Bill Maher And Chris Matthews Fight With Conservative Guest Over Why GOP Hates Obama

[highplainsdem]

Source: Mediaite

Bill Maher and Chris Matthews squared off with conservative radio host Roger Hedgecock on Real Time tonight over the Republicans’ economic policies and why they hate Obama. Matthews told Hedgecock that most of the economic criticisms have not-too-subtle racial implications, trying to get him to admit that he and his fellow conservatives just have a blanket hatred of Obama.

Maher said that no matter who the Republicans nominated for president, they would have been as weak as Romney, despite criticisms from the right that Romney’s campaign has been especially bad. Maher argued the Republicans are in trouble because they just don’t have any “new ideas.” Time editor Rana Foroohar said that the Republicans are not presenting any coherent policies.

And as for the infamous “47 percent” video, Maher found it unbelievable that one person was telling Romney he should be proud to be incredibly wealthy. Hedgecock countered by saying that there’s another school of thought in the United States that bashes success, which Maher referred to as a “strawman” argument. Matthews slammed Romney for believing that wealth means success, and said the “focus on money” is Romney’s main problem.

-snip-



Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-and-chris-matthews-fight-with-conservative-guest-over-why-gop-hates-obama/

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Video (7:51) at the link.

[IggleDoer]

1. Best line of the night was after Tweety went off into a rant, Hedgehog screamed back,

"CALM DOWN ... YOU'RE LYING.

Way to win an argument, Roger.

[ywcachieve]

12. Who is Tweety?

[central scrutinizer]

16. Mathews

it goes way back

[lovemydog]

17. Chris Mathews

A lot of folks here call him that. I guess because he somewhat resembles Tweety Bird.

Welcome here. Have fun!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. Mathews got the name "Tweety" from his own staff who were making fun of his hair die.

Lately, he's been more like this:

[img][/img]

[Robyn66]

43. I had forgotten that particular cartoon!!!

Chris Mathews really pissed me off during the 04 Bush campaign but he has more than made up for it since 08! Love that cartoon BTW!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

55. Tweety did that special on Obama and as he was doing it he saw first hand,..

...that all of the things the Republicans were saying about him were out and out lies. What's more, he saw their entire motivation was to get him out of office even if it hurt the country after an economic disaster.

He also saw them decide to play the race card to their base and it REALLY pisses him off that they are digging into that bag of dirty tricks. What's funny is having some of these idiots deny it as if he doesn't have friends within the Republican Party that have confirmed that this is EXACTLY what they are doing. They want to pretend he's pulling the charge of race baiting out of his ass when he is buddy buddy with people who feel ashamed of what their party is doing.

Speaking of the special, I might as well post it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101760467

[ywcachieve]

58. Thank you for the welcome.

[defacto7]

22. Welcome to DU!

We like to watch.

[ywcachieve]

60. Thank you for the welcome.

[calimary]

35. Welcome to DU! It's a longtime nickname for Chris Matthews.

Large head, blond hair. You get the idea...

I laughed so hard when I first saw that reference here. And during the duhbya years, his ideas were frequently for the birds too!

Glad you're here. We need your help to make sure President Obama stays in the Oval Office!





Now get to work.

[ywcachieve]

59. Thank you for welcoming me to DU.

[calimary]

64. A pleasure!

And we need all hands on deck. This is gonna get rough.

[Politicub]

25. I knew who you were talking about

Love DU!

[CreekDog]

40. He's not Tweety anymore

like a wise DUer said a while back.

[JI7]

56. he is Tweety, it's a cute nickname

[snooper2]

61. once tweety always tweety

[Cosmocat]

49. Mathews was like an unleashed dog

from about 5 seconds into the panel.

The winger spewed some nonsense and you heard that classic Mathews "ha" and he was off the races.

Pretty nice, unabated defense of reality.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

2. Tonight's show was the best in a very long time. Tweety was awesome tonight!

Simply brilliant!!!!

[freshwest]

4. +1

[CreekDog]

41. he really was

his old boss, and someone he really admired, would be proud:

[charmay]

3. There have been a couple mediocre shows this season but this show was great.

Hedgecock looked like a deer in headlights.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. What amazes me is how they can "calm down" and laugh. I can't do that.

I think what Matthews said was spot on - and the republican was a typical asshole. But to the media, to pundits, it is their livelihood. They make enough money to be able to go and have a drink with their "enemies" after the show. Or, somehow, be married (Carville and Matalin). I don't know about you, but this stuff - the attacks on Obama, the lies, the hypocrisy - it makes me so deeply angry that I can't calm down and laugh about it. Some of this stuff is just morally and ethically wrong. I actually find that I have little to no respect for, or any friendships with, conservatives/republicans (as far as I know...). It would just feel totally wrong.

