Joe Scarborough, ex-conservative?
Cliff Kincaid in the National Ledger wonders what happened to Joe Scarborough…
There used to be a time when Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, considered himself-and was considered-a conservative. He was a presenter at the 2004 Media Research Center (MRC) Dishonors Awards, which “honors” the most blatant and biased examples of distorted liberal reporting at a dinner that includes hilarious clips of the offending statements. Recently, however, Scarborough put himself up for a nomination, as he devoted his show to the question, “Is Bush an Idiot?,” and won the plaudits of the Washington Post and the left-wing bloggers at Mother Jones.
I say to my friends at the MRC, who have been kind enough to include me as a judge of those awards for many years now, that Scarborough should be “honored” at the next dinner for his pathetic excuse of a program. It is obvious that Scarborough, like his associate Keith Olbermann, has decided that he needs to increase his audience by appealing to the anti-Bush fringe.
The producers at the ratings-starved Scarborough show hit on the perfect theme guaranteed to make one famous in the liberal press. But Scarborough is the one who came across looking like a buffoon, if not an idiot.
I think Mr Kincaid has a fifth-grade understanding of what “conservative” means. Just because someone is conservative does NOT mean (s)he finds the president infallible. There are big differences between traditional conservatives and the so-called “neo-conservatives” that finds the president more infallible than Catholics in 15th century Europe. We often call both Pat Buchanan and Bill Kristol “conservatives” but one has written books about how Bush destroyed “Reagan conservatism” and the other is such an apologist for the administration’s policy he’s doing a better job than his ex-colleague Tony Snow…
Comment by anon — September 22, 2006 @ 9:10 am
I had been a Joe Scarborough fan for a long time.
But as the months went by, as he hosted his show, he had a choice. He could be profound or “cute”.
He decided on “cute” and he lost me.
Joe knows so much about “inside the beltway”. What a waste.
Comment by cella — September 22, 2006 @ 9:52 am
John Kasich’s “Heartland” and Joe Scarborough’s “Scarborough Country” started with a similar idea and a similar approach. But Scarborough has compromised his principles too many times. “Scarborough Country” has moved away from the heartland.
As for anon’s analasis of Pat Buchanan and Bill Kristol: Do you watch Fox News Sunday? Have you ever read The Weekly Standard? BK is hardly an apoligist for the President. He called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation way before anyone else did; and he’s called for more troops all along; and he still does. The President is neither a neo conservative nor a traditional conservative; he’s a compassionate conservative and a social conservative.
Comment by erljr — September 22, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Scarborough is one of those adroit political apostates to do something they have not succeeded doing in their previous lives. He at one time represented the Panhandle area of Florida as a congressman, but found out there are too many fellows much brighter than he is. So he left his seat and now poses as a shill for the liberals he used to hate. Too bad hardly anybody listens to him. Joe, it’s time to say ADIOS.
Comment by RGL — September 22, 2006 @ 11:56 am
Right before Scarborough left Congress, didn’t some guy (a staffer?) blow his own brians out with a gun in Joe’s district office in Florida (for a reason that was not made public), and Scarborough has never been the same since?
Comment by George — September 22, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
Interesting that ‘conservative’ is now synonymous with unthinking support for the current regime. Is it too much to accept that one can be both conservative AND recognize that Bush is intellectually… challenged?
Comment by Arthur — September 22, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
Please tell me how Bush is intellectually challenged. Please tell me something besides him sometimes stumbling on his words in speeches and correct me if I’m wrong, Didn’t Bush score higher in the SAT’s the Kerry?
Comment by Lurker — September 22, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
Poster Number 6,
You have the facts ALL WRONG. This post should be pulled.
An internet search engine will direct you to the facts.
Comment by cella — September 22, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
#9 Thanks. I’ll check it out (you should have posted a link). That’s why I posted the question, because I felt those of you follow this stuff more closely would know. I’m glad you spoke up (that’s the way these things are supposed to work–you’re one of the few who’s ever answered one of my questions).
