During early Friday morning’s coverage of the Democratic Convention, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews decided to play a clip of the previous evening's acceptance speech by Barack Obama to demonstrate that he was a “moderate” and “certainly not a socialist.” (video after jump)
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Here he is, the president arguing that government isn’t always the cure. In fact, it was quite honest about being something of a moderate, not a lefty here – certainly not a socialist listen to this.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We know that churches and charities can often make more of a difference than a poverty program alone. We don't want handouts for people who refuse to help themselves, and we don't want bailouts for banks that break the rules. We don't think government can solve all our problems. But we don't think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we're told to blame for our troubles.
MATTHEWS So much of this week has been –guys – a clear expression that we are not the left-wing party. That we are center-left – the Democrats – that we are people who believe in government action, but believe in limited government as much as anybody in America does.
Chris Matthews must be living in an alternate reality. The stimulus, ObamaCare, the autoworkers union bailout, the green energy executive order, the watered-down Dream Act enacted by presidential fiat weren’t actions of limited government.
Add to that $5 trillion added to the national debt, American families seeing their household incomes drop by 4.8 percent during the Obama recovery, and the unemployment rate being above 8 percent for over forty consecutive months.
