Morning Joe 2/3/2012 -- Divided Republicans

On Morning Joe today the guests were John Meacham, Steve Rattner, Sam McKinnon, Eugene Robinson, David Gregory, Bill Press and Chuck Todd. The topic for the first hour and a half I watched was the state of the Republican primary. Who better to give an objective, insightful analysis of the Republican Party than Leftists and Centrists. I suppose McKinnon and Scarborough were the voice of the Republican Party -- they are both part of the no-labels faction of Republicans who are very disappointed in the choices they have in the primary. McKinnon put afloat again the idea of Scarborugh being drafted to run for President. That was the comedy part of the show.

The Republican Party appears divided in 4 or 5 parts:  Country Club Republicans, no labels Republicans, limited government conservatives, social conservatives and neo-conservatives. Romney is being framed by media and conservatives as a Country Club conservative. Scarborough and Mckinnon sounded like liberals from Politico as they accused Romney of not caring for the poor. They first twisted Romney's words yesterday, and now they are carrying it a step further to accuse Romney of not caring about the plight of the poor, of being disconnected from the pain of poverty. But Scarborough put another phony twist on this to distinguish his angle from the average liberal. Scarborough said that he and other "small government" conservatives reacted to Romney's statement about the poor and the safety net because they believe the poor are hurt by the welfare state and that free market principles will pull the poor out of poverty -- that they want to get government out of the way. Scarborough can not be more disingenuous.

Scarborough implied that he would run on eliminating the welfare state -- he would fight to do away with the government safety net. The Leftists on the Morning Joe panel didn't challenge Scarborough, although they would challenge anyone else who wants to eliminate the welfare state -- they knew Scarborough was being disingenuous, but he was attacking Romney, so that was cool. Morning Joe this morning was about political deceit. The implied criticism of Romney from Scarborough and crew is that he's not politically deceitful -- he doesn't know how to pretend to care about the poor in the proper conservative fashion. The whole conversation, because it was not based on honesty, was so convoluted it became absurd to anyone listening closely.

McKinnon remained silent when Joe said he was for removing the government safety net, because McKinnon is not for removing the government safety net, and neither is Scarborough. McKinnon and Scarborough are not in search of a limited government/free market conservative candidate. They would support Ron Paul if they were. Scarborough, McKinnon, David Brooks, David Frum and that whole faction of Republicans want a Mitch Daniels type candidate -- a moderate who runs in the Center and plays both sides, but leans toward the slow progressive movement to "smart", "compassionate", government. They believe the strict constitutionalists and free market fanatics are too extreme, but they will use the rhetoric and play with liberty in order to get broad support.

The purpose of the Leftists on Morning Joe, with Scarborough as their useful idiot, is to stoke the divisions and avoid any focus placed on Obama's performance. Steve Rattner said that although unemployment will probably be 9% at the end of 2012, Obama is doing a good job and his policies are working because without his policies unemployment could be higher. This is like supporting a CEO of a company that lost 50 billion dollars because without this CEO the company could have lost 100 billion. Only in the political realm does Rattner's support of Obama make sense. The Right and the Left in the political realm right now are joined in the Center where statist power resides. All the political babble is just for show. Each little faction wants to find a seat at the table of power, and hopefully a seat at the head of the table, but none want any real limits on power.