Journalist Carl Bernstein chided the media for its false equivalency narrative of the government shutdown on Morning Joe Tuesday morning, arguing that the GOP’s “nihilism” was driving destructive, anti-governing policies.
“This is about media,” Bernstein said. “These poll numbers are about a totally different media culture than we’ve had in the past…We need to start covering this story not 50/50, this much on this side, that on the other. We need to cover it factually, because there are facts here that will show what this event is about, and where, in fact, is this anger, hatred of Obama coming from, what is the root of this.”
“We’re at a great cultural moment, a great political, pivotal moment in our history,” Bernstein said. “I compared it last to week to Joe McCarthy. This is about the Republican Party and what it’s going to be. Is it going to conduct a fact-based, philosophical argument in our political system, or is it going to be a nihilistic, hateful asymmetrical, in terms of facts and the truth, part of the party, as in Joe McCarthy?”
“I’ve been patient,” co-host Joe Scarborough said, referring to the previous week’s segment in which Bernstein’s McCarthy references caused Scarborough and guest Bill Kristol to team up on him. “I gave you twelve Joe McCarthy references.”
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Former George W Bush communications director regular Nicolle Wallace, instructed by Scarborough to play the “Kristol role” this week, actually built off Bernstein’s point, arguing that the GOP was ideologically unified but paralyzed by a dispute over methods and motives.
“It’s more fundamental,” Wallace said. “The divide in the Republican Party isn’t about haters and lovers. It’s about governing and not governing. And there is a group—and you can condemn their motives and you can condemn the outcome—but there’s a group that is simply not interested in governing, and that is the new divide in the Republican Party. They don’t fracture on ideological lines because ideologically we as a party are all on the same page: we do not believe Obamacare is the right way to reform the health care system. There is no divide in the Republican Party on the policy. But there is a great and bleeding wound now over whether we as a party are meant to govern.”
“That’s why I called them nihilists!” Bernstein said.
Watch the full segment below, via MSNBC:
[Image via screengrab]