‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Sept. 2, 2007

MS. MATALIN:  Can I just make a point?

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me, let me, let me move on.  Wait a minute.

Another Republican senator has decided to retire...

MR. MURPHY:  Yes.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...for very noble reasons, John Warner from Virginia, and he foreshadowed his decision last week here on MEET THE PRESS when I asked him whether he would run again.  This is the way he analyzed his decision.

(Videotape)

SEN. JOHN WARNER (R-VA):  The Senate requires you to go full-bore six or seven days a week, tremendous energy.  Go to Iraq, jump in and out of helicopters, get on the cargo planes, no sleep.  And that’s in different things we’ve got to do all around.  And I’ve got to assess, at this age, whether it is fair to Virginia to ask for a contract for another six years.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  At age 80 he decided he did not want to ask for that contract. He just wasn’t sure that he could meet his commitment to the people of Virginia.  But that now opens the seat up in Virginia.  Former Governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, considered a very strong candidate.

Mary Matalin, the Republicans have Congressman Tom Davis, former Governor Jim Gilmore.  But the Democrats could have two senators from Virginia, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, if he ran.

MS. MATALIN:  That’s—it’s a tough state.  It’s a, it’s a trending, trending purple, but only purple.  It’s a—it’s still a red state, and the reason and the rationale for Warner’s—Warner—Mark’s previous victories has—have been, and this is why he was considering running for the presidency is that he’s a good, conservative Southernesque, NASCAR, gun-toting kind of Democrat.  That’s how he’ll have to run in Virginia, which the more conservative Democrats that win just keep proving that conservative governing philosophy is the predominant one in this country.

MR. RUSSERT:  James Carville, the 2008 is looking more and more attractive to the Democrats in terms of...

MR. CARVILLE:  Oh.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...increasing their margins in the Senate and the House.

MR. CARVILLE:  What else there is, I think there like eight Senate seats, vacant Republican seats that are really, really in play, maybe one Democratic seat.  But not just, not just Virginia.  You got—we got Alaska, Oregon, Minnesota, New Hampshire.  The real good—depending on what happens in Nebraska, Nebraska could be at least a 50/50 state for, for the Democrats. And then you got—the Republicans also have some problems with North Carolina, Kentucky, even Texas, New Mexico.  So there’s no doubt that the Senate is looking, looking very good for, for the Democrats right now.  Now, who knows? I mean, Governor Warner has not made up his mind.  The Republicans are likely to have a primary between Congressman Davis and former Governor Jim Gilmore, which would be—set up a classic kind of right/left...

MR. SHRUM:  Yeah.

MR. CARVILLE:  ...battle of right/moderate battle, I guess I should say, within the Republican Party.

MR. RUSSERT:  Are the Republicans worried about the Senate, Mike Murphy?

MR. MURPHY:  Totally.  I think we have a shot to get it back, but it’s getting tougher mathematically.  We have 22 seats to defend—I think they have 12 or so.  And we got some incumbents in trouble, and we got a bad political environment.  Now, I do think the political environment’s going to get a little better.  I think the Democrats are, generically, a little too cocky, but in these state-by-state races, the situation like in Virginia where you lose a strong candidate and you pick up the threat of Warners—the other—the Democratic Warner, should he run, you know, it starts to tilt the numbers in a rough, rough direction.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to the presidential race.  A man by the name of Fred Thompson, Bob Shrum.  This is the way Stephen Hayes writes about him in today’s Weekly Standard.  I’ll share it with you and our viewers.  As “several Fred Thompson supporters believe he made a mistake by waiting to join the race.  They worry that his wink-and-a-nod candidacy has undermined his main strength:  his ability to present himself as a” plain spokesman, “no-nonsense conservative.  What’s more, they say, Thompson’s refusal to actively campaign reinforces what rival campaigns have suggested is Thompson’s chief weakness: laziness.” Here’s the cover of Newsweek magazine out today, “Lazy Like a Fox: Sure he’s laid-back, but don’t be fooled.  Fred Thompson’s good old boy style masks a drive that’s propelled him to the front of the field.” What do you make of the candidacy?

MR. SHRUM:  I, I don’t think his problem is laziness.  I mean, Mary can speak to that.  She’s worked with him.  (To Murphy) You’ve worked with him.  I think that he made a mistake in waiting so long.  He almost became the first noncandidate ever to implode, and he’s raised the stakes very high as he announces late.  People are—he’s going to be held to a very high standard as he begins to answer those first questions about Iraq, about health care, about the whole set of issues these other Republicans have been talking about.

