‘Meet the Press’ transcript for June 3, 2007

MR. CARVILLE:  Well, I think Fred Thompson is now, to use a sports metaphor, the “great white hope” of the Republican Party.  But, of course, in the Republican Party, hope comes in one color, and that would be white.  And one gender, that would be male.  You know, they have—they have a lot...

MS. MATALIN:  One giant idea that’s been beating your no ideas for 50 years.

MR. CARVILLE:  Gender.  They have a...

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, not 50 years, Mary, come on.

MR. CARVILLE:  They have a—they have a lot of problems, and, and their, their party’s at an all-time low in the NBC-Wall Street Journal polls, since they’ve been polling.  There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the field. Thompson’s obviously a talented person.  I think a lot of people are saying, “Gee, you know, maybe he can do it.” He’s been in Washington longer than you, Bob, because he came here in ‘72.  But if he—if he’s got the political skill to run as an outsider, who knows?  I mean, he’s obviously a, a talented guy, and we’ll see.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mitt Romney.  You heard Mr. Shrum’s analysis of Mitt Romney, you worked for him.

MR. MURPHY:  Right, I—super impressive guy.  I think in many ways he’s got the energy in the primary right now.  But his problem is he’s getting typecast at this early season as, as this flip-flop thing, which I think it’s now incumbent on his campaign to beat that.  The truth is, everybody in American politics has evolved.  The last two Republican presidents, they’re—excuse me, Reagan and Bush one—both changed on abortion.  Every Democrat has flip-flopped all over the place on the war.  Changing in politics I don’t think is that bad.  If we didn’t—if you wanted somebody locked in at 23 years holding their beliefs, you’d train a chimp to be president.  I think change and evolution is good.  The problem is, with Romney, if it becomes the only dimension, because there’s too much nuance and there’s too much shifting around—I think he’s made a mistake on immigration, where they got out tactically to score at the Republican primary better so quickly, that they didn’t have time to reconcile a broader view.  They pigeonholed Romney in a place that I think demeans him a little bit.  So he’s got plenty of time to fix that, but if it becomes the total thing he’s identified with, it’ll be a bit unfair, but it’ll hurt him a lot.

MR. RUSSERT:  What about John McCain, your other former client?

MR. MURPHY:  Well, McCain’s problem is he is on the wrong side of some issues a lot of people in the Republican primary care about.  Where—what I think he has to do is make soup out of that and say it’s about character.  I’m the one guy who’s going to stand up and tell you something you don’t want to hear once in a while because we’re running for the big job here.” And I think, actually, McCain can maybe make it an advantage, but there’s no question McCain a year ago was kind of the institutional perceptional front-runner.  That’s not true anymore.  He’s in some trouble, but it is early.  I have to invoke the...(unintelligible)...rule, the great McGovern strategist, nothing really matters till after that first caucus vote.  Plenty of time for stuff to happen if people have money and a message, which is what this is really all about.

MR. RUSSERT:  Mary Matalin, is Rudy Giuliani too liberal on gay rights, gun control, abortion rights, to be nominated?

MS. MATALIN:  I think we’re all missing the point in these primaries. We talk about them about them as if the measure of success is only going to be about where people are on issues.  We define conservativism—or liberalism, whatever it is today—by positions on issues.  What the disconnect is in the, in the Republican Party and in the country at large is the disconnect from what is the role of government?  And we have to go back to first principles. Not the definition of conservatism as it’s come from the opposition.  We’re not really running on our side to be the biggest Republican.  James is right. The last election was a repudiation of Republicanism, but it was not a repudiation or even a diminution of conservativism.  So what Fred Thompson connects to and the country connects to is our heritage of limited government. To us that means something.  It means unlimited possibilities in this country and the principles of the founders.  And, you know, that’s not big—good chatter for Sunday morning TV, but that’s what’s missing in the field, and that’s what’s missing with the country.  So where people are on issues, everybody understands that changes, that does evolve, there’re going to be different issues in the next four years that this president is going to have to deal with.

MR. RUSSERT:  But back to Rudy Giuliani, he is talking about a big idea: terrorism.  And yet, when he is forced to discuss abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, it causes a lot of discomfort with conservative Republicans. Otherwise Thompson wouldn’t enter the race saying, “I’m a consistent conservative.  You can trust me.”

MS. MATALIN:  That’s not what—I mean, we’re trying to put a frame on the message.  What Thompson is saying is, “I’m on the continuum of the big, long, deep heritage of conservatism in this country.”

MR. RUSSERT:  But he does disagree with Giuliani on abortion rights, gay rights and gun control.

MS. MATALIN:  But that’s not the definition of our party, and I would say about Rudy that half, 44 percent, near to half of this social conservatives, the religious conservatives, are for Rudy.  This is just not a campaign where the dispositive issues or the cycle where the dispositive issues are going to be abortion and gay rights.  It is about terrorism.  It is about security. It’s also about economic insecurity in the world.  So I wouldn’t write Rudy off either.  He’s—all these guys make each other stronger.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, but I think the big problem we’ve got in the Republican Party, or the big challenge, is if the election were held today, we’d get creamed.  It’s going to be a change election, and we’re not exactly change. So our nomination process, I think, will be very rocky because there’s a lot of tension in the party about that.  How do we handle a change election? And—but, you know, politics is not static, it’s dynamic, it’s always changing.  We don’t really know what the world’s going to be like in 18 months.  But we definitely have to—there’s going to be a lot of tension in this primary because big things have to be decided to reorient us to be able to win.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me go to the Democrats a little bit here.  This was the conservative Weekly Standard magazine:  “Days of Their Lives:  The Hillary and Bill Show:  America’s Longest-Running Soap Opera,” referring to the release of two new books about Senator Clinton.  The Washington Post broke the story.

“Two new books on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York offer fresh and often critical portraits of the Democratic presidential candidate that depict a tortured relationship with her husband and her past and” that “challenge the image she has presented on the campaign trail.

“The Hillary Clinton who emerges from” “pages of the books comes across as a complicated, sometimes compromised figure who tolerated Bill Clinton’s brazen infidelity, pursued her policy and political goals with methodical drive, and occasionally skirted along the edge of the truth along the way.  The books portray her as alternately brilliant and controlling, ambitious and victimized.

“The Clinton camp hopes to brush off the books as mainly rehashing old news. ‘Is it possible to be quoted yawning?’ asked Philippe Reines, her Senate spokesman.”

Mr. Carville, what will these books mean to Hillary camp, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the rest of the field?

MR. CARVILLE:  By a factor of more than five—and I think we can all agree with this—Hillary Clinton’s been subjected to more anti-Hillary books and investigations, Ken Starr, $70 million.  I find interesting that she’s the first woman to run for president and the most attacked human being to ever run for president.  Now, I’m not saying it’s all sexism, but I’m not saying it’s not.  And if you stack up all of the, all of the stuff, and, and, and everything becomes regurgitated, I, unlike other people, I happen to know Senator Clinton.  I am a huge admirer.  I think she’s a remarkable warm person.  But do I think she’s taken a compromised position in politics?  Well, sure.  Do I think she’s ambitious?  Thank God.  I mean, I, I, I—most people in politics are.  But I don’t think that these books are going to be particularly damaging to her.  I, I, I—but I do think she’s got a, she’s got a tough fight.  I think Obama is a, is a very skilled guy who’s got a lot of enthusiasm, and I think her people are much more focused on what’s going on in Iowa and New Hampshire than these books right now.  I really believe that.

MR. RUSSERT:  But a lot of Democrats are concerned about can she win a general election because of her high negatives.

MR. CARVILLE:  Right.

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