VIDEO: WINDOW INTO LIBERAL GROUP THINK

On the July 6th Morning Joe program over at MSNBC, to subject of Nevada's Republican challenger to Harry Reid, Sharron Angle was on the table during a panel discussion. Earlier, Angle had appeared on a radio show and made a comment about the Second Amendment that Chris Matthews seized on during the panel discussion. When he brought it up, Scarborough admitted he knew nothing about it. He then asked Matthews to clarify by telling everyone what she said.

When Scarborough asked Matthews to repeat Angle's quote, this is what MSNBC's resident Alinskyite had to say:

SCARBOROUGH: What was her exact quote since it's been brought up twice?

MATTHEWS: She said she understands why people think of and resort to Second Amendment solutions to the Democrats in Congress they don't like. It is pretty frightening.

Take note that Scarborough asked Matthews for the "exact quote" from Angle. You've just seen Matthews' response to that request; perhaps he should have had a transcript of the quote because that's not what he gave to Scarborough.

Here is the actual quote from Angle:

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact, you know, Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.

I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this, this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies, they're saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? And I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

The more telling thing here is not that Matthews misquoted Angle in a very partisan way. It's that Scarborough relied on Matthews as the sole source for the quote before making a personal value judgment about Angle based only on Matthews' take; he then relied on that source to hurl an insult at Angle, calling her a "jackass".

It doesn't take any genius to see that Matthews completely misquoted Angle but done so in a highly partisan manner. It's worth repeating that Scarborough asked for the "exact quote". He did not get that, not even close. Matthews quotes Angle as saying she "understands why people....resort to Second Amendment solutions to the Democrats in Congress..." In reality, Angle quoted Thomas Jefferson - a much revered founding father. Perhaps that's why Matthews didn't include that part.

As for Angle's quote, perhaps she could have chosen here words more carefully but she's not a career politician with a degree in parsing them with the intent of avoiding as much accountability as possible. That's one of the reasons Tea Party candidates have so much appeal.

That said, her first two sentences are simply factual. The third sentence merely identifies a logical conclusion if you believe the first two. The last sentence is likely the one that caused the stir. That is, "...the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out."

Ok, does anyone honestly think that Angle is calling for people to take up arms against Harry Reid? She's in the middle of an election campaign. She's obviously talking about voting him out of office. Did she choose the wrong words? Perhaps, but again, Scarborough relying solely on Matthews to quote a conservative Senate candidate accurately without taking that quote out of context is very telling indeed. It gives us a look inside the liberal media bubble, where the word of highly partisan colleagues - in this case, a colleague who considers Saul Alinsky a "hero" - is believed without checking the facts.

Here's the video of the exchange, via NewsBusters

Scarborough should know better than this.