Joy-Ann Reid shines as she challenges history revision
Joy-Ann Reid necessarily schools Chris Matthews on his panel as they tried to sanitise the real history of the Republican Party. Chris Matthews asked Republican Strategist Steve Schmidt if the Republican Party establishment used their base and is now paying the price as that base takes over.
“What is the old John F. Kennedy quote,” said Schmidt. “When you try to ride the tiger the problem is sometimes you wind up inside the tiger.”
Schmidt went on to make several points, some that were rather revisionist. He said the Trump fiasco has been building for a long time. He is shocked by those who act as if the tone of the Republican Primary races should be surprising.
“Have they not listened to talk radio for five minutes in this country that reaches fifty million people a day, a moment in the last ten years?” Schmidt asked. “The tone is disgusting around our political discourse. And Trump has been a reflection of that tone in this cage match Republican Primary. You look at the intellectual collapse of the conservative movement, the fading of giants like William F. Buckley, the replacement with purveyors of blogs and polemics. And it has all collapsed”
Joy-Ann Reid could take it no more. During his statement, it was evident that she objected to William F. Buckley as some intellectual giant of the conservative movement.
“Can I just say that if you go back, you have to remember that Jackie Robinson left the Republican Party because Barry Goldwater made a crusade out of opposing civil rights. Willaim F. Buckley Jr., who you lauded there as an intellectual giant of the party, came out in print, in the National Review, and said that the South had good reason to suborn the idea of segregation. There has been a cooptation and a usurpation of a part of what use to be the Democratic Party. You own that base.”
Chris Matthews interjected an important but contextually meaningless statement. He noted Republican Senators overwhelmingly voted for the Civil Rights Bill. In effect, he is jumping on the bandwagon of those in the Republican Party who attempt to mask the racist party it has become by pointing out certain truths. Lincoln, a Republican did free the slaves (Emancipation Proclamation). Many prominent people of color were Republicans, etc. After all, the Dixiecrats, the Southern Democrats, became Republicans.
These are smoke and mirror tactics that glaze over the reality of a party that needs to atone for what it has become. Joy-Ann Reid acknowledged Matthew’s statement and continued.
“They did [vote for the Civil Rights Bill],” Reid said. “But there use to be that embed in the Democratic Party, that George Wallace walked out of the Democratic Party and into the America Constitution Party. They’ve been there since Wallace. They’ve been there since Pat Buchanan. This candidacy has reinvented itself and has been revived and reanimated every generation. Trump is just the latest guy.”
It is refreshing to have Joy-Ann Reid sitting and watching on these panels. Many times she prevents the miseducation or the misinforming of the viewer.