Chris Matthews appears to have a Mad Libs-style list of the worst insults he hurls at conservative. On Wednesday, he chose "verbal terror" to smear everyone on the right who disagrees with all of the "great things" Barack Obama wants to do. The Hardball anchor opened his show by hyperbolically warning, "Political armageddon!" According to Matthews, the fight between the President and conservatives is not a conflict of ideas.
Rather, "it's a battle between a President who wants to do great things -- extend health care to the tens of millions of working people, many of them poor, ending two wars in Afghanistan" and an "almost totally negative force arrayed and barking against him, a campaign of verbal terror and negativity aimed at denying tens of millions decent health care." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
In the simplistic world of an MSNBC host, "it's a strange, unbalanced battle between a man who wants to do great things and an enemy aimed at ensuring he does not."
Matthews has no problem with using extremist language to demonize his enemies. On July 31, 2013, he labeled Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee "terrorists."
On March 2, 2009, the host wondered if then-Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius would survive the "terrorism of the anti-abortion people" who opposed her.
A partial transcript of the November 20 segment is below:
7:00
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Political Armageddon. Let's play Hardball.
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7:01
No, it's a battle between a president who wants to do great things -- extend health care to the tens of millions of working people, many of them poor, ending two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and preventing a third war with Iran -- and almost totally negative force arrayed and barking against him, a campaign of verbal terror and negativity aimed at denying tens of millions decent health care, denying immigrants the chance to be come citizens, denying people of other sexual orientations and identities an equal chance to provide for themselves, obviously, also denying marriage equality.
It's a strange, unbalanced battle between a man who wants to do great things and an enemy aimed at ensuring he does not. It's a tale of a political party that once freed the slaves and battled the monopolies, built the transcontinental railroad and created scientific agriculture to the land grant colleges reduced now to playing jackal in the moonlight. Howard Fineman's the editorial director of the Huffington Post Media Group and an MSNBC political analyst and Jonathan Capehart is the illustrious opinion writer for "The Washington Post" and an MSNBC contributor.
Howard, I painted this in strong terms and strong black and white, but I have to tell you, I don't see a Republican agenda except to destroy Obama. Let's go with this. The President's enemies have tried to destroy, kill, defund, block or destroy everything in his program.
The President, in contrast, has made it his goal to fight to extend rights to minorities, the uninsured and the oppressed. His opponents are trying to take away these rights.
