Appearing on Hardball to discuss Mitt Romney‘s new campaign strategy in the wake of being swept in Tuesday’s elections by Rick Santorum, Meet The Press host David Gregory suggested that the former Massachusetts governor has discovered he needs to take drastic measures. “I think what he’s doing now is cautious, tactical play here,” Gregory surmised. “He realizes that he thought he could stay above the fray for a long time, now he realizes he has to rip the guy’s face off here!”

One of the beauties of the transfer of power from major media operations to individuals, bloggers and tweeters is that they — we — can all serve as a sort of fact-checking peanut gallery. So it’s hard to imagine that, in this day and age, the mainstream media could repeatedly misstate the holding of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions without being roundly excoriated. Not a matter of opinion or a partisan viewpoint, but, simply parroting a mistake or lie about the holding in that crucial ruling.

On Monday’s Hardball on MSNBC, Chris Matthews gave President Obama’ an early Valentine, fawningly gushing over the political power of his toothy grin. “I think that smile of his is worth five to ten points in the general!” Matthews exclaimed. He added the caveat , “Hs campaign strategists might feel differently.”

One argument for the GOP nomination Mitt Romney has over his rivals is that his time in the private sector gave him enough experience to effectively create jobs, and because unemployment figures are so dismal, the nation should put Romney in charge so he can fix it. But with the latest numbers showing unemployment is steadily dropping down to 8.3 percent, Chris Matthews wondered if Romney will be able to sustain that argument for much longer.

On Wednesday evening’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews convened an infuriatingly one-sided panel to discuss the Obama administration’s recent decision not to permit an exemption for some religious employers to the contraception mandate. The Washington Post‘s Melinda Henneberger and Melissa Rogers of the Brookings Institution took turns trashing the decision, and the point of view of doctors, nurses, teachers, etc., who would be marginalized by such an exemption was not represented.

During MSNBC’s election night coverage of the Florida GOP primary, Chris Matthews went off on on a lengthy jeremiad against Mitt Romney on how his wealth has made him out of touch with the majority of Americans. “His family has all they want. They’ve gotten their take,” Matthews harangued. “When you’re hiding your money from the tax collectors so that you can have a fatter life, You don’t identify with the person trying to scrabble along making it in our society, who is a true patriot, left, right or center.

Newt Gingrich‘s family values have been the subject of much attention during the GOP primary race, and on his show today, Chris Matthews highlighted a poll which showed roughly half of the respondents rated Gingrich’s personal standards poorly. Mathews asked panelist Andrew Sullivan if the GOP establishment still retained enough clout to heavily influence the race going forward, given the concerns they have about a Gingrich candidacy.

On Wednesday’s edition of Now with Alex Wagner, perpetual motion machine and Hardball host Chris Matthews showed up to liven things up. In a segment about the current slugfest between former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Gov. Mitt Romney in Florida, Matthews (seated next to former Obama spokesman Bill Burton) called out GOP strategist Phil Musser for being a “Romney guy,” and concluded the segment by throwing host Alex Wagner off, responding to her kind outro by saying “This is how you dump guys, huh?”

During a SOTU preview segment on Tuesday evening’s Hardball, MSNBC contributor Howard Fineman made an observation about a rankling trend among certain opponents of President Obama, the tendency not to address him by his hard-won title. Framing it in the context of those who question the President’s legitimacy, Fineman noted “I have never heard Newt Gingrich call President Obama ‘President Obama.’”

I thought I’d put Fineman’s claim to the test, using last night’s debate. The results were surprising.

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Online political media giant Politico turns five years old today, and to celebrate, the site posted a video roast by some quotable notables in the political media world. While the site has arguably earned the right to toot its own horn at least once every half-decade, did they really have to overshadow the birthday of Saved By The Bell actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen?

Last night, all the networks were talking about Newt Gingrich and what his victory in South Carolina means for the future of the GOP presidential race and the chances that Mitt Romney will end up being the nominee. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews told Rachel Maddow that at this point in the race, Romney is incredibly vulnerable, and if he is going to end up being the party nominee, he is going to have to shift to the right to attract the same kind of voters that are now flocking to Gingrich.

In an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball Thursday, Former South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford slammed Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich over the revelations that he asked his ex-wife for an open marriage, saying it called into question his character and that he wouldn’t get her vote.