One of the things that’s happened, I think, is you have a really restless, concerned Republican Party.  My friend Murphy, and I don’t want to steal his line without attributing it, said all of these guys have a glass jaw.  Any of them could be hurt by someone going after them on a whole set of issues.  I think there’s a lot of unease about Giuliani, who’d be a strong candidate in the general, but who the social conservatives don’t like.  There’s a lot of unease about Romney, who’s a big flip-flopper.  And there’s going to be a lot of unease about Fred Thompson for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he seems to have been on both sides of the issues in some cases.  So I think you have a Republican Party that’s in disarray, frightened and looking for a solution.

MR. MURPHY:  I had this great line about glass jaws I was practicing in the green room.  Shrum...

MS. MATALIN:  That’ll teach you to...(unintelligible)

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, I’ve learned my lesson here, yeah.

MR. SHRUM:  Full attribution.

MR. MURPHY:  Got the five-finger discount.  Yes.  The issue with Fred—I think the most overrated thing in presidential primary, you know, huff-and-puffery in the pre-season is infrastructure.  You’ve got to lock down the infrastructure.  That’s spending eight million bucks to pay people to watch the other guy’s eight million bucks worth of people and report back, and then you have no money.  I think Fred can get in this late.  The question is can Fred perform?  They’ve had a lot of process stumbling in the last 60 days, a lot of people running in and out of the campaign.  They now have some professionals.  They’re going to do their announcement tour right away. They’re going to all the right places.  And if Fred is on his game, and Fred has a message beyond stories about the possum and the raccoon and grandma and whatever, and really has a, you know, strong message, he’s got the platform now to get right in this race.  And the other question will be money.  Can he really raise some dough?  So far it’s been weak.  But he’s got a big bite of the apple.  But as Bob says, and I agree with him on this, his expectations are so high now that if he doesn’t perform in the next 20 days, I think the big mentioning machine is going to crunch him down, and then money will be very, very hard.

MR. RUSSERT:  Fred Thompson will officially announce on Thursday, we’re being told.

Mary Matalin, he went to the Iowa state fair, and Fox News pointed out that after he left the Senate he was a lobbyist and he showed up at the state fair—here’s the photograph—wearing Gucci loafers.  Is there an image problem here?

MS. MATALIN:  Can I speak again as a normal person?  Not a single voter in my 28 years has ever voted on shoes or the process.  One guy, in 1992, said, “I voted against George Bush because I hate you.” OK, I think we lost for other reasons.  So all of this process stuff, nobody’s paying attention to.  The reason he can get in late now, and only he can not just get in this time, but he can win, is because he has the two magic ingredients to get in this late, and that is that he has superior rationale, a superior message, and he has the stature and the skills to be able to communicate it.

MR. RUSSERT:  What’s the rationale?

MS. MATALIN:  The rationale for the primary is, as Bob’s laid out all the vulnerabilities in the glass jaw candidates, he’s a consistent conservative, has been from the first time he read “Conscience of Conservatives,” through the conservative reform contest to Congress in 1994, usurping Justice Roberts through it.

MR. RUSSERT:  But he works for abortion rights’ groups.

MS. MATALIN:  No, he worked for a firm...

MR. SHRUM:  That was a brief bout of amnesia.

MS. MATALIN:  He worked for a firm—we can do this race like this, but you’re not where voters are.  But more than that, he’s a comprehensive conservative that speaks to Rudy’s vulnerabilities.  He has intelligence, homeland security and the national security issues, he has all the economic issues and he has the cultural issues.  The reason that’s...

MR. RUSSERT:  What are, what are Rudy’s vulnerabilities?

MS. MATALIN:  Just what Bob said.  I like Rudy a lot, but he’s not—he doesn’t scratch all three triads of the Republican triangle.

MR. RUSSERT:  Which are?

MS. MATALIN:  Which are national security, economic security and the cultural issues.  And the principles on which Fred believes and forms his policy are heartland, they’re first principles.  And he connects better with the heartland.  But the main superior rationale is he’ll be better in the general election.  He’s better than any of these guys against Hillary.  He’s not afraid of Hillary.  He’s a better politician than her, and he’ll get more blue states.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here, here’s the latest...

MS. MATALIN:  I’m on the team.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Sunday's Meet the Press guest list Nov. 22: Senate roundtable, Brinker, Snyderman Nov. 15: Clinton, Duncan, Gingrich, Sharpton Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: