Hardball with Chris Matthews
MSNBC
March 12, 2008, 5 pm
MATTHEWS: Well, he hired a Holy Cross guy again, which is always nice fore me to say. Thank you very much, Mike Taibbi, great reporting.
Let`s turn now to Republican Congressman Pete King. Peter, I was listening to you on one of the other networks earlier this morning coming to work. You are so tough. You don`t have a whole lot of sympathy for this governor that just stepped down, do you, sir?
REP. PETE KING (R), NEW YORK: No, Chris, really don`t. I`ve been in politics 30 years. I don`t think I`ve ever gotten involved in anything involving a personal matter, criticized another politician for what`s called a personal scandal, but this was different. First of all, it was not personal. He put at least 80,000 dollars into a criminal enterprise. That is what this was, a prosecution ring. They have ties to organized crime. And he was doing this while he was attorney general and while he was governor.
Secondly, as Mike Taibbi said, his reputation -- I never knew anyone who was more of an avenging angel, who was so unforgiving of others and so self-righteous. He destroyed innocent people. Yes, he went after some guilty people, but he also tried to destroy innocent people, going into their private lives.
To me, this was a case of a guy being totally vindictive. And that`s why it`s no -- it is reality that no one came to his defense because of the way he has conducted himself. He was already under criminal investigation in New York for using the state police to go after the Senate Republican majority leader. He had the state police following him around and that was disclosed by a Democrat attorney general, Andrew Cuomo. So this is a guy who really was so driven and so vindictive, and now it has come back to bite him.
MATTHEWS: Let`s try to find something good here, some sort of velvet around this cloud here or whatever. Could it be that the Republican party statewide in New York needs to come back. I mean, I grew up, you grew up, Peter, with a moderate Republican party. It was able to take the Democrats, defeat them year after year for governor of New York, all the way through all of the years with Rockefeller, for example, capable of winning state-wide elections for Keating (ph) and Jabbitz (ph) and even Jim Buckley (ph) winning as a conservative. Is that party going to come back in the face of this abuse of power?
KING: Don`t forget, Al D`Amato also won three times in New York. It can. This gives the Republican party an opportunity. But also, at a different level, David Paterson, the new governor -- I spoke to him this afternoon. Chris, he is a neighborhood guy. He`s a great guy, African- American, 90 percent blind I think. He is certainly legally blind, a decent guy. It is going to give politics in New York the opportunity to be conducted on a more civil level.
But yes, I think it will give Republicans an opportunity to regroup, because we were really under siege. We lost a state Senate seat last week. The Democrats were one seat away from taking over the state Senate. They have lost that opportunity now, because the lieutenant governor will be gone. He becomes governor and he won`t be able to cast the deciding vote that would have put us in the minority. So it gives us an opportunity to come back.
We need more than Eliot Spitzer`s scandal to come back. But it gives us a chance to mobilize, get retrenched and win some elections in November. I think John McCain at the top of the ticket is going to help us get those Reagan Democrats back.
MATTHEWS: Will Hillary Clinton, who is the senator and obviously the political colleague if not the ally of Spitzer -- I don`t think they`re that particularly close -- is this going to spray out to hurt her at all? I can imagine Blagojevich going down on something like this Illinois and that hurting Barack Obama. In fact, I can imagine in Clinton town, the Clinton crowd going after him heavily on this.
No one in the Obama campaign is going after Hillary about Spitzer.
KING: Yes, I don`t know if Obama is going to do it or not. As a practical matter, Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer were never close. He very reluctantly endorsed her last year, while David Paterson, the new governor, was actually standing next to her on the night of the Iowa primary. So she is a lot closer to David Paterson than Eliot Spitzer. No one was close to Eliot Spitzer.
MATTHEWS: I think it is a great opportunity for a blind person to show what they can do. A friend of mine is blind, Dave Tickey (ph), amazing professional. It is a great opportunity to display some real self- reliance and professionalism for the blind community in this country, and I am glad you said what you did, Pete. Thank you very much, Congressman Pete King of New York.
