Bush, GOP Congress Ripped by… Joe Scarborough?

[Bob Geiger]

I never thought I would have any reason to send you to something written by one of MSNBC's resident conservatives, Joe Scarborough, but that day has arrived.

In yesterday's Washington Post, the former Republican Congressman ripped into Bush saying that he feels sorry for his old buddies in Congress, trying to explain to voters this year "that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit."

Writes Scarborough: "How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?"

My answer is that they don't convince them, given that they have been a major part of the problem.

On that note, Joe then shifts gears and goes after the do-nothing Republican Congress, calling them what they are: Rubber-stampers for a failed president:

"Even when the administration would not give generals the troops they needed to win the war in Iraq, Republican leaders did nothing. When the president refused to veto a single spending bill while the deficit spiraled upward, Republican leaders looked away. And when chaos was reigning in the streets of New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast in Katrina's horrific aftermath, Republican leaders remained mute.

"That silence -- proof that it is better to be feared than loved in politics -- has had devastating results. The United States is more divided than ever, our leaders are despised around the world, our fiscal situation is catastrophic and congressional approval ratings are the lowest ever. Since nothing sharpens the mind like a political hanging, Republican leaders in the Senate and House are finally considering doing what effete newspaper editorialists have suggested for years: throwing Bush overboard."

Any time Joe Scarborough writes something that looks like it could have come from me, my world suddenly makes no sense.

You can read Scarborough's editorial in its entirety here. But you've got to wonder just what the thinking must be under the rocks at the Republican National Committee when something like this is in the Sunday paper -- and it's come from one of their own.

[Kagemusha]

1. I'm getting deja vu whiplash from the MSM noticing tortured explanations

that is, about torture...

We've all known about this stuff for QUITE a while now, because we actually hear the crap Cheney says about this. Not that Cheney hides it, but the MSM hasn't broadcast it much except in irrelevant abstract. Now it's thrust into our faces: The President says we don't torture people but he wants the authority to continue to do so. (!) And suddenly the world seems to have woken up all around us.

It's weird, I tell you.

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. Sounds like Joe may be trying to recast himself....

I could be wrong, and this may be Joe's conservative conscience speaking, but I'm so cynical about repubs these days, and I think perhaps Joe would like to enjoy some of the much lauded, and well deserved hoopla that Keith O is enjoying? Let's face it, MSRNC would be all but dead if not for KO.

:shrug:

[Marie26]

3. Scarborough's been bashing Bush for awhile.

Since Katrina, at least. It's been kind of nice to see.

[benny05]

4. He's Trying to Sound Liberatarian at Present

We'll see how long it lasts if the GOP maintains control of both houses, but at the same time, I'm glad he said something.

[Felinity]

8. Who knew?

Either Joe's an opportunist who has sensed a change in the winds, or wants a piece of Olberman's coattails; or he actually has reached his limit of party loyalty/support the president over the obvious reality of what Delay-Ney-Abramhoff types of the world have wrought.

I for one hope he's seen the light. For now, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe if we gave him some support, he'll continue to be a voice of reason that some Republicans will be willing to hear.

[Lasher]

19. Look Kermie, I can fly!

That's exactly what's going on, Tarheel. Look for more of this from media whores in general as they sense an awakening of America. They figure Democrats will regain control of at least the House and maybe the Senate also. Then it's buh bye to the roadblocks and whitewashes that have prevented the public from knowing what the criminal Bush cartel has been up to for 6 years. The pundits are trying to get ahead of the curve.

[plcdude]

5. I think we need

to educate Mr. Scarbough as to the real surplus story. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/

[JRob]

6. That's great! I'm going to print that and keep it in my pocket... nt

[peacetalksforall]

7. I remain suspicious of anyone working for GE - a war warlord.

No one can deny that marching orders to the three NBCs comes from GE. KO is their money maker. He's sincere and gets away with it in the NBC house, but he is probably their money making exception. At the same time they also earn money by the glorification of crime and prisons.

There is no doubt that GE is a Republican corporation and that all news from their corporate subsidiaries is filtered and skewed to favor and propituate the Republican cause.

I'm willng to be convinced that I'm wrong about GE and the NBCs purpose before their cameras in all things that relate to news, political commentary, and paid or unpaid propaganda.

[immoderate]

11. Maybe even GE has a limit.

They are perpetually one of the top arms manufacturers. They cultivated Ronald Reagan and kept him in the public eye in his "out" years after he was governor of California.

But maybe they are seeing the result of their policies going too far. They stuck with Keith Olbermann, perhaps because he is a great broadcasting talent. Remember that three quartes of his show is comedy, entertainment news, and "oddball" stories, but gives them some claim of balance.

Joe just might feel that he can't continue in the fantasy mode of Coulter, Limbaugh, Savage Weiner, Neil Borscht, and the rest of the crazies.

He's not saying anything that Barry Goldwater wouldn't say, and that makes him sound like a liberal. The pendulum may have swung too far and we've got to relieve the inmates of their control of the asylum. Maybe GE is saying "Even we don't want a fascist dictatorship."

--IMM

[McCamy Taylor]

21. GE = general manufacturing > war . High oil is KILLING them. When the

NeoCons started talking about invading Iran (or rather when Sy Hersch got a Pentagon leak about that story) back in winter 2004-5, GE/NBC bailed from the Bush/Cheney ship and has been sailing independently ever since.

