On his Tuesday broadcast of “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough doubled-down on his disdain for Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich, attacking him for the persona he puts on in political situations.
“I wrote a column about him six months ago and it was all about what Newt was saying — what comes out of his mind,” Scarborough said. “He called Kathleen Sebelius, who is a very nice lady, called her bland on Politico. She’s not bland. She is a nice lady. You can disagree with her. He compared her to Joseph Stalin just this year. He said the Democratic Party was … a socialist, secular machine that poses a greater threat to America than Nazism? No. He called the [Congressional Budget Office] a socialist scheme basically to take down America. No. He is not a nice human being. He is a bad person when it comes to demonizing opponents. As George Will said, he would have made a marvelous Marxist because he dehumanizes anybody that gets in his way.”
And to cement his dislike of Gingrich for viewers, he made the comparison of him to former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who Scarborough has been very tough on over the years.
“I want to make sure — is that fair?” Scarborough asked. “I’m not talking about the conclusions, but just over the past six months he has said some horrific things about people with families, with children. He is a — when he puts on his political helmet — he is a terrible person. He dehumanizes people, like Glenn Beck, calling them racists, bigots, socialists, Marxists.”
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Scarborough served in Congress under Gingrich’s leadership and recounted his experience, suggesting that Gingrich lacks resilience in political situations.
“We had to push Newt because he wanted to cave in,” Scarborough said. “Those of us who told Newt, ‘If you don’t fight for a balanced budget and don’t fight for these tax cuts and don’t fight for the cuts in committee chairmanships, etc., etc., that we promised we were going to do, we are going to kick you out’ — those 10 or 15 or so, every one of them — Tom Coburn, Matt Salmon running again in Arizona, all of them. They may not be saying it publicly, but privately they’re sending me e-mails every day going, … ‘How many times does Newt have to teach these people he’s bad for the conservative movement?’ So there’s — I’ve got to say I don’t believe, Mika — there was something in Politico that said people were holding the fire against Newt because they were — they were thinking they might have to make peace with him if he won the nomination. Let me tell you something: The Republican establishment will never make peace with Newt Gingrich. They just won’t.”
According to the former Florida congressmen, a win for Gingrich would be a win President Barack Obama in 2012.
“This is an important point because the Republicans I talked to say he cannot win the nomination at any cost,” Scarborough added. “He will destroy our party. He will re-elect Barack Obama and we’ll be ruined.”