Scarborough Tells 'Terminally Stupid Ideologues' to 'Stop Using the Tea Party as a Piñata'

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) set off a liberal firestorm when he called Standard and Poor's U.S. credit rating change the "Tea Party Downgrade."

On Monday's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough told "terminally stupid ideologues" that "really don't understand" anything because they're "so dogmatic [they] can't think for [themselves]" to "stop using the Tea Party as a piñata" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

JOE SCARBOROUGH: So this is sort of my closed-caption for the terminally stupid ideologues out there that have just listened to what’s gone down for the past three minutes and you really don’t understand because you’re so dogmatic that you can’t think for yourself.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Alright, be nice.

SCARBOROUGH: I am not blaming the President exclusively. We have blamed the Tea Partiers here for not moving. We have blamed Republicans. We have blamed Democrats as well. But please – I know it makes you feel better, but, you know, stop using the Tea Party as a piñata. We’ve got systemic problems in this country. The President could have done something for two years when he had Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and controlling the United States Senate. He did nothing on entitlement reform.

Indeed.

What was marvelous about this segment was that Scarborough spoke some inconvenient truths to his co-host, guests, and viewers that few in the media dare.

In particular, with the help of charts provided by MSNBC economic analyst and former Obama administration car czar Steve Rattner, Scarborough demonstrated that the real problem in our budget is the unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security and Medicare.

He then went on to accurately note that contrary to the liberal media meme, the President really never offered cuts to such programs in his so-called "grand bargain" because no specifics were provided and nothing was put on paper.

More importantly according to Scarborough, Obama knew full well that Democrats in Congress would never have go along with any cuts to entitlement programs thereby making this "offer" a cynical one the President knew would never go anywhere.

In Scarborough's view, Republicans would have been wise to call the President's bluff, agree in principle to raising revenues, and then allow the entire deal to be scuttled by Democrat intransigence over Social Security and Medicare reform.

Instead, by Republicans backing away from the poker table with a clearly winning hand, the Democrats and the White House have been able to blame everything on them and in particular the Tea Party while demagoguing Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) for having offered the only budget that attempted to solve our long-term fiscal problems.

For those interested, this was a very informative discussion that should have happened on the Sunday talk shows but didn't because it would have interfered with the media's ability to blame the S&P downgrade on the Tea Party: