Rachel Maddow does not believe in “both-sidesism” as a key phrase used in politics right now, and she went as far as to call it “lazy punditry” last night on her eponymous MSNBC news program.
Maddow also called out the Republican Party for their effort, led by Matt Gaetz, to oust Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in the broader context of the polarization of political parties.
The MSNBC host made the basic argument that news like this proves that the two political parties are not twin versions of each other.
“As much as I have found it frustrating for years, there is still, even now, unbelievably, a lot of lazy punditry, a lot of lazy assuming out there in the press that our two major parties in this country are basically the same, that they’re mirror images of each other. The actual news from the actual world is here to disprove that most days, particularly today though,” she began in the Monday night segment.
She then recapped the ongoing effort from Gaetz to oust speaker of the House McCarthy for deigning to reach across the aisle and avoid a government shutdown over the weekend.
“Bottom line: Whether or not Republicans succeed in ousting their own speaker of the House over this narrow miss on a government shutdown, whether or not it ultimately ousts him from the speakership, the message here is clear, right? I mean, in the Republican Party, if you work with Democrats on anything, you are in big trouble as a Republican,” Maddow explained. “That is where the Republican Party is at right now.”
Former White House aide to Mark Meadows Cassidy Hutchinson echoed this sentiment on “CNN This Morning” Tuesday, when she called Gaetz an “unserious politician” who is “single-handedly uprooting the Republican Party, which is already hanging on by a thread.”
“The two sides, the two major political parties in the United States right now seem like they are coming from two different planets, and they are trying to do two totally different things,” Maddow said Monday. “It may have a little bit to do with the relationship between the fringe, the extreme, and the middle. The distance between not just the not-governing but really far out-there sort of non-respectable fringe and the actual governing part of the party.”
To further illustrate her point, Maddow noted President Joe Biden’s history of bipartisanship and pulled up a campaign ad emphasizing his practice of reaching across the aisle.
“Both-sidesism about our two major political parties has really never been warranted in this country in modern times, not in my lifetime,” Maddow said. “Right now, it is not just unwarranted, it is malpractice. One of these things is not at all like the other.”
Watch Maddow’s full MSNBC report in the video above.
