What do Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Donald Trump have in common with the Islamic extremists who murdered a dozen innocent United Nations workers in Afghanistan? A sane person would say “nothing,” beyond the fact that all are members of the same species.
If you’re Chris Matthews, on the other, you see a moral equivalence between the two groups. The host of MSNBC’s Hardball made the case on last night’s show that Republican "fanatics" and "zealots at home" who "attack the President's basic beliefs” are no different from Muslims who commit atrocities in the name of their religion (h/t Scott Whitlock, Newsbusters).
The segment, titled “Zealots abroad, zealots at home,” opened with a still photo of militaristic Muslims which dissolved into another, of Gingrich, Bachmann, and Donald Trump.
To frame his case on comparative zealotry, Matthews delivered a few gratuitous zingers at the religions of the Middle East:
The Israelis hold their covenant with God to the land he promised them. The Arabs cling to the land of their birth, to their Muslim or Christian faith and, yes, they too to Jerusalem. But, listen to the fanatics in this country. They attack the President's basic beliefs, accusing him of thinking like a Muslim from Kenya. You hear that a lot….
To make sure there is no question in the viewer’s mind about which political party these ingrates belong to, Matthews injects a trace of conspiracy theory into his “argument”:
[They believe] the Democrats are anti-American. They want next year's election, that's the people on the right, to be about who the real Americans are, the real Christians. They let the word spread around the country, keep spreading, by the way, to a majority of their Republicans, about how the President may have just snuck in this country, doctored his papers and now pretends to be a Christian….
The segment wouldn’t be complete, of course, unless Matthews had a choice word or two for Terry Jones, the man at whose feet liberals place full blame for the U.N. workers’ murders. So how does this paragon of tolerance refer to the Florida pastor? As a “Billy Bob character”:
But they keep spreading this rumor on the right, people like Newt Gingrich and the rest of them. They are building the case for this Billy Bob character to burn Korans and then he's giving a case to Karzai to save his butt over there. This is a dynamic, dangerous kind of thing that does lead to wars. This is what happens in wars. Rumors lead to rumors lead to rumors and then only in the end, ‘I only responded to what I heard. It's not my fault.’ That's what you hear. The killers.
In the end, Matthews’ case is a house of cards propped up by the faulty assumptions that (1) anyone who questions the president’s sometimes-questionable beliefs is a birther and (2) that anyone who believes that Terry Jones (make that “Billy Bob”) was not directly and solely responsible for the murders in Afghanistan is dangerous.
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