Hardball for Nov 7 (Chris Matthews discusses abortion and loses it with Marc Racicot)

MSNBC ^ | 11/8/2002 | Chris Matthews

[Utah Girl]

MATTHEWS: We have the Republican Caucus, the Republican Party on here, ideologically speaking, the most far right group ever to assemble, I think. G. Gordon Liddy, Patrick J. Buchanan and Bob Dornan are whooping it up here. We’re going to be joined right now by Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Racicot, thanks for joining us.

MARC RACICOT, RNC CHAIRMAN: My pleasure. Thank you.

MATTHEWS: Are you going to try to appease these wild Indians I got here of the political right or what are you going to do? Are you going to give them an anti-abortion judge that can drive Nita Lowey and the left crazy for the next couple of months?

DORNAN: We all have Irish blood, including the host.

MATTHEWS: It has nothing to do with that (UNITELLIGIBLE). Mr.

Racicot, you’re not Irish, so speak on.

RACICOT: I am Irish. My grandmother was a good Irish person...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh God.

RACICOT: ... and Catholic as well. So I think we all have some disqualifying characteristics.

MATTHEWS: OK, let’s move on to the subject...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Judgeships are probably the hottest question in the country because when you put a judge up, you have to-they basically now have to say OK, I’m pro for abortion rights or I’m anti abortion rights, I’m choice or I’m life. How do you avoid that fight if Sandra Day O’Connor, for example, retires or one of the other judges retires in the next couple of months?

RACICOT: Well, I think you focus upon what the constitution contemplates and that is whether or not they’re qualified by reason of experience and training, and then you talk about the constitutional principles that have been articulated throughout the many generations that the court has sat and heard cases like whether or not you’re going to observe precedent.

There’s a reason for having the rule to observe precedent, and that is to bring about stability in the law. There’s a reason why courts are not consigned with the responsibility to legislate...

MATTHEWS: OK, can we get beyond...

RACICOT: ... because of stability.

MATTHEWS: ... that? I accept all that as sort of backdrop or background music, but the fact is the Republican Party has made a commitment to the far right crowd, to the religious conservatives of this country, to outlaw abortion. Will they make good on that promise?

RACICOT: I don’t think that there’s been any commitment of that kind. What this president has talked about is recommending to the Senate judges who are qualified by reason of their experience and training, and judicial capacity. These people that have been presented to the judiciary committee like...

MATTHEWS: Right.

RACICOT: ... Priscilla Owen or Miguel Estrada, these are people who are highly qualified. They have unanimous recommendations from the American Bar Association; they’re well qualified. These people ought to be considered and ought to receive a vote. The reason they didn’t is because those who control the committee were afraid the Democrats would vote for them too.

MATTHEWS: If all the people in the deep south, and I’m talking about pretty much up to the northern tobacco south, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, all across the south and what you might call the Bible Belt-I don’t mind calling it that-all voted Republican for governor as well as senator, a huge sweep on the red part of the map from last time. You don’t think that’s a mandate to outlaw abortion by the president, by putting pro-life judges on the bench? You don’t read it that way?

RACICOT: I don’t believe that you can distill it that simply, Chris.

I think there are a lot of reasons to explain that. Number one...

MATTHEWS: You don’t want to admit that one of the reasons is abortion?

RACICOT: I don’t think that it’s an expressed requirement or an express expectation. I mean I’m pro-life. I would like to see judges who construe the law in reference to that issue with a great deal of firmness, conviction and faith in the innocence of human life, but I’d never required that when I made an appointment.

I didn’t have that as a litmus test. I listened...

(CROSSTALK)

RACICOT: ... to what it is that they had to say about how they were going to be a judge.

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Marc Racicot, Republican National Chairman. Back to the panel. Does everybody agree with that? I hear you Bob Dornan. Aren’t you amazed to hear that the RNC chair is basically pooh-poohing the idea that this is a big priority question?

[webber]

Isn't it amazing that while Klinton was POTUS, Chris bragged about being a devout Catholic, and that he was going to Rome to see the Pope." And now he's talking about the threat to abortions by right-wing extremists? Isn't he then labeling the Pope, who, in their religion consider the Pope to be infallible in matters of morals, a right-wing extremist? And doesn't this mean that Chris Matthews belongs to a extreme-rightwing religion? How then can he support abortion after his religious leader, the pope, condems abortions of any kind, even contraceptives of any kind? This is your typical demon-rat for you. They revere their religious leaders they say and then tell them to to "hell". They say they believe in Jesus, then raise their hands to God and thrust their middle finger up at Him and tell Him that His laws don't apply to modern society, like all these changes took the Omniscient, Almighty God by total surprise, and suddenly His laws are obsolete and don't apply to todays "modern" society.....times have changed and God Almighty needs to change with the times is the demoncrat mantra.

[MHGinTN]

If you were to stick a long knife into a cadaver, or shoot a cadaver, would you be prosecuted for murder? No. How would your defense attorney approach your case? By showing that the cadaver was not alive of course.

Why is it that the abortionist is not required to prove the 'thing' he/she is about to assault is NOT ALIVE?... I ask, specifically, because many of the little ones being assault are then dissected for tissue transfers to research labs, and if a whole little one were to be sent along to the lab and be found alive upon arrival, could the lab go ahead and harvest tissue anyway? [I'm sure the paradoxes are by now glaring, but here's one further point: the abortion clinics harvesting tissues and whole bodies of the aborted little ones NEVER HAVE TO PROVE THE LITTLE ONE WAS DEAD BEFORE HARVESTING. Think about it. The fetal tissue industry is now a billion dollar plus enterprise!]

