NBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Republican's Public Image

Interview

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REP. MATT CARTWRIGHT (D) PENNSYLVANIA: Oh, I think they do. I think
they have to cringe when they hear things like what you quoted Senator Cruz
saying at the top of the show. I mean, jokes about Nigerian scammers. You
know, I wonder how much off the cost that really was and how calculated it
was to appeal to Senator Cruz` base. Many at home believe that the
President is from Africa, but yeah, in answer your question, I think that
Republicans really have to be recoiling. The mainstream, you know, I call
them Country Club Republicans.

The Senator -- the road-type Republicans, they must be at their wit`s
ends when they try to think about how to deal with Senator Cruz but you get
this, you know, you see this happening when a law like the Affordable Care
Act becomes pretty obvious that it`s going to take root, that it`s going to
work, that it`s going to be a part of the American legal structure.
It`s the further and further Right Wing fringes that continue to
attack it as the other attacks melt away.

DYSON: Sure. Well with all due respect to you as a political figure
and other politicians, we know that many politicians are poll-driven,
number-crunching kind of empirical verifiers of whether they`re up or down.
So why isn`t it the fact that the poll numbers that are steadily sinking
aren`t impressing the Republicans with the fact that the American public
just doesn`t like what they`re doing?

CARTWRIGHT: Oh, I think a lot of them are paying attention to it. In
fact, we saw during the shut down a lot of their -- the centrist
Republicans were actually coming out and saying in public that they would
be for a clean CR opening up to government again with no strings attached
but you hear that, you know, the continual reign of quotations from the
Right Wing or, you know, I have one here, Michael Eric, that I want to read
speaking of Senator Cruz.

DYSON: Right.

CARTWRIGHT: "Never in the history of the world has any measure have
been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery,
to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of employers providing
work for the people." I mean that kind of over the top, over blown
rhetoric we`ve seen but that wasn`t from Senator Cruz. That was from
Republican Congressman John Taber in 1935 and he was talking about Social
Security at that time.

DYSON: Wow, the parallels are pretty frightening there as Dr. King
would say. Well, what is it about the whistle politics that you refer to
earlier in regards to Ted Cruz about the Nigerians who were now on the pay
roll basically trying to work on the website? Why is it that they continue
to exploit the implicit racial passions that are deeply embedded in this
country as oppose to playing to the higher road where we can all come
together?

CARTWRIGHT: Well, I don`t know that they`re doing that, Michael Eric
but I will say that I suspect it and whether they`re doing it on purpose,
it does appeal to the people who think that way. There are, you know, a
lot of fairly backward people that are a part of the base of people like
Senator Cruz and comments like that just are right up their ally.

DYSON: Yeah. Well, we`re going to talk to, you know, I`ll talk about
a judge later on, a Republican who you might have heard about, who said
look, "Enough is enough." You know, are there going to be other
Republicans joining him who`ll say, "Look, this is too extreme. I`m here
as a Republican. I want to stand behind principles that can be morally
defensible," but this kind of stuff that they`re doing is playing to a base
constituency in their party which really goes against the best interest
even of the Republican Party, much less to say, the entire nation.
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CARTWRIGHT: Well, as I say, I think I see it as kind of the last
great gas of the Right Wing against the Affordable Care Act. It started to
be expected, you know, that the moderates fall away from the attack, you
know, after 44 times repealing it, they got tired of that.
DYSON: Right.

CARTWRIGHT: They were bound to. The rest of us are already are.
DYSON: Right.

CARTWRIGHT: But the Right Wingers stay at it and that what`s going on
here.

DYSON: Well, do you think that the moderates are going to -- be able
to gain any ground in terms of trying to regain the authority within their
own party? I just don`t believe that John Boehner cottons (ph) too well to
the Right Wing of this party even though he defers to them with regular
intensity.

CARTWRIGHT: Well, I see a great irony here. Somebody like Senator
Cruz or our folks who are in blood red districts who can go on with
nonsense like this, they`re not in trouble. They`re not going to be in
trouble. The people who are going to be in trouble are the ones who are
guilty by association and we`re talking about the moderate Republicans who
are in closer districts who stand a reasonable chance of losing because of
their association with the Republican Party and what it got up to with this
ridiculous shutdown we just went through.

DYSON: Right. Well, look, finally tell us behind the scenes what`s
really going on with some of these moderate Republicans that you know who
are really, you know, just turned off but what they`re, you know, Right
Wing buggers are doing. You were there behind the scenes. Tell us, is
there really a groundswell for, you know, kind of, some kind of some party
go between moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans, people move this
country forward?

CARTWRIGHT: Well I, you know, Michael Eric I want you to know I get
along with all of my brother and sister and members of Congress and most of
them are great company, nice people to be with, it`s just that when they`re
-- some of their hard line Right Wingers get up to a microphone, you kind
of just have to put your hands over your ears when you hear the things that
they say.

DYSON: Yeah.

CARTWRIGHT: But yes, there are a lot of moderate Republicans that I
think really want to save their party. It sounds like Senator McConnell is
desperately trying to save the party. And I think the Speaker of the House
is really at his wit`s ends and has been for some time would have a deal
with the situation.
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DYSON: No doubt, well all I can say is God bless you up there my
friend. Congressman Matt Cartwright, thanks so much for you`re time
tonight.

CARTWRIGHT: It`s my pleasure.

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