Scarborough Clashes With Bernstein Over GOP Meltdown: Enough of Your ‘Moral Lecturing’
For the third week in a row, legendary journalist Carl Bernstein got under the skin of Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough Wednesday morning by framing the current GOP infighting over the government shutdown as an epochal political moment rather than a dispute over tactics, and Scarborough showed signs that his patience was wearing thin.*
“This is an ethical question,” Bernstein posited. “The moral issue is not Obamacare. The moral issue is allowing the United States, our very fabric of our being, our governmental system, our finances, to be absolutely obliterated. We have been affected terribly by this event. This is watershed.”
“I sat here and listened to you with your moral lecturing last time. No, this is a battle over tactics,” Scarborough said. “I disagree of the tactics of how we get there. I think we have to be smarter. It’s not a moral issue. It’s like Nicolle Wallace said: let’s not have a debate over whether the conservative party or the moderate party. Let just stop being the stupid party.”
RELATED: Bernstein Whips Media for Blaming Both Parties for Shutdown: ‘There are Facts Here’
“If i’m not mistaken, the stock market is still doing pretty well,” Scarborough continued. “We’re at 15,000, Carl, and you’re acting like locusts have descended from heavens and have eaten the flesh off of every American. Listen, that 15,000? It’ll crash. The markets will crash, more Americans will be hurt than have already been hurt if this goes on for a week or two or three. But we’re not there yet.”
“This is a continuum that has been going on for years with this president,” Bernstein said. “Let’s go back to George Bush’s election. Let’s see how the Democrats took George Bush’s election and the Supreme Court decision and recognized his legitimacy as president. And then let’s look at what happened with Sarah Palin and the nine leaders of the party, who on Inauguration Day said we are going to cut this guy’s legs off. How did this happen? ”
“Democrats called him a Nazi for eight years,” Scarborough said. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard a Democrat say that George Bush has shredded the Constitution for doing same exact thing that Barack Obama continues to, do well, I would have as much money as [Morning Joe co-host] Willie Geist.”
* Regular viewers will note the absence of McCarthy references. So much for my drinking game.
Watch the full segment below, via MSNBC:
[Image via screengrab]
