David Gregory Hits Walker With Leftist 'Crank Caller,' Suggests He's the Ideologue (And the Leftist Isn't?)

February 28th, 2011 8:54 AM

In his interview with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Sunday, NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory not only used a radical leftist blogger's "crank call" of Walker as an act of journalism, worthy of respect, he suggested that the leftist exposed Walker as "more of an ideologue than someone who wants to solve a serious problem." Doesn't that phrase perfectly describe Ian Murphy, the prank caller?

Can anyone imagine Gregory putting on Planned Parenthood boss Cecile Richards and playing back tape from the Live Action video stings and insisting that she's more of an ideologue than a problem-solver? The fairer question is if David Gregory is more of an ideologue than a problem-solver. Here's how Gregory insisted his liberal team's prank was respectable yesterday:

DAVID GREGORY:  You were the subject of a crank call, a liberal blogger who was trying to draw you into, to a conversation about all of this, and you had a serious conversation, not knowing who you were talking to.  And you talked about Ronald Reagan and him taking on the unions and the air traffic controllers.  And you talked about putting this moment in some kind of context.  This is part of what you said.

GOV. SCOTT WALKER:  In Wisconsin's history--little did I know how big it would be nationally--in Wisconsin's history I said, "This is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history."

GREGORY:  "Change the course of history." And this is where critics say, you know, this governor is really more of an ideologue than someone who wants to solve a serious problem.  You're going farther than other Republicans who have taken on pension and healthcare costs to really go  after collective bargaining.  And by your own admission, you're saying, "Well, there's some areas where we just can't afford that level of austerity." But if you're serious about austerity, doesn't it have to be a situation where everybody gets affected?

WALKER:  Well, in the end, the reason I made that comment, I do believe that this is our moment in Wisconsin's history.  It's one of those where, for year after year after year, not just the last governor, but governors before, legislatures before, have kicked the can.  They've taken one-time fixes to push the budget problems off into the future.  We can't do that.  We're broke. Like nearly every other state across the country, we're broke.  And it's about time somebody stood up and told the truth in this state and said, "Here's our problem.  Here's the solution," and acted on it.  Because, if we don't, we fail to make a commitment to the future.  Our children will face even more dire consequences than what we face today.

GREGORY:  But, Governor, if you, if you say you're broke...

WALKER:  So I, I make no apology for the fact that this is an important moment in time.

GREGORY:  Governor, if you're really serious about the state being broke, you have a deal that you could take to get the contributions you need to solve the problem at hand.  Why not separate that out from your views about collective bargaining?

Walker told Gregory repeatedly that state public-sector union officials obviously cannot guarantee that every local government will abide by any rhetoric from Madison, and that in fact, since the standoff began, local union bosses were already negotiating to keep their present deals intact, or even increase their wages. Gregory didn't seem to hear that answer at all. Then Gregory asked about what the Left wanted to ask, if Walker considered using activists to embarrass the unions for their rhetorical excess:

GREGORY:  Governor, final question here, I want to clarify something.  In the course of this prank, this crank call that you got. It was suggested by someone who was a liberal blogger that you might think about planting troublemakers into the crowd.  And you said quote, "We thought about that." Is that right?  You really thought about trying to bust up physically these protests?

WALKER:  No, we thought, as the call continues and I've said repeatedly, we, we rejected that.  But we have people all the time who contact us for and against this bill, and you can imagine people with all sorts of ideas and suggestions, and we look at everything that's out there.  But the bottom line is, we rejected that because we have had a civil discourse.  We've had, you know, a week ago, 70,000 people, we had more than that yesterday, and yet we haven't had problems here.  We haven't had disturbances.  We've just had very passionate protesters for and against this bill, and that's OK.  That's a very Midwestern thing.  But we're not going to allow anybody to come in from outside of this state and try and disrupt this debate.  They can inform it, but we're not going to allow them to disrupt this debate and take the focus off the real issue here.  And the issue is, the people in Wisconsin, particularly those 14 state senators, need to come home and have the debate here in the state Capitol.

Gregory's apparent shock over the discussion of how to play the public-relations game around mass protests didn't seem to consider that the Left has constantly played "troublemaker" to make the police or President Bush look more extreme, and it failed to consider that the Left may have sent "troublemakers" into Tea Party rallies for that purpose. Did he spend any time in his show prep pondering whether the shoe's been worn on the other foot?

Then he turned to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to expand on the crank caller's point, but Lawrence ran into a wall with Haley Barbour:

GREGORY:  Lawrence O'Donnell, how do you read this?

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL:  Well, you know, one of the things I was struck by in your interview with the governor is, just to go back to a point, is that he said that he rejected, rejected the idea of sending in troublemakers to the demonstrations.  That means the idea was discussed.  That means someone in the governor's office said, "How about we send some people in there to cause physical trouble in these demonstrations?" And this governor thought about it, discussed it, rejected it.  OK, he rejected it.  But to say he rejected it and think, "Well, that's the end of it, that's a noncontroversial moment," it's quite shocking to think that there was a governor thinking about that.

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR:  Well, Larry, you added the word physical.  Nobody ever -- you could talk about should you send people out there to talk to the employees?

O'DONNELL:  OK, let's, let's just--OK, I'll, I'll retract that.  Let's just say troublemakers.  This, it's shocking to think the governor, among the things they were discussing was, "Should we send in troublemakers?" How long did you -- would you have to discuss that?

Later in that discussion, O'Donnell claimed Gov. Walker was afraid of "democracy," as if he had no voter mandate for what he's proposed. Barbour again tried to tether Lawrence to political reality:

O'DONNELL:  And I don't know why you fear democracy so much.  You're saying that this is a temporary agreement.  It's a, it's a result of democracy in Wisconsin.  Republicans won Wisconsin, and, and the, and Republicans ran on this.  And now they're doing this.  If the idea remains popular, and if it has democratic support in Wisconsin, meaning support of the democracy of Wisconsin, why would you worry about leaving this agreement out there so that it--and allowing collective bargaining so that the--Wisconsin can democratically express itself in the future as being in favor or opposed to more or less government spending on workers?

GOV. BARBOUR:  Well, Larry, it, it is precisely because I do believe in democracy.  We had an election in 2010, and Wisconsin voted for a Republican governor, a Republican senator, two Republican Houses of the legislature, and they have determined this is the best way to go forward to get the budget of that state, in effect, which they were elected to do.  Look at Indiana.  In Indiana this was done six years ago by the governor.  It has been very popular.  Nobody put Mitch Daniels' picture with a, with a crosshair over his face like they're doing in Wisconsin.  You know, if Sarah Palin, did that, you know, it would be the world coming to an end.