without worry matthews buys into the standard republican talking point that using standard procedural tactics to circumvent the filibuster were damaging the senate (?!?!). dean rightly points out that reconciliation was used more than twenty times in recent history e.g. when bush, the republicans and "fiscal-wary" blue dogs gangraped the deficit with their record tax cuts for the rich. CM tries to defend his fallacy by claiming that setting up a new bureaucracy for the public option would disrupt future legislation and negotiation with republicans which - following his non-sequitur - wouldnt make republicans look too respectable but nevermind.. to that i'd like to point out that medicare, medicaid and social security also set up new governmental insitutions but are by themselves undisputed by the vast majority of americans and politically sacrosanct and untouchable even by conservatives today. no talk about a political cataclysm there, innit?!

make no mistake, i wouldn't say yet CM was a conservative. in fact, he is a spineless careerist, an opportunist sleaze and a corporatist sockpuppet. well that's may be just a just a tiny step short of being an actual conservative these days... but let's not lose focus.

to stress my point that he's bending in the direction the wind blows any day and doing so with conviction impertinent smugness, let me give you a transcript of the hardball broadcast when dubya had his mission accomplished photo up on the USS lincoln
there he actually doubts whether purple heart- and silver star-decorated john kerry could stage the dress-up in a fighting uniform as well as draft-dodger dubya pulled it off on that day. on a more subtle note, let me quote this from the transcript:
MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically for just a secretary, the president deserves everything he’s doing tonight in term of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics

moving ahead a couple of years when public opinion of the dumbass-in-chief wasn't so favourable CM completely disowns him and negates any leadership qualities of his:


so now that he is president hussein's sockpuppet you have him viciously attacking anyone like howard dean who doesn't fall in line with the white house but cares more about responsible policies.


IMO such a faux liberal journalist does more harm to the discourse than a flat-out liar like hannity could ever bring about.
time to get this back-stabber off the camera