This is why I just could never be a politician....and I suspect that is true of many or most of us here. It just cuts too close - means too much - and is no laughing matter.

[ann---]

8. I agree

with you 100%.

[Cha]

13. Yeah, I get too emotional

I had to train myself how to be more calm on the Internet!

[bluedigger]

18. So were the first 100,000 or so just training posts?

[Cha]

27. You could

say that..

[Zoeisright]

14. They got that laughing thing from Raygun.

He started it. Mittens has perfected it. It's insulting and disparaging - two characteristics repukes have down pat.

[Rhiannon12866]

30. You know, I was having almost the same exact thoughts as I was watching tonight.

They can get all bent out of shape one minute, then be laughing at some joke (even if it's aimed in their direction) the next. All I can think of is that those from the media are trained to control their emotions and remain professional while they're in front of the camera - even Tweety. LOL. I thought he was very good tonight, seems like he's been on sort of a "The Newsroom" roll lately...

[maddiemom]

37. Yeah. Carville and Matelin. I've never been able to buy it.

It makes me suspect the deal that all politicians are coming from the same place and totally conning us is true. My formerly liberal ex- husband got increasingly conservative over the twenty years of our marriage. It finally finished us. I can;t imagine even starting a marriage so conflicted,

[Patiod]

51. Carville's rationale:

He says that they agree on basic moral and "family values" (about the importance of hard work, putting family first, etc) and religious faith (I think they're both Catholic). He feels that political values are of little importance compared with that. I tend to disagree - like you, I have a tough time with the "values" of most of the "I got mine" Republican douchebags I know.

Although I do have a few old-fashioned-Republican friends whose values I generally share (none are gun fanatics or conservative in areas like gay rights) but they wouldn't be conservative enough to be Fox "News" commentators like Matelin.

[marasinghe]

6. thanks for the link.

file "Hedgecock" under the truth in labeling clause.

[BlueStreak]

7. Why does notbody EVER challenge these assholes on the food stamp thing

There has not been one piece of legislation passed under Obama that changes the rules for qualifying for food stamps. Not one paragraph in any bill. Not a sentence. Not a single word.

How dare they say "Obama is the food stamp President." He didn't do that. There are more people on food stamps today because more of our national wealth have continued to move from the 99% to the 1%. That means more people at the bottom now fall under the rules to qualify for food stamps.

Geez. How hard would it be for one of them to simply say, "Tell me exactly what action President Obama took that put more people on food stamps."

[Iliyah]

11. BlueStreak, Pres O is black and anything black equals to anything

welfare.

[BlueStreak]

15. Yes, of course it is dog whistle stuff, but at least force them

to be more clear about that point. Obama doesn't have anything to do with food stamps. He didn't make any changes. The program has exactly the same rules as the day he took office.

[OnionPatch]

21. Their answer would be

he didn't let the tax cuts become permanent for the "job creators". They're going to beat that dead horse to the ground. Nearly everyone knows now that trickle-down economics doesn't work, in fact, it's caused the economy we have now, but they'll be sticking to that bullshit lie to the bitter end.

[BlueStreak]

45. Facts are important

Fact #1. Obama hasn't made any changes to the program. The participation rules are unchanged.

Fact #2. In a steady economy, you would expect the total number of participants to rise because the population is rising. Youhave to look at the PERCENTAGE of people receiving assistance

Fact #3. The participation goes up every recession, and Bush gave us the Mother of all recessions. We're still working our way out of that.

There are lots of charts here: http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts

One interesting one shows that the trend is turning around.

[Iliyah]

9. Tweedy is pissed for numerous reasons

but one I think is he really charged about is the VOTER SUPPRESSION and why the corporate media is not talking more about it.

[Cosmocat]

46. He is from Pa

and it probably the worst bill out there, and has had a lower court judge sign off on it while most states are repealing less restrictive bills.

[mwooldri]

48. Maybe I'm guessing but this voter disenfranchisement is a personal issue to him?

I watch bits and pieces of his show but didn't he say something like his mother was impacted by the voter ID law?

Voter suppression is too tame a word. It's dis-enfranchisement. Need a simpler word for it though. It's not the voting itself that is the issue, it is the registration IMO. That can be tightened up with no need for photo ID, and that can eliminate voter fraud. Along with stiffer penalties for illegal voting... that should kick it out. The stories I hear of voting fraud is around the candidates themselves dealing with underhand shenanigans to rig the election in their favour.

[BeyondGeography]

10. When Time's economics editor says supply-side economics is broken

we're finally getting somewhere.

