New MSNBC Host Wagner: Pro-Waterboarding GOP Candidates Building 'House of Crazy'

November 14th, 2011 1:09 PM

Well, that didn't take long. It took about half an hour into her new noon Eastern program Now with Alex Wagner for the host to attack the Republican presidential field as insane. And true to MSNBC form, her panel of liberal journalists largely agreed with her.

"When I watched that waterboarding segment, all I could think of is these Republican candidates are putting another brick on the house of crazy that they are building for themselves," Wagner complained after airing a montage of  GOP presidential contenders in Saturday's CBS-National Journal foreign policy debate regarding their views on the controversial enhanced interrogation technique. [MP3 audio available here; video follows page break]

"I mean, we are now, the conversation moves ever-more right every single time they have" a debate, Wagner griped.

"Right, this is a hard-right moment in the Republican Party, no question," Politico writer Maggie Haberman agreed.

"So far, these Republican debates have been, they [are like] much of the early work of the Marx Brothers," HDNet's Dan Rather quipped.

For his part, panelist John Heilemann dismissed the waterboarding views of GOP candidates as problematic in the general election, but in doing so praised President Obama as having run  "a basically pretty conservative administration and because he's been very successful in foreign policy."