On Regime Change

Chris Matthews is such an idiot ....

The American Regime [Jonah Goldberg]

While researching a piece I'm doing on tyranny and taxation, I found this little diatribe by Chris Matthews:

Well, we`ve got the response to that. Here`s — here`s — you know, this guy is no frail flower, if you will. He doesn`t hide. Here`s what Rush Limbaugh said to "The D.C. Examiner" today. Quote, "Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people purposely — purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power, and I`ve never known so many people who literally fear for the future."

This is to me — I`ll just give you a little editorial (INAUDIBLE) I`ve never seen language like this in the American press, referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election — we will have another one in November, we`ll have another one for president in a couple years — fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country. And this guy, this walrus under water, makes fun of this administration, calling it a "regime." We know that word, "regime." It was used by recent presidents (INAUDIBLE) by George Bush, "regime change." You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They`re juntas. They`re military coups. The use of the word "regime" in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus to stop using it.

Me: Let me say up front, I partially agree with Matthews. I don't like this "regime" talk. He's wrong when he says that regime only refers tyrannical juntas and the like. A regime is a larger concept that means not just an administration or "government" in the parliamentary sense, but a system of government itself. That's why the "First Things" controversy was such a big deal. A number of conservatives raised the question of whether the American regime was losing legitimacy. I don't want to revisit that old argument. But the point is I don't think we should use "regime" as interchangeable with "administration" or anything like that. Administrations come and go, the American regime has endured.

But Matthews is entirely and typically full of it when he suggests that Rush Limbaugh is the first or even a particularly egregious abuser of the term. It's clear that Rush is (mis)using the term to simply refer to the Obama-Pelosi administration, as it were. And his larger point is entirely valid.

But here's the thing: the Democratic Party, almost in toto, used this "regime" formulation for most of the Bush presidency. I don't have time to go look, but I would be shocked if Matthews himself didn't use "regime change" more than once in precisely the way he's now condemning. As the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry talked about "regime change" starting at home (which I objected to at the time on similar grounds). If Matthews missed this, and countless other examples, he should be officially disqualified as a serious political observer.

Update: A few readers object that I'm unfair to Rush because he was merely being satirical. A lot of readers meanwhile, think I'm being unfair to reality by suggesting that Chris Matthews was ever a serious political observer.
04/03 01:17 PM


Matthews And "Regime Change" Cont'd [Jonah Goldberg]

Byron's got the goods:

Matthews didn't stop there. "I never heard the word 'regime,' before, have you?" he said to NBC's Chuck Todd. "I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a 'regime.'"
It appears that Matthews has suffered a major memory loss. I don't have the facilities to search for every utterance of Joe McCarthy, but a look at more recent times reveals many, many, many examples of the phrase "Bush regime." In fact, a search of the Nexis database for "Bush regime" yields 6,769 examples from January 20, 2001 to the present.

It was used 16 times in the New York Times, beginning with an April 4, 2001 column by Maureen Dowd — who wrote, "Seventy-five days into the Bush regime and I'm a wreck" — and ending with a March 6, 2009 editorial denouncing the "frightening legal claim advanced by the Bush regime to justify holding [accused terrorist Ali al-Marri]."

"Bush regime" was used 24 times in the Washington Post, beginning with a January 22, 2001 profile of Marshall Wittmann by Howard Kurtz — who noted that Wittmann served as "a Health and Human Services deputy assistant secretary in the first Bush regime" — and ending with an October 6, 2009 column by Dana Milbank which quoted far-left antiwar protester Medea Benjamin questioning whether the Obama administration "looks very different from the Bush regime."

Perhaps Matthews missed all of those references. If he did, he still might have heard the phrase the many times it was uttered on his own network, MSNBC. For example, on January 8 of this year, Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak said that, "In George Bush's regime, only one million jobs had been created…" On August 21, 2009, MSNBC's Ed Schultz referred to something that happened in 2006, when "the Bush regime was still in power." On October 8, 2007, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon said that "the middle class has not fared quite as well under Bush regime as…" On August 10, 2007, MSNBC played a clip of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan referring to "the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that have been tragically harmed by the Bush regime." On September 21, 2006, a guest referred to liberals "expressing their dissatisfaction with the Bush regime." On July 7, 2004, Ralph Nader — appearing with Matthews on "Hardball" — discussed how he would "take apart the Bush regime." On May 26, 2003, Joe Scarborough noted a left-wing website that "has published a deck of Bush regime playing cards." A September 26, 2002 program featured a viewer email that said, "The Bush regime rhetoric gets goofier and more desperate every day."

Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. "Let's go to the Reverend Al Sharpton," Matthews said. "Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?"

Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did.

And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?

04/04 09:31 AM