MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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Joining me tonight is Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott.

Congressman, good to have you with us tonight.

Quite the ledger. Do you think he has a chance of being the Republican nominee with that donor"s list that is longer than everybody else"s?

REP. JIM MCDERMOTT (D), WASHINGTON: I probably know newt Gingrich as well as any Democrat in the House of Representatives. I"ve had close contact with him. He"s the most uniquely unqualified man to be president I can imagine.

His style, which he brought into the House, was to create partisanship and actually bring about the partisanship we see, the deadlock we see today. His great ideas everybody talks about include things like shutting down the government.

Now, when Bill Clinton got through with him, he was running rings around Newt. And I think Obama will do the same.

Newt is very slick, but it"s about--he"s like the mouth of the Mississippi. He"s about an inch deep and a mile wide. And once you get down through the slick cover, you find there is nothing there.

SCHULTZ: Well, he"s definitely built the infrastructure. Would he be, despite the polls--would he have the best chance of gaining in the polls? And how do you think he"d play in Iowa?

MCDERMOTT: He will say whatever he thinks is necessary to say. I really don"t know if he believes anything. And I think that from that point of view, the Iowa voters, they"re very solid people. They sit in their living room and look at these people one at a time. And they picked Huckabee last time, because he seemed real.

Newt will seem phony from the very start when he gets into people"s living rooms.

SCHULTZ: Was he unethical in your opinion?

MCDERMOTT: I think the committee fined him. The Ethics Committee fined him 300,000 dollars. So you have to say that his colleagues in the House judged him to be unethical.

SCHULTZ: Let"s talk about a sea change that may be taking place across America. Let"s go to the Ryan Plan, which a lot of people are rejecting across this country. And it"s affecting a House special election in upstate New York.

The district is solidly Republican, but polling shows the Democrat has got a shot. And now Karl Rove is forking all kinds of money out into this district. What do you make of that race?

MCDERMOTT: Well, my view is that the Republicans followed Paul Ryan over the cliff with his privatization of Social Security. And the American people woke up and said, wow, is that what this is about? And now they"re going to turn on him.

They"re going to turn to a Democratic candidate in a district where a Republican would ordinarily win. I think that the Republicans that are now in control of the House clearly have overstepped. They"ve overreached and the American people are starting to bounce back against them.

SCHULTZ: Congressman Jim McDermott, always a pleasure. Great to have you with us tonight. Thanks so much.

MCDERMOTT: See you. Good night.

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