Chris Matthews: "You mean, like mice like cheese"

Bush_Eats_Beef

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Dec-15-05 03:17 PM
Original message

Chris Matthews: "You mean, like mice like cheese"

'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for December 14

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10479638/

MATTHEWS: Let's take a look at our own poll, NBC �Wall Street Journal� poll out just today. Forty-two percent say Bush is been giving some good reasons for keeping those troops in Iraq. So people believe that he's trying and succeeding in articulating, at least, his reasons. In other words, they're beginning to say, agree or not, he knows what he's talking about.

(Charlie) COOK (National Journal): But you are seeing the president's numbers across the board come up a little bit. And I think it's three things. One, is you had a lot�you've had good economic news all year long, but I think they finally�the good economic news finally get a critical mass.

MATTHEWS: Where is it showing itself, the good news?

COOK: Excuse me?

MATTHEWS: Where is the good economic feeling showing itself?

COOK: Across the board just sort of Republican and general approval numbers unrelated to Iraq have gone up.

MATTHEWS: How do you put that against the news from out of the General Motors with 30,000 guys and women, you know, laid off?

COOK: OK. Here you go right direction, wrong track. Do you think the country is headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track? Right direction numbers have moved up a little bit.

The other thing is Harriet Myers really cost him. Whenever the president's approval ratings among Republicans only is above 80 than his overall approval is over 40. But when it drops below 80 percent, he starts getting down into the 30's.

After Harriet you had enough Republicans, enough conservatives left him that allowed him to drop it back into the 30's, and then when that was over kind of push back up.

MATTHEWS: I agree with you. And you know what I think watching these events and being on television tonight. I do sense that something clicked back. There was a bad period there, which was Katrina when he seemed to be out to lunch not really aware of what was going on. He had to have somebody put together a DVD together to tell him what was going on.

And then that odd weekend when he went off and picked Harriet Miers because her deputy said so. And then something clicked. What clicked in? And he started to give these very impressive speeches the last couple of weeks.

COOK: I have to throw Libby in there too.

I think sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to start turning around. And I think that was it. And then one last thing is Democrats. When the focus was on, look, we never should have gone into Iraq, and we have screwed it up.

MATTHEWS: They won that argument.

COOK: Right.

But when the venue changed over to what do we do now? That's when Democrats lost�started�went on a much more less...

MATTHEWS: Has Howard Dean helped him by calling, you know, we can't win, that statement?

COOK: Yes, I think that was a problem. What was that on a San Antonio radio station? But it got a lot of play elsewhere.

MATTHEWS: A lot of bounce.

COOK: Yes, absolutely.

And the Democrats are just all over the map. When they were focused on one, pretty much one message, they were doing well. When they went all over the map, down.

MATTHEWS: Why didn't the Democrats focus on the bad Intel and stay there? That this war was misdirected from the beginning. We shouldn't have gone in and keep saying we shouldn't have gone in?

COOK: Because Democrats are undisciplined. I mean, you know, our grandparents could have told us this.

MATTHEWS: You mean, like mice like cheese.

COOK: Yes, yes.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you, Charlie Cook. You're the best.

COOK: Take care. See you.

MATTHEWS: Thank you.