Just a little point of economic clarification.

[peacetalksforall]

29. I'm conflicted. It's possible. But I am so hardheaded

against them because of their now long history (way over 16 years) of pro-Republican support.

[quiet.american]

9. Oh, Joe -- how soon we forget....

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, April 9, 2003)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."

and the next day....

(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, April 10, 2003)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.' Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2842

Has Joe yet said the words, "I was wrong"? Because as we know he positioned himself as one of the biggest cheerleaders of the criminal Bush administration he now tut-tuts.

[Tarheel_Dem]

12. omg....QA

you should definitely send this to Joe, and of course let him know that you appreciate that he's "seen the light", but definitely ask him if he's ever publically apologized to the people he named in those articles? I mean, I had forgotten that he called out MoDowd, and Scott Ritter.

As he suggested for those who disagreed with him and the White House in 2003, his past words should certainly bite him in his own a**.

[quiet.american]

14. Not a bad idea! n/t

[Child_Of_Isis]

22. he positioned himself as one of the biggest cheerleaders

That's right! He helped them to get where they are. His propaganda helped feed the masses.

[blue cat]

10. He had the swift boat liars

on more often than any other show, so don't trust him at all.

[sui generis]

13. It's never too late to say we told you so

and he can "look liberals in eye" all he wants, but he'd still better lower his gaze for being a salad tossing Bush butt monkey himself for as long as he has.

[aggiesal]

15. He can't have it both ways.

He been a solid Bush-backer for years, supporting every piece of legislation that this administration has placed before congress.
Now that the Rep. are about to get their clocks cleaned, because of their voting record and their support for the sorry legislation, they're jumping off the band wagon?

I suspect all the Rep. are doing this to distance themselves from King George and try to get re-elected.
I believe Scarwhorough (oops, I meant ScarBorough) is helping to accomplish this.
Once the '06 election is stolen, again, they will all jump back on.

[mark11727]

16. Oh Joe, you moonbat, you.

:think:

[Bob K]

17. Reality

Joe has a job. He gets paid to crank out rhetoric on a daily basis. It's obvious that he counts on folks having a memory only as long as their (____________). I wouldn't look for HIM to revive his blustery blather of times past. It'll be up to the likes of us to exhume such as a means of putting a squeeze on his tender parts.

Along these lines - when this House of cards is reduced to being floor covering, what's gonna come from mouths of the likes of Rush & Coulder as blame or justification??? :dunce:

[jazzjunkysue]

18. Amazing that he put this in the public record in print. It's one thing to

blather away on TV, on a cable opinion show. It's another to go public record in the WaPo.

I think this is another waving of the white flag. they smell which way the wind is blowing and they're jumping ship, like the rats that they are.

In the meantime, Kerry could have been president and prevented all this. No way will Joe or any of them own up to their responsibility of putting the chimperor in office to begin with.

They can't Blame Bush unless they also blame themselves.

[Joey Liberal]

20. Maybe Joe does have a soul?

Nah.........

[Cobalt-60]

23. He and the network are trying to save themselves

It's too late
It would take a restraint job like the one in Clockwork Orange to get me to sit through a single minute of corporate news.
For the rest of my life I'll be looking to entities like Reuters and the BBC for information.
Corporate shills like Scarborough have gone too deep into the Goebels school of journalism to even consider watching them or the channels that enabled them.

[El Fuego]

24. I think he "calls 'em as he sees 'em" every once in a while

I occasionally catch some of his show because he follows Keith on MSNBC. When he gets ultra conservative he pisses me off and I grab the remote, but sometimes he says things like "You can't put party before country," and you have to respect him for that.

I wonder if he's trying to keep KO's huge audience (people like me) from turning the channel!

[Jack Rabbit]

25. Scarborough's conversion, such as it is, took place about a year ago

Response to Bob Geiger's comments on Joe Scarborough.

I don't think Joe Scarborough is an any danger of having his being possessed by Eugene Debs. Nevetheless, there are so many things wrong with the Bush regime that it should be no surprise that sober Conservatives offer their version of what's wrong and how to fix it.

In the past year when I've brought this up, some speculated that it was Katrina that turned him around; Scarborough was once a GOP Congressman from Florida and the clusterfuck he saw in New Orleans, I'm sure he is well aware, easily could have happened in his old district.

That may be one reason. My own speculation is that a light lit over Scarborough's head and he realized that he is now making a living as a journalist rather than as as a partisan politician. He's decided to act like a journalist and set his personal ideology aside and just report facts: Don't spin (and he's done plenty of that since he was picked up by MSNBC); just report the facts; let the chips fall where they may; and analyze what is, not the world according to the neoconservatives (who, contrary to Dr. Moynihan's dictum, think they're entitled to their own facts). That is all we news consumers can ask of a jounalist.

I'd rather have a conservative doing that than listen to liberal spin. There is more joy in heaven over a single repentant sinner than over a thousands.

[dreamsvsnightmares]

26. Give him 30 days and see how fast his "This is the way I Think"

will change for the gop

[civildisoBDence]

27. As a blue dog Democrat, I'm fiscally conservative and socially

liberal. I don't know why to hate Bush more...for his fiscal irresponsibility or the whole laundry list of socially regressive, proto-fascist policies.

Newsprism

[roody]

28. What is the story about his intern

found dead in his office?