Like you know what their angle is.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I see their angle.
BRZEZINSKI: What’s the angle here? Who’s, I don’t get it.
SCARBOROUGH: They believe. I mean, these Republicans believe this is the only opportunity to…
BRZEZINSKI: Are they so stuck to their little contract and the Tea Party that they cannot even think outside the box for the good of the country?
Pretty pathetic question from Brzezinski, although not at all surprising given her extreme liberal bias.
Many of these newly-elected Tea Party Congressmen and women left successful careers to fight for the good of the country.
Mortgaging our children and grandchildren's future with piles of debt that will inevitably drown the nation's economy is not for the good of the country.
What's in the country's best interest now is for spending to be restrained so that America can pay its bills over the long haul while retaining its AAA credit rating.
The suggestion that right-thinking Republicans at this moment in history are doing anything that isn't for the good of the country requires what Hillary Clinton called a willing suspension of disbelief.
Fortunately for viewers, Scarborough - when he was finally given a chance to answer - did a pretty good job:
BRZEZINSKI: Seriously.
SCARBOROUGH: Can I finish?
BRZEZINSKI: Sorry.
SCARBOROUGH: You ask a question, I’m going to finish.
BRZEZINSKI: Sorry.
SCARBOROUGH: No, the, they understand one thing.
BRZEZINSKI: Alright, what do they understand?
SCARBOROUGH: They’re dead right about this. This is their best chance for quite some time to actually get real debt savings. And I think they’re concerned like I would be very concerned right now that there’s going to be fuzzy math in these deals, that Barack Obama’s not going to be serious about entitlement reform.
Indeed. Such concern is magnified by what happened in December when a budget agreement was made with spending cuts that in the end were far less than advertised.
Having witnessed that seven months ago, fiscally conservative Republicans are saying "No mas," and are finally holding the line.
Whether or not Brzezinki understands this, it is exclusively for the good of the country.
If Mika and her ilk were at all honest about this current impasse, they'd realize the President's insistance that any deal carry the debt ceiling into 2013 has nothing to do with the country's best interest.
This is exclusively political, and a desire on the part of the current White House resident to not have to address this issue in his reelection year.
If Obama was a Republican preventing a short-term fix to this problem exclusively for his own political benefit, Brzezinski and her colleagues would be absolutely skewering him for not thinking "outside the box for the good of the country."
Why the double standard, Mika?