Juan Williams received some of the most visceral reaction of anyone during Monday’s Fox News Republican debate when asking Newt Gingrich to explain his comments on child janitors. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, he reacted to some of the fallout: namely, Chris Matthews claiming that Gingrich had pronounced his name in a “racially charged” way. Williams didn’t touch the race issue, but did say that he believed the audience looked at him during that as a “strange character.”

A big moment of last night’s debate came when moderator Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich argued over Gingrich’s comments that many have seen as condescending towards blacks. However, Williams really should have been offended due to Gingrich’s incredibly insensitive pronunciation of the word “Juan.” At least, that’s the opinion of Chris Matthews who accused Gingrich of a racial motive in the way he used Williams’ name.

One of the biggest questions in this election cycle is how dedicated the Republican party is to defeating President Obama in November, regardless of who the nominee is. American evangelicals still have a strong distrust of Mitt Romney, partially because of his moderate political positions, but a new poll out shows that a vast majority of them prefer Romney to Obama despite their reservations.

Is former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu this election’s Zell Miller? Challenging Chris Matthews to a duel was just about the only thing he didn’t shout at the MSNBC team today, as he told Ed Schultz the statistics he cited were “a crock of crap,” told Lawrence O’Donnell he didn’t “know what you’re talking about,” and challenged one of Matthews’ comments as “anti-American.”

Hardball host Chris Matthews appeared on Morning Joe Tuesday morning and lauded the independence of New Hampshire voters. “I was going back to ’52, and it says we’re real, we’re American and we’re flinty. A lot of the vote up here is often rejectionist,” Matthews gushed. “If I would voting I’d vote for Huntsman because he’s American.”

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, acting as a surrogate for Mitt Romney, had some choice words for MSNBC’s Chris Matthews when asked whether candidates should be held responsible for ads “put on the air by their former staffers and friends in their interest.”

“Look,” he weighed in, “you guys are reveling and wallowing in [a] ridiculous perception of what’s going on.”

Chris Matthews took notice of Ron Paul‘s presidential campaign today, and wondered how long it would be before the libertarian congressman would finally give up his bid to get the Republican party nomination and run as a third-party candidate. Matthews recalled another fiscally conservative independent who did very well against two establishment figures: Ross Perot, almost twenty years ago. Matthews compared the two candidates and discussed with the panel whether Paul could be just as successful running as an independent.

Chris Matthews descended from his Hardball perch to appear on Rachel Maddow‘s program tonight to preview next week’s New Hampshire primary and size up the relative strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Matthews’ observations of the New Hampshire primary, and possibly the other northeastern Republican primaries, was that there’s really nothing interesting that’s going to happen. In that region of the country, Matthews argued, Romney is pretty much guaranteed a victory over his GOP rivals.

Chris Matthews went head-to-head with flailing Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Gingrich had strong words for fellow GOP opponent Mitt Romney. “He’s not going to be the nominee,” Gingrich boldly declared.

During MSNBC’s Iowa Caucus coverage, The Huffington Post‘s Howard Fineman divulged to Chris Matthews that Michele Bachmann‘s “inner circle is in the process of telling her it’s time for her to drop out.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s NewsNation with Tamron Hall, Hardball host Chris Matthews called out Mitt Romney for relying on the unaffliated Super PAC Restore Our Future to politically cripple Newt Gingrich in Iowa.

During a panel discussion on his Sunday talk show, Chris Matthews questioned whether — faced with lingering economic problems — President Obama was on a path towards defeat. “No matter who the Republicans choose ultimately, voters will have to decide whether to trust Barack Obama with four more years,” Matthews noted. “His low poll numbers and his people say that he must begin to tear down the opposition. So it stands to be a historically negative year…How can you run on a campaign slogan of ‘This is as good as it gets’?

With the Iowa caucuses on the horizon for Tuesday, the strain started to show today on some of the few people in America putting in 100% at work today: the Republican presidential candidates. This is particularly true for Newt Gingrich, who started crying during a talk when prompted to talk about his mother, but his breaking up was excused today on Hardball, where Chris Matthews broke down the “brutal” dynamics of the political game and gave Gingrich the benefit of the doubt.