On Wednesday’s edition of Morning Joe, panel members chose to decry the current political climate of the U.S. by reviving the old attack on talk radio and conservatives. Steve Schmidt, senior campaign strategist for the 2008 McCain presidential campaign, began by connecting political "tribalism” with “the conservative commentator on the radio that talks about half the country being his enemy.” Joe Scarborough picked right up on the narrative and continued it by sycophantically stating to Willie Geist, “The fact of the matter is, that there are people who make money by playing to a small, angry crowd, by saying it’s us against the world. Listen to my radio show, it's us against the world.”
Geist proved more than happy to go along with Scarborough and Schmidt’s tirade as he re-affirmed their assertions before adding his own spin to them:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: They get more traffic by being angrier and saying ‘Look at the people over there. They’re not wrong. They are evil.’ This is all driven by a sort of narrow casting that gets people rich just like gerrymandering allows congressmen and congresswoman to engage in narrow casting, targeting, micro-targeting that makes everything much more toxic in Congress, but they just play to the lowest common denominator and they get re-elected.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah, and we've seen it on both sides of the debate. Right now it feels like it's on the conservative side. But, we see it on the progressive side as well. What you hope wouldn't happen is that it reaches Congress and reaches the White House. But, unfortunately, that's where we are right now where we're treating opponents like enemies.
Really? It feels like it’s on the conservative side when liberal comedians are pretending to behead the President and others are performing mock assassination attempts of him?
Here are the excerpts from the June 7 exchange:
STEVE SCHMIDT: You look at the totality of everything that's happened over the course of the last couple of weeks, at the NATO summit, the refusal to re-affirm the United States Article 5 commitments at a ceremony where we’re dedicating a piece of the World Trade Center. Talking about Germany saying the Germans are bad, very bad, the attacks on the mayor of London. You look at the Canadian foreign minister's comments yesterday. All of it taking place in this early part of June where we commemorate so many important, historical moments in the history of the country and we talk about this era of tribalism and you referenced the conservative commentator on the radio who talks about half the country being his enemy.
And I think that, as we move forward is to understand in politics that it's very difficult to make a case that you love your country if you don't love your countrymen, which includes people that disagree with you politically. They're your fellow Americans, they're your political opponents, but they're certainly not your enemies and this toxicity that abounds around our politics is destructive and pernicious and it's gonna take acts of profound political leadership to get us out of it.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: And why don't we just call it what it is Willie. The fact of the matter is, that there are people who make money by playing to a small, angry crowd, by saying it's us against the world. Listen to my radio show, it's us against the world. Watch my prime time cable show, this week only in Russian. There are bloggers, us against the world. They get more traffic by being angrier and saying 'Look at the people over there. They're not wrong. They are evil.' This is all driven by a sort of narrow casting that gets people rich just like gerrymandering allows congressmen and congresswoman to engage in narrow casting, targeting, micro-targeting that makes everything much more toxic in Congress, but they just play to the lowest common denominator and they get re-elected.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah, and we've seen it on both sides of the debate. Right now it feels like it's on the conservative side. But, we see it on the progressive side as well. What you hope wouldn't happen is that it reaches Congress and reaches the White House. But, unfortunately, that's where we are right now where we're treating opponents like enemies and I think that was really well said by Schmidt. I hope a lot of people in Washington were listening this morning. Steve, thanks so much.
