Scooby Doo, Basil Faulty and the Morning Joe Team

I’d have got­ten away with it too if it wasn’t for those med­dling kids

Scooby Doo Where are you (1969−1972)

Right, well I’ll go and have a lie down then. No I won’t; I’ll go and hit some guests.

Basil Faulty Faulty Tow­ers (1975)

A Congressman’s first duty is to get re-​elected

Sam Ray­burn

Just 24 hours after MSNBC view­ers where shocked to learn that John McCain’s gaffe’s con­cern­ing the econ­omy and NOT the selec­tion of Sarah Palin had every­thing to do with his defeat in 2008 Joe Scar­bor­ough and com­pany slipped back into stan­dard MSNBC mode.

Cit­ing Jeb Bush’s remarks he talks about how closed the Repub­li­can Party has become, Mike Bar­ni­cle brought up the 10 – 1 ratio busi­ness and Joe took a swipe at blog­gers and tweet­ers in the process with the panel all back­ing him up as they sit in that most hon­est city in the nation Chicago.

Let’s for­get for one moment that the Bush wing of the GOP didn’t care for the Rea­gan wing until Until George Bush Sr. became Vice Pres­i­dent and the deals he made as pres­i­dent that led to 8 years of Bill Clin­ton (as well argued by Bryan Pre­ston.) Let’s for­get that Morn­ing Joe had noth­ing but scorn for Pat Toomey right up until he actu­ally won and lets for­get, like all MSNBC shows their favorite Repub­li­cans are always those who bash other repub­li­cans: (Hi Gov Hunts­man how ya doing?) only seem to love repub­li­cans who bash the GOP. Let’s even for­get if the GOP took their advice the house would still be con­trolled by Democ­rats who still wouldn’t have passed a budget.

Let’s instead look at their cri­tique of con­gress being unwill­ing to “com­pro­mise” with democrats.

The first point is of course that these deals invari­ably result in real spend­ing increases but phony “cuts” I’ve been hear­ing about bud­get cuts for 20+ years yet fed­eral spend­ing has gone up every year. For some rea­son this fact doesn’t seem to play with this crowd, but that the minor point.

The 2^nd point is the real ques­tion: These GOP can­di­dates who didn’t choose not to give in to the Democ­rats are doing what the vot­ers who elected them want.

These are the vot­ers who stayed home in 2006 when they had enough of GOP spend­ing. These are the vot­ers who stayed home when the “Mav­er­ick Mod­er­ate” John McCain won the nom­i­na­tion, and they are the same vot­ers who made the dif­fer­ence in 2010 for Scott Brown in Jan­u­ary and who drove the big red wave nation­wide on the fed­eral and state level. These are also the vot­ers who elected Scott Walker and who after he refused to com­pro­mise with the Democ­rats in deep blue Wis­con­sin con­vinc­ingly re-​elected him.

Maybe Joe never did his show in his paja­mas, but he also has never done the show from a Major National Tea Party event, if he had back in Sep­tem­ber of 2010 he would have heard this:

“Why are you active now?” The answers were more direct, the actions of this con­gress and pres­i­dent, Oba­macare, cap & tax, the bank bill, the bailouts, small busi­ness own­ers in par­tic­u­lar were adamant about what this was doing. They talked of the pain of lay­ing peo­ple off to survive.

“Who here trusts the GOP?” Not a sin­gle hand went up, but peo­ple over and over promised me that if the GOP spent like the democ­rats they would be back to throw them out too. No won­der the GOP is scared of the tea party.

These are the votes who suc­cess­fully voted for tea party repub­li­cans in Utah, Indi­ana and else­where. These are the vot­ers who melted Olympia Snowe and have kept the rest of the National GOP hon­est, a GOP they have explic­itly said they do not trust. When he insists the future of the GOP is with him he sound like Basil Faulty, his hotel would be a won­der­ful place if it wasn’t for those fool­ish guests.

Joe Scar­bor­ough argu­ment isn’t with the GOP it’s with the vot­ers who elected them. He advises the GOP in con­gress to ignore these votes. An older hand had other advice:

He would never ask a man to do any­thing against his own inter­ests. “A Congressman’s first duty is to get re-​elected” he would say and he would advice young Con­gress­men: “Always vote your district.”

Robert A. Caro: The Years of Lyn­don John­son The Path to Power 1982 pp 329

That man was Sam Ray­burn, one of the great­est mem­bers of con­gress who ever lived. I like Joe Scar­brough and if he thinks Ray­burn was wrong that’s his priv­i­lege and he’s wel­come to make his case to any per­son who will listen.

As for the mem­bers of con­gress, the choice is theirs, Sam Rayburn’s way or Joe Scar­bor­ough & Co’s way. If they want to take Joe’s advice over Mr. Sam’s well, the more fool them.

Update: Medi­aite trum­pets Scar­bor­ough. Sam Ray­burn not mentioned