MSNBC's Chris Matthews is starting to get completely unhinged.
On Tuesday's Hardball, he accused Republicans of using "Cold War CIA tactics to destabilize our own country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this. I think the difference between the Democrats and Republicans is getting as wide as the Grand Canyon. Watch how they do it. President Obama wants to keep the government going. Pretty simple, huh? Republicans threaten to stop it. It's relentless. The fiscal abyss, the debt ceiling, the sequester, the end of the continuing resolution. Different words, different deadlines, all detonate the same explosion. They threaten to crash the government if they don't like the way it’s doing something, if they don’t like who the American people have elected as president.
Isn't that what the Republicans did back in the old days? If they didn't like a government somewhere - Guatemala, Iran, the Dominican Republic, Chile - they just brought it down.
Guess what? Republicans are now using the same tactic here at home. If they don't like who we’ve elected president, they find a way to undermine the government, discredit its leaders, whatever it takes to destroy it. We are using in this country the same old Cold War CIA tactics to destabilize our own country.
Look at the impact this constant threats to shut down the government are having on public confidence. It's all in the ratings. It's undermining it, making people forever nervous about the basic ability of America to even have a running government. Is that patriotic? I don't think so.
Isn't it fascinating how much history - some of it quite recent - Matthews ignored to make these absurd comments?
For instance, it was Democrats that threatened a government shutdown in 1990 if George H.W. Bush didn't raise taxes. As such, this tactic is nothing new.
But far more important is that all of these budget crises could have easily been prevented if Senate Democrats actually proposed a budget.
Matthews and his colleagues in the media all conveniently ignore that it's now been four years since Senate Democrats have done such a thing, and that none of these crises would happen if they did.
But that's not important to Matthews. Neither is the fact that Democrats control the Senate and the White House giving them far more power than Republicans who only control the House.
Beyond this, it is the Obama administration that first came up with the idea of this sequester to reach a compromise during 2011's debt ceiling impasse.
For some reason, that's totally unimportant to folks like Matthews who are constantly blaming all the problems in the world on Republicans.
Color me very unsurprised.
