Is Chris Matthews feeling pressure to keep up with the Olbermanns when it comes to flinging invective at conservatives? On this evening's Hardball, discussing Dick Cheney's statement—-made at a dinner at which he received an award—that Pres. Obama is dithering on Afghanistan, an apparently incensed Matthews spluttered [unexpurgated in the original]:
"What G--D--- award . . . are they giving these guys?"
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let's go back to David Corn [of the leftist Nation mag]. David, do you think Dick Cheney is weirdly helping Barack Obama, perhaps against his will? He comes back with a black tie on, a tuxedo, he and Scooter Libby both celebrating their latest trophies they got from one of these right-wing front groups. Celebrating what? It's like Little League: everybody gets a trophy. You get completely wrong about everything, you lose it all, you're wrong on every prediction. People hate you, and they give you--wear your black tie tonight—and make sure you're in a mood to receive an award. What G--D--- award—I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said it. What award are they giving these guys? And what for?
DAVID CORN: Chris, he got the Keeper of the Flame Award.
MATTHEWS: I'm sorry for using that term. It's just seems so outrageous; you give a guy an award for taking us into a war that he claimed victory in before we even got started, and cost thousands of lives, and he was dead wrong on every front.
Convenient of Chris to let that slur slip to his red-meat crowd, then cover himself with an apology, no?
Fortunately, Terry Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of our sister publication CNSNews.com, was there to rebut Matthews.
TERRY JEFFREY: First of all, I want to defend the Center for Security Policy, which awarded this Keeper of the Flame award to Dick Cheney. It's run by Frank Gaffney, who was a Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration, the administration that won the Cold War, Frank Gaffney is in part responsible for the policies that defeated Communism. Secondly, no matter what you say about the previous administration about national security—and I did have some disagreements with where they went, I'm not a Wilsonian, I do not believe in promoting democracy all around the world—Dick Cheney and George Bush can say this: in the eight years following the September 11th, 2001 attacks, there was not another terrorist attack on the United States. They succeeded.
