Don't Let The Facts Get In The Way Of My Liberally Biased Story!

On Thursday, Marco Rubio spoke about the importance of free-enterprise, lowering taxes, simplifying the tax code, getting control of our debt and deficits, and fighting terrorism in a smart, effective way. He also eluded to the wisdom our founders demonstrated in crafting our founding documents in a way that ensured individual liberty and guaranteed all the chance to succeed.

These are simple governmental principles that are important to people of many political persuasions, not merely conservatives. In addition, these principles are easy to comprehend. Well, apparently easy for everyone to comprehend except Chris Matthews. When Matthews discussed Rubio’s speech on lowly rated yet somehow still televised show on MSNBC, he referred to the Rubio’s vision as “constitutionally fundamentalist”, which would potentially lead to overturning civil rights legislation, separate but equal, and otherwise set the country back by potentially overturning 50-100 years of Supreme Court decisions. I can’t quite comprehend the mental gymnastics Matthews had to go through to reach such an asinine conclusion. I can only assume that Matthews understands that he can’t compete with Rubio in the marketplace of ideas, so he has to resort to trying to marginalize Rubio, and others who share his views, by making them appear to be racist. This tired strategy is a crutch often used by Matthews and many others who share his views, and it has stifled meaningful debate for far too long.

In addition, these statements by Matthews demonstrate just how completely inept and out of step with reality that many in the news media are. This is a shame, and it illustrates a larger problem with the news. The media is supposed to serve as the political informant of the American public. The have access to politicians that we don't have, and as a result they should be providing us with meaningful, accurate information to help the public make well-informed political decisions. Unfortunately, as Chris Matthews demonstrates with his analysis of the Rubio speech, the actions of many in the news media are doing the public a major disservice.