For the second day in a row, the lone so-called conservative anchor on MSNBC supported Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.
After saying Cain "made a fool of himself" with his inconsistent response to the allegations Monday, Scarborough said that if there were another viable conservative candidate in the race, "Rush Limbaugh would be making fun of Herman Cain today" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOE SCARBOROUGH, CO-HOST: We had said a couple of days ago when it came to domestic policy, his tax plan, foreign policy, his tax plan, that Herman Cain was making it up as he went along. Yesterday was a perfect example. There is, there is nothing but chaos here. I don’t know how any conservative, forget his ideology, whatever that is because he’s making that up, too. One day he’s pro-choice, the next he’s pro-Life. One day he wants to release prisoners in Gitmo, the next he doesn’t. And I’ve got to say despite all of these facts, publications like the National Review line up in defense of Herman Cain as if defending Herman Cain is defending conservatism which I would suggest after last, after yesterday’s circus act by everybody involved in this that really typifies what’s been wrong in the conservative movement over the last several years.
But all that being said, Herman Cain made a fool of himself yesterday.
As the segment drew to a close, Scarborough took this further:
SCARBOROUGH: There is in conservative quarters such a desperate cry to have anybody but Mitt Romney that you see people like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and the National Review desperately searching for an alternative.
MARK HALPERIN, TIME MAGAZINE: He’s our flawed guy, but he’s our guy.
SCARBOROUGH: And right now, Herman Cain is the only viable alternative. You know, Rush liked Rick Perry a couple of months ago. Maybe he still likes him, I don’t know. But it just shows there is no strong conservative. I guarantee you if Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan or Chris Christie were in this race, maybe not Chris Christie.
HALPERIN: Mike Pence.
SCARBOROUGH: Mike Pence. If Mike Pence were in this, Rush Limbaugh would be making fun of Herman Cain today.
But what Scarborough was sadly missing about the overall conservative reaction to this is that the Right would be responding this way regardless of who the candidate was or what his/her positions were.
This is another obvious smear job of a right-leaning politician by the media, and we're all sick of it.
If Scarborough wasn't doing his darnedest to prove how right he is about Cain's inviability as a candidate, he would have quickly on Monday realized the pathetic sourcing as well as the tremendously soft allegations made in this Politico piece.
Instead, like all the other shills at MSNBC, he ran with this story rather than seeing it for exactly what it was: an attempt by the Left to destroy a Republican candidate who in the worst case is likely to end up on the eventual nominee's short list for vice president.
Scarborough himself noted two weeks ago that if Cain were a Democrat, the Left and their media minions would be swooning over him just as they did Barack Obama.
He should have therefore put two and two together and realized that Politico would never in a million years have published this piece if Cain had a "D" next to his name.
That alone should have clued Scarborough in to the hypocrisy in play here irrespective of Cain's inconsistent response to the allegations.
As we learned last week that Scarborough isn't very good at simple arithmetic, it shouldn't surprise us that two plus two is at this point in time too difficult for Morning Joe.
