“Picking on somebody from the coasts, usually ethnic, and making them the poster person of the Democratic Party is old business for the Republicans,” Matthews claimed. “They did that for Tip O’Neil, they did it after Teddy, and now they do it after Nancy Pelosi.”
“They take an ethnic sort of person from one of the coasts and make them the banner person,” he concluded.
Given that most Democrats in Congress are "from the coasts" nowadays, it's not unusual that the Democrat leaders Republicans don't like are "from the coasts."
But the grouping of O'Neill, Kennedy, and Pelosi as "ethnics" is bizarre. Two millionaires and a neighborhood guy? Or two fat guys who look like drunkards with a pathologically skinny society lady?
Any way you cut it, one of them is not like the others. He could have made a case with O'Neill and Cuomo and Maxine Waters, but Kennedy and Pelosi are about as "ethnic" as the Bushes.
What Matthews is doing is playing the "ethnic" card, appealing to some long-ago Catholic White ethnic solidarity against the Protestants of the interior.
He's done it before.
Chris Matthews Says Evangelicals See Catholics (and Mormons) as Cultists
Matthews Plays Religion Card: Reminds Voters Brown Protestant, Coakley Catholic
Absolutely.