It has taken forever for a public conversation about the Republicans' absurd and useless ideology to happen. Better late than never.

[lovemydog]

19. It's broken and shrank the middle class.

It's about time people understand that republican trickle down nonsense was snake oil sold to the gullible for the sole purpose of making the rich much richer.

[madmom]

20. Did you notice when they started having an intellectual talk on

religions, the repug had no talking points and never said another word!

[defacto7]

24. Maybe someone finally figured out

they're barking up the wrong tree if they think religion will opiate the masses.

[Politicub]

23. It was great to see n/t

[colsohlibgal]

26. Tweety's Redemption Rolls On

Chris had a lot to make up for after his get a room fawning/gushing over Bush's fake "mission accomplished: landing on the carrier. He's well on his way.

I will say this about Hedgecock, as wing-nuts go he was more amiable and less obnoxious than most as he was being wrong about almost everything.

[JaneQPublic]

38. You're right! Tweety had a man-crush on Dubya.

Always talking about how good GWBush look in jeans, with his big buckle, etc.

If I recall correctly, Tweety was against the Iraq War early on, though.

And he's been a full-throated Obama supporter since he was first nominated.

[Cosmocat]

47. Don't forget his off air butt kissing of delay

during his one interview with him that came to light.

He was BAD in the 90s with Clinton and got that bizarre man crush on Bush II.

But, I think as MSNBC increasingly has embraced the role of the liberal ying (and truth telling) to the Faux Yang (and, well, it is what it is) he has started to really just let it roll.

[VPStoltz]

28. If there is a "school of thought" that bashes success (which there isn't)...

it's because we have been force fed this bullshit about "job creators" which is obviously a lie the successful are gleefully foisting on us all. There is only ONE job the mass sum of the wealthy in the country want to create, that of a rabidly conservative president.

[4lbs]

29. Regarding the 'food stamps' thing, I was hoping someone would mention the Senate vote

earlier this week in which the Repugs killed the Veterans Jobs Bill.

The same Repugs that wrote some of the legislature in that bill, voted AGAINST it!

They should have brought up that if the bill had passed, maybe there would be several hundred thousand fewer veterans on food stamps!

[AsahinaKimi]

31. That was freaking brilliant

Chris Matthews and Bill Maher had me cheering!

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

32. "This is calmed down."

May we all be blessed with that energy.

Thanks for the link.

[emulatorloo]

33. Awesome. K&R!

[jzodda]

34. Tonight was great.

Tonight's show was the best in awhile. Every segment was great.

[BadGimp]

36. Chris MAthews Ripped The Face off the GOP

omg he was in grand form

Thank you Chris Mathews!

[oldsarge54]

42. Puritan Thinking

Puritans (and Pilgrims were puritans) believed that wealth and health were indicators of God's approval. Calvinism is centered on the thinking that went behind Job's friends, bad things happen to bad people. We have had that thread throughout American history, with the poor being such because they deserve it (Cain). I just can't remember anytime since the Great Depression that this tendency has been quite so blatant.

[SemperEadem]

44. so true

it's a very presbyterian/calvinist view (read John Knox's writings) that if you're down on your circumstances, or poor, then it's because your soul is wretched and you're out of favor with God. To them, it had nothing to do with an economic system that crushes everyone except the church/nobility/upper class/1%.

[firenewt]

50. If wealth = success, money is the base for determinig if a person is good or bad and how you make

money is of no concern, then by default the GOP respects drug dealers and crime lords.

[Courtesy Flush]

52. I wonder how they calculate the food stamp growth.

Here in Louisiana we're recovering from a hurricane. Thousands of people are eligible for emergency food stamps -- even if they don't ordinarily meet eligibility requirements.

The Department of Social Services just pulled 1853 workers off their regular duties to process these claims. Those workers will not see any regular food stamp recipients. They're exclusively seeing people who aren't on the FS rolls. If each of those 1853 workers processes a few hundred applications, that's a lot of new food stamp cases.

These are one-time emergency recipients, who should not be counted.

[Cleita]

53. That was a beautiful thing to see. n/t

[Kolesar]

54. Safety valve programs like "food stamps" keep a recession from spiraling out of control

&We still have high unemployment and need to distribute "food stamps".
It is actually a debit card, btw.

[cheapdate]

57. New respect for Chris Matthews! Beautiful.

[OldDem2012]

62. Tweety's performance the night of the debates turned me completely against him...

He must know he's pissed off quite a few of his viewers, some of whom, like me, will never return no matter what he does now.

[jayfish]

63. Yes,...

I'm sure you would rather have watched a Faux News style circle-jerk proclaiming Obama the victor. We need more who acted the same way lest our President lay another egg on the 16th.