Curtis Houck:
In the first few minutes of his return to MSNBC on Wednesday afternoon after his wife Kathleen finished a distant third in her Maryland congressional race, Hardball host Chris Matthews branded himself quite the hypocrite as he repeatedly harped on the fact that Ted Cruz running mate Carly Fiorina “is a three-time loser” in her political career and thus “pathetic.”
Matthews kicked the irony into high gear just two minutes in as he told Cruz campaign correspondent Hallie Jackson that “Carly Fiorina is a three-time loser” who “lost statewide in California” plus “at Hewlett-Packard before that” and “lost running for president.”
Three minutes later, a sense of sudden respect came over Matthews for the late Ronald Reagan as he complimented him for his failed 1976 presidential bid against then-President Gerald Ford that included running mate Richard Schweiker:
You know, and I said that back when Reagan picked Schweiker. I got a hint that Reagan, he’s going down fighting. He’s going to play whatever — I’m going to try to win this damn thing, so he sends Jim Baker to try to poach votes fro Gerry Ford, the more moderate Republicans. He didn’t do anything out of it, but he tried.
In contrast to that campaign, Matthews asserted that the Cruz-Fiorina ticket “looks pathetic because,” once again,“she’s lost three contests in a row.”
Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn seized on that remark and added: “And the question is, are two losers better than one? I mean, seriously, she had here brief moment in the sun. Like two, three weeks, she did well in the polls. She did well in the debates.”
Matthews did allude to the fact that he was away from MSNBC’s Super Tuesday 4 coverage, but never stated toMeet the Press moderator Chuck Todd why he didn’t show up:
