Quote of the Day: Digging

The Quote of the Day is from E.J. Dionne, who said this on today's Meet the Press:

When you are in a hole economically, you need to dig out. That's a time when you need government.

My response:


Other Meet the Press runners up for Quote of the Day below the fold, mostly Rachel Maddow getting a well-deserved slap-down...

Watching MTP today was an exercise in both loving and hating Mike Murphy. He slapped Rachel Maddow a couple of times, but also had to prove his mainstream bona fides by digging at Sarah Palin unnecessarily.

On the stimulus (bold added). David Brooks, for the score - Murphy with an assist:

MR. BROOKS: But where's the proof it's working?

MR. MURPHY: Yeah. Where are the jobs?

MR. BROOKS: We have, we have a stimulus package, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars we don't have. They promised it would bring unemployment rate down to 7, it hasn't done so.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, there are no jobs from this program.

MS. MADDOW: Well, what was the alternate plan? The Republican plan, the alternate plan to the stimulus was a five-year spending freeze.

MR. MURPHY: Well...

MS. MADDOW: How, how would we be doing right now?

MR. BROOKS: No, no, no.

MR. MURPHY: (Unintelligible)

MS. MADDOW: Five year...

MR. BROOKS: No, the Republicans had a $450 billion stimulus package.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah.

On bipartisanship w.r.t. the stimulus:

MR. MURPHY: It went through the appropriations way. If he'd lived up to his campaign rhetoric and had a bipartisan approach, he could've got a payroll tax holiday for working people, would've put a lot of consumption money into the economy a lot quicker.

MS. MADDOW: A bipartisan approach on stimulus? Really? Bipartisan approach?

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, absolutely.

MS. MADDOW: The Republicans would be willing to go along with that?

MR. MURPHY: If it was a payroll tax holiday, you would've got at least half of the caucus.

MS. MADDOW: That's hysterical.

Hysterical, yet 100% true. Larry Lindsey was talking about a payroll tax holiday in The Weekly Standard in Dec/08-Jan/09, and I think it made a lot of sense.

Maddow/Murphy on the GOP Olympic schadenfreude:

MS. MADDOW: Well, the unseemly cheering on the right for America losing its Olympic bid I think is going to be the taste that lingers a long time after this failure. Certainly the president tried to get something and he didn't get it, and people who hate the president feel like that's a cause for celebration. But to see, for example, the Weekly Standard post "Chicago loses, Chicago loses, cheers erupt at Weekly Standard headquarters" I think says a lot more about the Weekly Standard, it says a lot more about the right right now than it does about this loss. [...] For them to be cheering America's loss here on the right I think is sort of disgusting.

MR. MURPHY: I'm, I'm enjoying the irony of the left attacking people's patriotism after complaining about it during every Republican campaign. But there are two big issues here. One, the president looks weak, it's bad politics for him. I was for the Olympics here. But there's a second thing going on which is inside Washington stuff, but important. I think last week it was pretty clear that Valerie Jarrett's running the White House, because this was amateur staff work. You never send the president of the United States around the world to something where you don't know the outcome.

Slap!

More Murphy slappage on the O-lympics and American exceptionalism:

MR. MURPHY: Exactly, exactly. I don't like the, the fact that the White House or the staff--and again, I think the professional staff is ignored here--can get rolled by the Brazilian minister of sport. That bothers me.

MS. MADDOW: You know, but listen. Every, every member of every country that was in the finals sent a head of government or a head of state. The last two...

MR. MURPHY: But there's a difference, Rachel.

MS. MADDOW: The last--but the last two Olympic--it isn't.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah. The president of the United States...

MS. MADDOW: We're America, it's different.

MR. MURPHY: ...is a special category, a one, and you don't put a president in that position in a competent staff.

MS. MADDOW: Sure. And tell a Spaniard that King Carlos is second, second rate. I mean, at this point...

MR. MURPHY: King Carlos knows deep down he's second rate to the president of the United States.

Mwah ha ha!

MR. MURPHY: [...] What's happened is we've created--there is kind of a freak show business now of, of each side which amplifies the shrillest voices. We have one-party cable networks now, one of each, and what that does is dumbs down the debate. Everything's argument by noise, by hot language and by anecdotes, you know, so facts and more complicated debate is pushed out because it's not loud and colorful enough.

MS. MADDOW: Is Joe...

MR. MURPHY: It cheapens the debate.

MS. MADDOW: Wait, is, is Joe Scarborough, which network is he on? Which one-party network?

MR. MURPHY: He's on your liberal network.

MS. MADDOW: So he's the--how is that a one-party network?

MR. MURPHY: I would take your prime time and Fox prime time and say it is kind of a--the same dance toward the dumbing of debate.

Lest we get too excited about Mr. Murphy...

On Sarah Palin's book:

MR. MURPHY: [...] I'm, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to wait for it to get spell-checked, but then I'm going to buy it.

Was that necessary, Mike?

Posted by: JoeCollins at 12:57 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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