Chris Matthews’ Weak Grasp of Government Shutdown History Chris Matthews pens book about the 1980s – “when politics worked.” Somehow Matthews-the-author never noticed that his boss back then, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, shut down the government 12 times – 8 of those while Ronald Reagan was president. So basically every damn year. Chris Matthews just wrote a book about his time as a congressional staffer during the 1980s, so you’d think he would have a better memory of how things worked back then. The blowhard host of MSNBC’s Hardball has seemingly forgotten about the government shutdowns that he was a part of while working for then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Back then, Republicans controlled the White House and the U.S. Senate, while O’Neill and his fellow Democrats played the role of loyal opposition while controlling a majority of the U.S. House. To Matthews, those were the glory days of compromise “when government worked,” according to the subtitle of his new book. That, despite the eight government shutdowns that happened between 1981 and 1988 when Reagan and O’Neill couldn’t come to an agreement on budgetary issues. A few days ago, Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, called Matthews out — on his own show, no less — about the intellectual dishonesty being peddled by the host. “You know, your boss, Tip O’Neill, shut down the government 12 different times. And you didn’t call him a terrorist.” Matthews claimed to remember only one such shutdown, then later recalled others but said they were different because “These were always issues of a couple of days. And they were always resolved, and they were over numbers” In other words, it was different then. The difference is that, back then, a Republican was in the White House and the Democrats were the ones playing defense.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 10:57:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015