[Reactionary]

It is glaring idiocy, isn't it, to insist that a fetus isn't alive.

After all, if it isn't alive, why do we need need abortion? If it's already dead or non-living, there obviously isn't reason to kill it, is there?

Or maybe it's just that liberals believe in killing dead things twice, just in case. Or something...

[Chemnitz]

Laura I. is another attractive, feminine conservative. The conservatives have the most appealing women to speak for the unborn and conservative values. Hooray for us.

THEY have Susan Estrotzarovich.

[Reactionary]

"After all, if it isn't alive, why do we need need abortion? If it's already dead or non-living, there obviously isn't reason to kill it, is there?"

I sent the above statement to O'Reilly once, when he went off on one of his usual tirades concerning abortion. Pithy? Yes. To the point? Indeed. Did he put it on the air? No.

Some things are just a little too obvious for people who are already convinced of something idiotic, I think.

[Malesherbes]

I liked the part where the transcript reported that Matthews was speaking a foreign language. Most of the time his English syntax is so awful and convoluted that it sounds like a foreign language.

No wonder this show is sinking fast, along with the rest of MSNBC.

[MHGinTN]

binky2000 signed up 2002-11-08. You've only just arrived (?). Sit and talk a while.

Murder of the innocent is not enlightened social policy. Contraception, better health programs, healthier homes, emphasis on moral choices, etc., these are enlightened social policies and must become the alternative to serial killing on demand. [You might try using the correct terminology, instead of euphemism like 'pro-choice', if you're trying to get a rise out of Freepers.]

[xm177e2]

I want to see if I get booted out of this site for my views before I put anything else down.

LOL... you can take conservative or liberal position on ALMOST anything here. For the economy, taxes and guns, you sort of have to be moderate or right-wing. Other than that, it's a free-for-all.

This isn't like DU (which kicked me out 5 minutes ago because I questioned the decision to pick Nancy Pelosi, a self-avowed socialist). We have Bush-haters and Trent Lott-haters and all sorts of people here, it's a big tent.

[Reactionary]

"Who is benefitting from this child's birth? Not me, not the child, not the mother, not the taxpayer, not the country."

True enough in most cases. But life isn't something that should be subject to a cost-benefit analysis. Pragmatism is fine in most situations, but I wouldn't say it's exhaustive (particularly concerning issues of life and death).

Life is enough of a "benefit" for you and I. I do not see any reason to deny that to anyone else based upon it's immediate value to myself. That's the difference.

And, just so you know, I'm not a religious person. My argument dealt with a rather simple issue - whether or not a fetus is alive.

[MHGinTN]

I trust you're aware of what a tubal pregnancy is?... A physician should end such a pregnancy asap because it is likely that gestating individual human life will kill the woman and the prenatal will die anyway with that scenario. There, now one of FR's most rabid defenders of the little ones has given you a real reason why abortion is rarely called for.

Would you like to discuss this issue (wholesale abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion and forced premature delivery abortions) from the perspective of life support?

[Blackyce]

So you're doing a Cost-Benefit Analysis on whether we should allow murder?? Perfectly logical.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Who is benefitting from this child's birth? Not me, not the child Sheesh. There's that better off not being born argument again. Sorry friend, but some of the greatest thinkers and leaders of all times were born under the most adverse conditions and in abject poverty.

[Reactionary]

You're being pragmatic. After all, you're asking the question as to what "benefit" the birth of a child would have to yourself, the country, the parents.

And you have not dealt with the issue we were discussing and have instead interjected another issue, namely the "value" of a life.

I may be a rationalist, but I have enough sense to know that debating the relative value of someone else's life is playing with fire. Strangely, those who usually ask for answers to such questions never seem to apply their logic to their own lives. When was the last time your heard someone who advocates a social policy based upon the value of someone else's life apply the same standard of logic to their own lives?

They don't do it. Why? Because, however srange it may seem, the justification for the value of their own lives is rather self-evident. As I said, to everyone alive, life itself is "enough of a value."

[Blackyce]

< parallel reasoning > I am pro-forced euthanization. There is no other way for me to see it. I have to look at it as cold as possible. There are 65 year olds on Social Security who have NO BUSINESS caring for themselves. These seniors, if allowed to be live, would cause further money drain on our already too socialized country (for the most part). The children(for the most part) may also be forced to alter their life plans, and possibly quit their hourly waged jobs and get on the welfare system (in this scenario, the senior's spouse died years earlier). Who is benefitting from this senior's life? Not me, not the senior, not the children, not the taxpayer, not the country. < /parallel reasoning>

[MHGinTN]

The stealth axiom of their argument is, 'the unborn are not individual humans.'

[Reactionary]

What? Do you suppose anyone has ever met a human who wasn't an individual?

Those crazy liberals. What will they think of next? :)

[MHGinTN]

And that individuality starts at conception for every living human being. At some point after conceptrion, life support from another individual human begins and we call it pregnancy. Pregnancy is life support from one individual human being for another individual human being. Apparently, the only way to salve the conscience and withdraw that life support is to fantacize that the one receiving life support is not an individual human. It is human life, it is individual, differing from every other individual human, it is developing its own body. But somehow in the liberal mind, that doesn't make 'it' an individual human if 'it' is scheduled for termination of life support. That's as damned arbitrary as one can get!