The Republican Media- No. 13

"Maybe we should elect John McCain to get us out of this war." It isn't the absurdity of this statement, from Chris Matthews on the 3/24/08 Morning Joe on MSNBC, that is significant. It's that Matthews had spent roughly the previously five minutes explaining to Pat Buchanan, Mika Brzezinski, and Pat Buchanan how important he thinks it is to withdraw our soldiers from Iraq "swiftly." Matthews' emphasis was on the danger of having American troops objects of anger for anti-western extremists and he noted that Democrats in the fall election will knock McCain for finding acceptable leaving soldiers in Iraq 100 years. Criticizing use of "surge" instead of "election," Matthews had roundly criticized the media's acceptance of politically strategic terminology from the Bush Administration and asserted "the definition of 'victory' is Americans get to come home, they don't get to stay there."

Matthews responded to Buchanan's reference to congressional Democrats failing to extricate the U.S.A. from Persian Gulf War II, comparing their fear to the "lost China" slur of the (Joe) McCarthy era. Matthews' comment came on the heels of a reference to the value of electing Republicans to end the war and apparently to the "Nixon goes to China" idea, that only someone, or some party, associated with one course of action could avoid the vicious attacks inevitable if the other party were to take the action.

Warning to Barack Obama (Clinton already believes, or is pretending to believe, that she is getting bad press): Once the general election campaign formally begins, after the convention(s), most of the excitement of the media over a potentially historic election ends; then, it's Republican vs. Democrat- and to make matters worse, the Repub is media icon McCain. If a member of the media who opposed the war when it began (supporting it briefly after military victory was swiftly achieved) and has opposed it now for years