MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Monday continued down his endless path to media redemption. The former Republican has already left the GOP and denounced the party. Now, he thinks that maybe liberals were “right” all along in saying that Republicans were always “racist” and “rotten.” Talking to another ex-GOP strategist, Rick Wilson, the MSNBC host noted that the left would say the “party was always corrupt, it was always rotten. It was always racist. You are now reaping what you sow.”
Now, Scarborough seems to agree: “Were all those liberals that said the GOP was racist” right? Seeming to ask forgiveness for his own past, the Morning Joe co-host lamented, “Were all those liberals that said the GOP was racist and — all the things that I have been my entire life, evangelical, Southern Baptist, a proud southerner, you just go down the list.”
He appeared disgusted that those who voted for him as a Republican Congressman years ago now vote for Donald Trump: “Right now you look at it and, 95 percent of the people who voted for me when I was running a very different platform, they are all Trump supporters now.”
Scarborough and Wilson then exchanged insults about their former voters:
RICK WILSON (Author, Running Against the Devil): I think Trump catalyzed some very dark things that we wanted to look away from for a long time. And we wanted to keep the crazy uncle part of the party in the closet. Whip them out to vote every couple years.
SCARBOROUGH: We usually did. We usually did.
A discussion on when racism really took over the party ensued. Former Republican Elise Jordan disagreed with Wilson that it was 2010. Maybe it was 2008:
I don’t know if I totally agree it was 2010. I think it was 2008 and Barack Obama. I think it became socially acceptable among some Republicans that galvanized support among the base to be racist. I think that the racism strain has always been there throughout American politics with both parties. But it really went to another super charged level when Obama took office.
A partial transcript is below:
Morning Joe
1/13/2020
8:35
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Since we have four former Republicans here, you will hear from our good friend Charlie Pierce that the party was always corrupt, it was always rotten. It was always racist. You are now reaping what you sow. Rick, there are times when I have been going, wait a second, were the liberals right? Were all those liberals that said the GOP was racist and — all the things that I have been my entire life, evangelical, Southern Baptist, a proud southerner, you just go down the list, right now you look at it and, 95 percent of the people who voted for me when I was running a very different platform, they are all Trump supporters now.
RICK WILSON (Author, Running Against the Devil): I think Trump catalyzed some very dark things that we wanted to look away from for a long time. And we wanted to keep the crazy uncle part of the party in the closet. Whip them out to vote every couple years.
SCARBOROUGH: We usually did. We usually did. I used to mock the press for always going for the whacko early in the process. I said, “You do that because this reinforces what you believe about Republicans. They will never make it.” I wrote a column called Crazy Never Wins” in 2012. Now, we usually never got the Romneys. We usually got the Bob Doles. We usually got the Gerald Fords.
WILSON: And we usually got the George H.W. Bushs. The moderating forces inside the party, the old three-legged stool of foreign policy conservatives, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, that's gone now. The entire party is dedicated to being idolaters to Donald Trump.
SCARBOROUGH: Why? When did it happen?
WILSON: I think the transition — we went off the rails in 2010. Owning the libs portion of the Republican Party and let's be transgressive, let’s be transgressive. We didn’t care. When Ted Cruz once said, “Oh, I’d rather have 35 real conservatives in the Senate than the majority, I was like, “Wait a minute.”
8:41
ELISE JORDAN: I don’t know if I totally agree it was 2010. I think it was 2008 and Barack Obama. I think it became socially acceptable among some Republicans that galvanized support among the base to be racist. I think that the racism strain has always been there throughout American politics with both parties. But it really went to another super charged level when Obama took office.
