MSNBC TRANSCRIPT
Hardball with Chris Matthews
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Guests: Tom DeLay - - - -
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Harris, Clarence Page,
John Harris, Clarence Page, Todd Harris, Steve McMahon
But first, a look at the state of this race less than a week before voters go to the polls beginning tonight with former the House majority leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas. Mr. DeLay, are you happy with the tone of the Republican campaign, phrases like socialist, communist, anti-American, all kinds of stuff being thrown at Barack Obama? Is it right? Is it fair? Is it smart?
TOM DELAY (R-TX), FORMER HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: Absolutely, it is. I wish McCain would be a little more assertive, to be honest with you. I think what’s going to win this is when people get to the polls, they just can’t bring themselves to vote for a radical like Obama. It’s deja vu all over again. He’s more to the left than Gore or John Kerry put together, and the American people are starting to realize that. And that’s what I think McCain ought to be focusing on, not that Obama’s not ready. Hillary Clinton tried that. It’s that he is too radical for the American people.
MATTHEWS: Where would you put him on that spectrum between-well, you’re using terms like “socialist.” You’re not-you’re happy, I guess, OK with words like “communist.” We had somebody on the show the other day who said he ought to be checked out for being anti-American. Where would you put him? Do you think he’s anti-American in his values?
DELAY: Chris, I tagged him as a Marxist months ago, particularly when you look at his relationship with Jeremiah Wright, his relationship with William Ayers. It’s not that Wright makes outrageous sermons, it’s that Jeremiah Wright is a black liberation theology preacher. And 20 years of association means that he must agree with the Marxist theology of black liberation theology. Same with William Ayers. It’s not that he’s a terrorist, it’s that this guy is so anti-American, he wants to completely destroy America and build a new America. And yet...
MATTHEWS: What are you talking about? Are you talking about...
DELAY: William Ayers.
MATTHEWS: ... Barack wants to destroy-oh...
DELAY: William Ayers.
MATTHEWS: Where’s Barack on this? Do you think Barack’s anti-American?
DELAY: Well, that’s-I’m not going to go that far, but the interview on NPR...
MATTHEWS: Well, you’re going pretty far. You’re calling him a Marxist.
DELAY: Well...
MATTHEWS: That’s pretty far. You’re calling him a radical. That’s pretty far.
DELAY: Chris, all you have to do is listen to that interview in 2001 on NPR that came out this week, and that connects all the dots. I mean, he explained his world view. He explained his world view as it relates to the Constitution. He called the Constitution a charter of negative rights and that we need to rewrite the Constitution to broaden the scope of the government to work on your behalf. If that’s not socialist, if that’s not Marxist, I don’t know what is.
MATTHEWS: So where are we at on this? Let me ask you about something that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said on this show the other day. She said that she thought that the media ought to conduct a probe of anti-American thinking within the Democratic side of the Congress. Do you think that’s smart to say something like that?
DELAY: Well, I-I know Michele Bachmann. She is a brilliant congresswoman, and she’s-I think she’s going to be reelected in Minnesota. She thinks that there are particularly people like William Ayers that are Democrats that need-you need to look at who they are and what is behind all the rhetoric and the demagoguery. That’s what she was talking about. And call it for what it is. I mean, you know, Barack Obama goes on offense when people start saying what he truly is.
MATTHEWS: OK...
DELAY: The real Obama is coming out, Chris, and we all know it.
MATTHEWS: I’m not going to let you get in as deep a hole as you want to dig here, Congressman, because I know you want to get deep in this hole because I know you don’t believe this about everybody. Let me get-let me ask you to slice and dice this. Let’s take a real liberal, like Barney Frank, who you worked with, OK?
DELAY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Is he anti-American?
DELAY: No.
MATTHEWS: Is he anti-American?
DELAY: Not at all.
MATTHEWS: OK, then distinguish him...
(CROSSTALK)
DELAY: He’s a legitimate liberal. He’s a brilliant man. I disagree with everything he does, but I have great respect for him.