Comment by George — September 22, 2006 @ 6:29 pm
Even if Scarborough was asking whether Bush was an idiot in a rhetorical manner, I still didn’t like the supposition. And at about the same time, he went tabloid. So I don’t know at which exact point he “jumped the shark” as far as I’m concerned, but I no longer watch. And I used to be one of his biggest fans, calling others to watch his show. No more.
Comment by Missy — September 22, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
#9-Thanks again. Just googled “joe scarborough” and “scandal”, and quite a bit popped back. Recommend others take a look at it when they have time. A lot of unanswered questions in the case appear to still remain.
Comment by George — September 22, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
Well, that’s the internet for you. You can find “unanswered questions” about the Scarborough “scandal”, and about who wired the explosives in the World Trade Center, and about who really killed Vince Foster. Don’t fall for that stuff.
Comment by johnny dollar — September 23, 2006 @ 1:56 am
George, I did a lot of searching about those insinuations about the death of that employee in Scarborough’s office. I found two interesting points concerning the reported autopsy findings of the medical examiner who, from reading these Internet articles, apparently was fired from his job in Missouri and was under investigation by the Florida Board of Medicine for “lying” about his record. I cannot document the veracity of this, but if true, is significant. He also appeared to be a major contributor to Scarborough’s election. (All this information is gleaned from a search of Internet articles easily available for anybody to review.)
Here are the two interesting points I found:
(1) The employee was reportedly found to have a skull fracture with a subdural hematoma (a blood clot in the brain). That’s enough to cause death if the clot is not evacuated on time. One thing that can cause that is a fall with major trauma to the skull, which happens in a lot of accidents. This was, from reading excerpts of the findings, presumed to be an accidental fall.
(2)The coroner also found a “floppy mitral valve” which indeed can cause rhythmm disturbances of the heart. To say, in retrospect, that she had cardiac arrythmias to have caused her to die is at best speculation. One would be more comfortable in arriving at that conclusion if there is a history of this woman having had these “arrythmias” well-documented in the past. The only way to unequivocally say she died of these arrythmias was if they were recorded on a Holter monitor. The usual arrythmia is what is called ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrilltion which may lead to cardiac arrest, with resulting deprivation of blood to the vital organs.
Anyway, I am not at all trying to make any insinuations here other than to clarify for laypeople some points, if the Internet records are true. Katherine Harris was reported to raise some questions about Joe when the Florida GOP was thinking of tapping him to run against Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, which he declined to do. Harris won the GOP primaries this month, but has not been embraced by her party that believes her chances of beating Nelson are nil.
Since all these allegations against Joe apparently did not result in any charge, it’s well to move on and judge him on the merits of his job at MSNBC. I used to like him but his recent views are upsetting a lot of people who supported his conservative philosophy. Maybe it’s just a reminder that people can change, as is evident with Joe.
Comment by RGL — September 23, 2006 @ 10:42 am
There is a HUGE difference between what Joe Scarborough does and what Keith Olbermann does. The difference? Keith Olbermann believes in what he says; he isn’t just “pandering to the anti-Bush crowd.” Joe, on the other hand, has seen how well Keith is doing lately and that, combined with possibly his own disillusions about Bush, has caused his conservatism to become rather flabby of late. He doesn’t seem to know which way to go.
Comment by tanne — September 23, 2006 @ 11:08 am
I should add something to my comment above, in order to be fair to Joe: he is your old-fashioned classic conservative in that he doesn’t believe in big government and massive expenditures. I think he is distressed by the fact that the Bush Administration doesn’t seem to mind big government and huge spending so long as it is aimed at promoting their agendas. This does not make him happy. And in that sense I cannot blame him. Barry Goldwater would not like Bush, either. So Joe is stuck with being a conservative who doesn’t approve of the current administration–and I think he has yet to find his voice on how to express that. It’s easier to do another story on American Idol.
Comment by tanne — September 24, 2006 @ 8:21 am
maybe we are seeing the real joe
Comment by Jerry Mack — September 24, 2006 @ 8:07 pm