“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough — once seen as a lone voice of conservatism at MSNBC — has leveled criticism at former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and GOP presidential nomination frontrunner Herman Cain, dismissing his ascendancy as “the flavor of the week.”
On his Thursday show, Scarborough backed that claim by offering his detractors anecdotal evidence of times he was right in the past.
“Remember last year, Sarah Palin — I came out and I said … ‘the mainstream Republican Party will not accept her.’ Everybody said ‘oh!’ Oh, the hate mail. Remember what I said about Glenn Beck — that he wouldn’t last at Fox because he was too extreme even for Fox. Remember the hate mail? That would never happen, right? Then what I said about Michele Bachmann after the Iowa deal.”
Watch:
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“They get so angry,” he said. “And it made me sad right here. It really does. When I hurt you, it hurts me — I want you to know that. Because I’m telling the truth that it upsets you. I don’t want to upset you, I really don’t. It’s like when I said all that about Newt [Gingrich]. Remember Newt had come on and I wrote a really stinging op-ed that said this … his rhetoric was too extreme to win? I was called hateful. ‘Joe, you still carry a grudge.’ Why do I carry a grudge? He didn’t kick us out of Washington, we kicked him out of Washington.”
The “Morning Joe” host trotted out a couple more I-told-you-so examples for his viewers, including Perry and Trump.
“Trump, Perry,” he continued. “Remember Perry? I don’t hate any of these people. Everybody knows I’ve got nothing but love in my heart. … But it really has to be irritating to these wingnuts — that keep calling me a RINO [Republican in Name Only] — that I know the Republican Party better than they know the Republican Party. In fact, I’ve got the Republican Party nailed down. I know the heart of the Republican Party. They know the heart of nutbar land.”
Based on that, Scarborough said he feels strongly enough to say Cain won’t be the nominee either, and he is nothing more than the “flavor of the week.”
“So let me just say — Herman Cain: Flavor of the week,” he concluded. “He will not win the nomination. And by the way, say all the ugly things you said about me when I said it about Sarah Palin. When I said it about Perry and when I said it about Bachmann and when I — the list is so long — [said it about] Glenn Beck. You see, I understand that you hate me, despite the fact that I love you because I’ve got Christ in my heart. I know you hate the fact that I’m always right and you’re always wrong. I know that hurts you. I just said, I have Christ in my heart.”
Scarborough also referenced a line from “Star Wars” at the end of his rant.
“It’s the same story — you and your stupid websites, you say what you want,” Scarborough said. “I’m like Obi-Wan Kenobi — the conservative Obi-Wan — just strike me down and I’m only getting stronger, Darth.”
Once upon a time, Scarborough was a respected figure in the conservative movement, serving as a one-man balance to the liberal bastion of MSNBC. However, in recent years, his star has faded among some conservatives.