Watching this afternoon's edition of Hardball on MSNBC, I was startled to see conservative scoundrel, Patrick J. Buchanan playing the atypical role of "the voice of reason" during a discussion of the dust-up between Obama and Clinton at the debate the other night.
A few days before the Debate, Obama had made some remarks during a session with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette that were clearly meant to appeal to the paper's more conservative readers.
First he praised Ronald Reagan:
I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.
Then he switched gears and talked about the Republicans during the last 10 - 15 years:
I think it is fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense they were challenging conventional wisdom.
Senator Clinton brought this up during the debate and challanged her opponent on the second point thus:
I do think that your record and what you say does matter. And when it comes to a lot of the issues that are important in this race, it is sometimes difficult to understand what Senator Obama has said, because as soon as he is confronted on it, he says that's not what he meant.
The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote. Now, I personally think they had ideas, but they were bad ideas. They were bad ideas for America.
A slightly unfair paraphrasing, but certainly a legitimate point.
Obama played dumb, his rejoinder was to accuse her of saying that he had praised the ideas of Ronald Reagan! Of course, Clinton didn't even mention Reagan, in fact she clearly was referring to Obama's second statement, about Republican ideas over the last 10 - 15 years (Reagan left the White House 19 years ago, Bill Clinton was inaugurated 15 years ago).
On the Hardball panel, which was split about evenly between left and right, was a Clinton surrogate, a left wing radio host who is backing Obama, Chris Matthews, a conservative tool, and Mr. Buchanan.
Matthews immediately lit into Clinton, accusing her of "distortion" of Obama's statements about Reagan. The Clinton guy rather lamely tried to simply say that her point was valid while the talk show host aggressively pushed Mathews' line. Buchanan wasn't called upon to comment immediately but you could see him in his box on the screen, fidgeting, getting indignant.
After another round of discussion from the other two guests, which the talk show guy dominated by virtue of loudly talking over everything the Clinton guy tried to say, Buchanan was finally asked to comment.
Buchanan exploded into the conversation saying in effect, "Sheesh you guys! She was talking about the Republican ideas over the last 10 or 15 years, not about Reagan. She didn't even mention Reagan!"
It threw the whole discussion off for about a half a second, then the radio guy butted in again and Matthews used that opportunity to sidetrack the conversation.
In the next segment, Buchanan was gone and Matthews was on to giving Bill Clinton a hard time.