It seems like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough woke up on the conservative side of his bed this morning.
The “Morning Joe” host, who seems to swing between right and left on certain issues, had his sights set on President Barack Obama’s limp-wristed efforts to rein in deficit spending. According to Scarborough, Obama’s reluctance to embrace the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission report shows he isn’t serious about the issue.
“[The recommended reforms] on Social Security would not touch my children in their teens and in their early 20s, but my 2-year old Mike might be impacted by the time he turns 67,” Scarborough said. “That’s how pathetically weak these recommendations are and the president is still brushing them aside. He is not a serious man when it comes to deficit reduction and he has never been a serious man — to say no to a deficit-reduction plan that would not affect anybody on Social Security 10 years or older – to say that is too extreme when you have people like Marco Rubio in the state of Florida saying we may have to push it up to 70, this president may be serious about many things but deficit reduction is not one of them.”
Scarborough alluded to the tough love that New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie has put in place to get his state’s fiscal house in order. Scarborough suggested Obama emulate him on a national level. However, Scarborough’s sidekick Mika Brzezinski suggested the Republicans in Congress should make the first move because it might be “interesting.”
That drew the ire of Scarborough.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “The buck does not stop, Pat Buchanan, with the president. Harry Truman should have said the buck stops with the majority leader of the United States Senate if that leader is a Republican or the speaker – I mean, come on, this is sad. The buck stops with the president. Leadership stops there and he is MIA on this issue.”
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About an hour later in the program, Scarborough picked up on his rant and attacked the Democratic Party as a whole for demagoguery on entitlements.
“[I]t seems to me that Republicans have gone first the last two times,” Scarborough said. “We did it in ’95 and Bill Clinton shamelessly demagogued Medicare. It was one of the most disgraceful acts I’ve seen. It was for a more disgraceful — we went first and Democrats were able to demagogue. And he lied for years about it. And we saved Medicare. He lied shamelessly. So we’re supposed to do that again? George Bush did it in 2005 and I heard liberals talk forever about how we had to get responsible with entitlement programs. The second bush did that, they killed him. They started writing editorials in The New York Times going, ‘Social Security? Why, it’s solvent for the next five generations.’ Come on! Why should Republicans step out when Democrats have shamelessly demagogued this issue?”