We’ve heard the conspiracies. They’re rampant all over the Internet that President Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya or Indonesia. Though they have been roundly dismissed by many on the left and the right, left-leaning outlets still use the conspiracy theory to marginalize conservatives.
However, on Thursday’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan makes a good point – that people who want to connect former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the tragedy in Tucson last weekend may be invoking their own “birther”-like conspiracy into the dialogue. That is something “Hardball” host Chris Matthews has been willing to do since his first broadcast following the tragedy.
“You mentioned the birthers, but I’ll tell you Chris on the right – guys who go out and say somehow because Sarah Palin put out some silly map that this guy could not have conceivably seen – she is morally complicit. They think guys like you are like the birthers of the left.”
Another point Buchanan made was that Matthews’ repeated allusions to the “Second Amendment remedies” remark made by former Nevada Republican senatorial candidate Sharron Angle in a radio interview earlier this month. Is Matthews doing more harm by repeating the statement over and over to score political points?
“You shouldn’t say Second Amendment remedies,” Buchanan said. “But let me ask you something – who said it 1,000 times on the air? Sharron Angle said it once. I agree with you. You would say, ‘Look Sharron, don’t use it. Are you inflaming or informing? … But you keep repeating it.”
Buchanan is on to something here. A Nexis search indicates that over the last 30 days, the term “second amendment remedy” has been mentioned at least once on 10 different prime time MSNBC broadcasts. Compare that to CNN, where it was mentioned on four different broadcasts and Fox News, only once.
Watch:
But military metaphors are an inherent part of the political lingo, Buchanan said.
“Chris, we have used military metaphors — what is a campaign about if not a military maneuver?” he continued.