Morning A' La Carte

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 5th, 2010


Observations


1) As much as I’m critical about the Morning Joe show missing key elements of a story, I have to admit that I caught the Cuba flight list item yesterday, but either ran out of room to talk about it or just didn’t. I’m happy that the show and it’s longtime reality measuring guest Eugene Robinson tackled the prima facie of the matter today.


But the missing dimension is that if anything, it’s a good sign for Cuba that the administration is considering them among these 14 nations. It must be read that the administration is preparing for the eventuality of a normal relationship with Cuba and the good and bad that come with it. We have a prison there. We have listened to cautionary takes for a long time that if that base were domestic it would be a terrorism target. We must adjust that if we were to allow domestic bound flights from Cuba, it must carry with it the possibility of pass through terrorism from persons relating themselves to Guantanamo inmates. So as a potential conduit, it’s smartly on the list.


Eugene’s take has another problem in that it reads as a tit for tat from the side of the far left. Ever talk to Chris Matthews about Cuba? He still wants to nuke them for assassinating JFK. We have established the MJR lucidity test, and of these two far left takes, Eugene Robinson’s fails, and Chris Matthews’ irrational outburst passes. Crazy.


2) But any day that David Ignatius is on the show is a great day for lucidity. He in fact has come off of the Harrison Ford perch for a second to tackle the very subject. As Joe Scarborough butcher para-titled: the “Californication of American Government”. JS has for a long time considered California ungovernable. But in typical fashion it’s a talking point that mysteriously has lacked any detail or substance ever in the history of the show, allocating it to the mile high pile of negative broadstrokes that define his and the shows greatest challenge.


Ignatius eloquently put his finding in a paragraph. The state started with a 60 billion dollar budget imbalance, wound up with a 21 billion dollar one, and is running around telling itself it did its job governing. It bodes grimly for the whole union in that it is a microcosm for the fundamental inability of the legislative and executive branches, as designed by our forefathers, to make a difficult people first decision, instead deciding based on lobby, campaign, earmark, and commerce.


Mort Zuckerman quickly paralleled the health care process where a three word ideal took 2600 pages in congress just to pay everyone off but the American citizen.


What I found striking is that Joe Scarborough conveniently missed an opportunity to defend his take that the cloture rule “softens” legislation as a necessary stabilizing force in good governments. We have invented another test here at MJR called the scoreboard test, and you fail that test friend, there are no results of good government anywhere in sight, just deliberative bodies instead deciding based on lobby, campaign, earmark, and commerce.


3) Another great missed opportunity was the fantastic dichotomy of Ignatius’ point and the earlier Erick Erickson interview. Believe it or not, there is some merit in Erickson’ take if you could pick and choose. But you know the problem, we all know the problem, it’s the purity test.


If the next great political party is purple, guys like Erickson unfairly bind the voter into platforms unassociated with each other. You can’t be purple if you can’t take each item a' la carte.


Being an independent to me is fiscal responsibility, mixed with privacy protections that keep the government out of my social life. What it means to another demographic can be polar opposite, and they are equally invited. It’s the lack of a connectivity to the unrelated agenda items that is key to being in the middle.


Erickson has a great take about commerce (mentioned above) being a disaster to government as displayed in supernova fashion in the health care debate. But because I think that health care is a public good, we apparently can never be friends.


Until the show can create a lucid dialogue between the Erickson take and the Ignatius take on its same show, it fails the third test we are unveiling here on Morning Joe Rebuttal: the connect the dots in real time test. You can’t idolize ideology at 6 and damn ideology at 8


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.