MATTHEWS: OK, distinguish him from the Democratic candidate for president this year, Barack Obama. Distinguish-just take a classic liberal like Barney, from Newton, Massachusetts, who would love the word liberal. He’s got no problem with it. He would probably accept the same language you use about him. He’d say, Fine, that’s me. And you’d probably like the language he would apply to you. Fine. But let’s talk about this use of the word “radical,” “Marxist,” the other terms you threw at Obama tonight, applied to Obama. How’s Obama different than Barney Frank, for example?
DELAY: Well, I’ve known Barney Frank for a very, very long time, and I know Barney Frank believes in the Constitution. Now, he may have a little bit different interpretation, but he doesn’t want to go out and stack the Supreme Court so that the Supreme Court will allow you to completely shred the Constitution.
Obama wants that. Obama’s world view is redistribution of wealth. Obama’s world view is to attack people-I mean, you saw it in Joe the plumber-attack people and destroy them if they have a different point of view than yours. I mean, Obama is a radical. And at the very best, he is a socialist.
MATTHEWS: But we have a-we have a-let’s talk about what we’re stuck with, what we have. We have a tax system. The way the burden is distributed, as you know-you probably make a little more than a congressman makes now, maybe a lot more, but you realize this tax-the way this tax system works is if you make a good deal of money, you pay about 50 percent, if you count state and local and federal. It gets up to about 50 percent. If you don’t make much money, if you’re a working guy or working woman out there, you mainly pay payroll taxes. You don’t pay a big chunk of income taxes. We have a very progressive tax system that really hits you harder at the top.
DELAY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Are you against that?
DELAY: Oh, yes.
MATTHEWS: Are you against that?
DELAY: We ought to throw this tax system out and we ought to impose a fair tax system where every American is paying some tax and has some vested interest in America. But Obama wants to raise your taxes. And I guarantee you he will not cut taxes. He will come in as president, if he is president, along with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the first thing they’ll do is raise taxes and they’ll forget about cutting taxes. And they want to get taxes back up to the rates that they were back when they were in control back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
MATTHEWS: OK. OK.
DELAY: And you’ll be paying 80 percent and 90 percent...
MATTHEWS: OK...
DELAY: ... just like Europe. That’s how you can redistribute the wealth.
MATTHEWS: OK, Mr. DeLay, a political question. You built a-you helped build the Democratic-the majority, the Republican majority, in the House of Representatives back in the ‘90s. It wasn’t 100 years ago, it was fairly recently.
DELAY: Right.
MATTHEWS: Now it looks like the part-your party’s about to take another beating, maybe lose 30 more seats...
DELAY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... next Tuesday. It’s going to be down to the old shrivel of the Republican Party it was 20 or 30 years ago, down to 160 seats maybe, 170 seats. Who’s...
DELAY: You wish, Chris. It may get down to 170...
MATTHEWS: I’m asking!
DELAY: ... at the worst.
MATTHEWS: Well, we compare numbers. OK, 170. I’m telling you, it’s way down to where it was, out of 435. That’s a small minority.
DELAY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: I’m just asking you, without getting into exact numbers-
I don’t know you’re doing this. You’re a smart guy. OK, 170. How...
(CROSSTALK)
DELAY: Wait, wait, wait. I’m not saying 170.
MATTHEWS: OK. OK, I’m not-OK. You think I’m trying to pin you. I’m not trying to pin you. If your party takes a big loss next week, whose fault is it?
DELAY: Oh, there’s lots of fault, and you can’t point the fingers. The one thing I’m trying to do, and I have been for the last two years, is tell Republicans and conservatives to get over it. Everybody wants to blame each other and point the fingers at everybody. There was a lot of things that brought the party down, no one person, no one ideology, and what we need to be doing is understand that and start rebuilding again. We’ve been there before. We were there in the ‘70s and we came back very, very strong. So we can do it again.
MATTHEWS: Well, it must be tough to lose to people you think are Marxist radicals. I mean, that must really hurt.
DELAY: Oh, we’re not going to lose. The American people are going to figure it out and vote against Obama.
MATTHEWS: OK. OK. It’s great having you on, Congressman. You speak your mind.
DELAY: Thank you, Chris.
MATTHEWS: You do not speak with a forked tongue, that’s for sure.
DELAY: That’s for sure.
MATTHEWS: Former U.S. congressman Tom DeLay, once part of the brilliant leadership of the Republican Party in Congress.
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