Chris Matthews and gang at MSNBC have repeatedly attacked Tea Party conservatives in Congress, such as Ted Cruz, for attempts to use continuing resolution votes as leverage for conservative policy items. But now that liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the fly in the ointment, threatening to scuttle a spending bill agreed upon by Senate leadership and President Obama, the Hardball host is showering the Bay State Democrat with praise for a "revolutionary spirit" aimed at reinvigorating a despondent Democratic Party base standing in the "shadow of recent defeat" from November's electoral drubbing.
Lamenting in his closing "Let Me Finish" commentary that Democrats are "stuck in place," with "stunted thinking," Matthews urged his audience to "remember this date, December 11, 2014, it may be the birthday for a Democratic Party that's regained its reason to be!"
Earlier in the program, Matthews repeated used language of "revolution," in a positive light, to describe Warren's crusade against Wall Street bankers.
"It looks like a revolutionary spirit on the Hill tonight, among Democrats," Matthews remarked to guest Congresswoman Donna Edwards, a Maryland Democrat, noting Democratic caucus members bucking against President Obama's call for support for the continuing resolution.
About five minutes later, Matthews asked Edwards:
Also, couldn't there be another factor here? You've lost both houses of Congress now. You're the opposition on the Hill. You're not worried about carrying the water on debt ceilings and all the rest and omnibus budget deals and continuing resolutions. You lost the House a while ago, you're losing the Senate. Is this a revolutionary spirit that's fueled by the fact you don't have to run this show, you just have to drive your ideas?
Of course Matthews's standard line over the past few years is that it's Democrats who are the grown-ups, the party of government who are willing to cut deals to keep the machinery of government running. Let the Republicans be the unyielding ideologues who are willing to take the government hostage, Matthews and gang at MSNBC were wont to tell us, the Democrats would never stoop so low.
For what it's worth, at one point on Thursday's program, former RNC chairman Michael Steele and Republican strategist Hogan Gidley pointed out the obvious hypocrisy, but, of course, Matthews was ready with a convenient excuse:
Let's discriminate [sic] here between someone who's trying to make sure Wall Street doesn't get another bite out of the apple they shouldn't have and somebody who's out there saying Chuck Hagel's taking 200,000 bucks from the North Koreans. There's a difference.
