One of Joe Scarborough’s biggest assets in assessing American politics today is that his observations come from a true conservative and a neutral eye in the sky. As such, he assessed America’s biggest problem right now and concluded it is the party out of power.
Scarborough retains his true Florida Panhandle roots. He certainly isn’t as conservative as he once was, but he’s still conservative in the true George Will definition. So when Scarborough says that the MAGAs are ruining what was once a great country and how they’re doing it, he has more insight than most. Scarborough says that when the GOP-MAGAs, going back to Obama, are out of power, they have no message or agenda other than talking about the country being “carnage” under Democratic power. So ironic.
From the video below:
“We have problems, but most of our problems right now, if you look across the board, come straight out of Washington, D.C.”
We have a political system that is corrosive right now, and one of the reasons it’s corrosive is because a party that’s out of power spends all of their time talking about how bad America is, just because they’re out of power, and it keeps getting worse, and, of course, it’s at its low point now because you have Donald Trump who starts playing QAnon music and then spends the end of his speeches talking about how bad America is, just like he did before he was president, talking about how bad America was, how bad crime was in America because he wasn’t president When in fact crime was at a 50-year low before he came president of the United States. Talking about how horrible the southern border was, and guess what, before Donald Trump was president, illegal crossings at the southern border hit a 50-year low.”
“The fact is America’s in a strong position now,
We have been in a strong position. We just need politicians who are worthy of representing this great country — we don’t have it right now. What we have right now is pure madness. We need to appreciate what we have, embrace it, and build upon it.”
Well, yeah, but as Joe said, the party out of power doesn’t want to embrace anything. Going all the way back to McConnell saying that there would be no deals in Obama’s first term (or second), the GOP doesn’t want the country to do well. They want power so badly that it’s almost impossible to see a peaceful response to a Biden win. The MAGAs are – again – willing to burn it into the ground. Additionally, if the Republican wins, one worries it may be the last neutral election into the foreseeable future.
It is a little tough to tell whether Scarborough lumped the Democrats under the umbrella. To the extent he did, it’s far far less so. Under Trump, Democrats opposed the tax cut for the rich. But Democrats also signaled a willingness to work on infrastructure, which would have been a massive victory for Trump and the country. He was just too incompetent to get it done. And then, with COVID, the Democrats under Nancy Pelosi put together a relief package that was perhaps too big in PPP and too low for individual families.
Democrats never said that the country was carnage so much as say that Trump was dangerous, a prescient observation.
So this isn’t a “both sides thing,” at least not to the same degree, and Scarborough seems to at least acknowledge that. To the extent he’s speaking about Republicans, he’s 100% correct.
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@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact for speaking engagements or any concerns.