‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Nov. 25, 2007

MS. MATALIN:  And ladies.  Lots...

MR. RUSSERT:  Please.

MS. MATALIN:  When I say guys, girls, I mean it’s a cultural—it’s a very important cultural thing.  It’s not—and, and these issue papers are not issue papers.  They’re specific, they’re detailed.

MR. SHRUM:  No, I hear you.  Don’t shoot me.

MS. MATALIN:  And I’m not—I’m from the Cheney way.

MR. SHRUM:  Don’t throw the pen.

MR. MURPHY:  Don’t shoot me.  Don’t pull a weapon, I’m with you.

MS. MATALIN:  You come hunting with me, I’m going to shoot you.

MR. RUSSERT:  How about the issue of immigration because this is very revealing in terms of John McCain’s position on immigration, Mitt Romney’s, Rudy Giuliani’s.  David Brooks, The New York Times columnist, wrote this just the other day about Giuliani.  “Rudy Giuliani can play a little rough at times, but there are some moments when an inner light turns on and he turns downright idealistic.  One of those moments came” “October 10, 1996, as he stepped on the podium at the Kennedy School of Government to deliver a speech on immigration.

“‘I’m pleased to be with you this evening to talk about the”’ anti-immigration “‘movement in America,’” “‘and why I believe this movement endangers the single most important reason for American greatness, namely, the renewal, reformation and reawakening that’s provided by the continuous flow of immigrants.’

“Then he turned to the subject of illegal immigration:  ‘The United States has to do’” ‘”a better job of patrolling our borders.’ But, he continued ‘The reality is, people will always get in.’

“‘There are times,’” “‘when undocumented aliens must have a substantial degree of protection.’ They must feel safe sending their children to school.  They should feel safe reporting crime to the police.  ‘Similarly, illegal and undocumented immigrants should be able to seek medical help without the threat of being reported.  When these people are sick, they are just as sick and just as contagious as citizens.’”

“His speeches represent the Rudy who once went overboard and declared, ‘If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city,” referring to New York.

Now, contrast that tone with the tone of Rudy Giuliani’s radio commercial on immigration.  Let’s listen.

(Audiotape)

NARRATOR:  Here’s Rudy Giuliani ...

MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI:  A person who comes here illegally, commits a crime, should be thrown out of the country.  People that come in illegally we got to stop.  Stop illegal immigration by building a fence, a physical fence, and then a technological fence.  You then hire enough border patrol so they can respond in a timely way.  And then, if anybody becomes a citizen, we should make certain they can read English, write English and speak English, because this is an English-speaking country.

NARRATOR:  Paid for by Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee Incorporated.

(End audiotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Now, there’s nothing contradictory, if you read each of those very, very carefully.  But the tone is dramatically different, Michael Murphy.

MR. SHRUM:  Well, well, actually, he didn’t say, he didn’t—in the first one, he said, “If you’re undocumented and you work hard, we want you in New York City.”

MR. MURPHY:  Yep.

MR. SHRUM:  In the second one, he says, “We want to throw you out of the country.”

MR. MURPHY:  The, the first one sounds like a Romney mail piece you’ll probably be getting soon if you live in New Hampshire.  I’m sympathetic to Rudy, and it’s—particularly to McCain on this because I think they’re right on the immigration issue.  Their problem is the politics of it, where most people in the Republican primary think they’re dead wrong.  And when McCain got out, courageously, he also got smacked down viciously in the primary, and it knocked him out of the front-runner’s position.  So all the Republican candidates know this issue is powerful dynamite in our, in our primary on the Republican side, and so they’re all kind of tilting their positions to survive, which is kind of a—an unimpressive but necessary art in national politics.

MR. RUSSERT:  What do the Democrats do about immigration in the general election?

MR. CARVILLE:  Well, they talk about border security, and they talk about employer sanctions.

MR. RUSSERT:  Not driver’s licenses?

MR. CARVILLE:  I don’t think they’re going to talk about driver’s licenses. How does that—let me say this—like I said, that’s again...

MR. RUSSERT:  We’re going...

MR. CARVILLE:  The only thing more popular than an idea whose time is come is an idea whose time is come, come and gone.

MR. SHRUM:  Look, look, the Republicans have already damaged themselves tremendously with Hispanic voters on this.  Unless John McCain came back and won the nomination, and even he’s been backtracking on this, I think you would see much bigger Hispanic vote for Democrats this time than last time.  I think Republicans will want to talk a lot about immigration in the general.  I think James is right, Democrats will talk about border security.  And then ultimately, we’re going to have real immigration reform in this country.  It’s going to happen.

MS. MATALIN:  Democrats have hurt themselves.  They keep talking about—Democrats like to talk about what Republicans have done.

MR. SHRUM:  Right.

MS. MATALIN:  Democrats have really hurt themselves with middle class, blue collar, African-Americans who think by some three-quarters, 75 percent, are dissatisfied with what the Democrats have done, which is to say nothing, or their positions that they’re espousing on immigration.  It’s not just a political issue, it’s a very difficult, substantive...

MR. SHRUM:  Mary, Mary, are you seriously suggesting that African-Americans are going...

MR. CARVILLE:  Right.

MR. SHRUM:  ...to vote Republican on the immigration issue?

MS. MATALIN:  I’m saying that you...

MR. SHRUM:  That is—you’re...

MS. MATALIN:  ...keep talking about the immigration.

MR. SHRUM:  ...that’s where the fairy dust is, on that side of the table.

MR. MURPHY:  I’m telling you, it was kind of fun to watch because the Democrats have been on the sidelines watching all this immigration kerfuffle in our party, kind of giggling at us, “Oh, those Republicans.” Then Spitzer got right into it, and they found out it works in their party, too.  He got his arm cut off, and he put a huge hurt on Hillary...

MR. RUSSERT:  Because he’s the governor of New York.

MR. MURPHY:  ...when he fumbled the issue.  The governor of New York, when he started talking about driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.  So this issue will play everywhere.  It is a cutting issue in this election, and the Democrats are going to find out.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here, here’s another cutting issue, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, mixing it up on taxing and spending.  Romney’s put this out, “Big city, big spender.  Big spending brings billion-dollar budget bust.” Romney talking about Giuliani.  Giuliani said, “Hold on, Mr. Governor of Massachusetts.  You never cut taxes because the legislature wouldn’t let you, and, on your watch, violent crime and murder went up.” And we now have Romney and Giuliani fighting about who’s a fiscal conservative and who’s tough on crime.  Do those issues cut with the Republican electorate, Mary?

MS. MATALIN:  Yes, they do.  And I’m going to come back to Fred Thompson who has a record supporting tax cuts, he has a record cutting government spending, he’s laying out a plan, not an issue paper, a real, specific detailed, conservative plan to grow the economy.

MR. MURPHY:  I know, but...

MR. RUSSERT:  But Giuliani will say he’s never been an executive.  He’s a lobbyist, a lawyer, and a senator.  He’s never managed anything.

MS. MATALIN:  He’s a—he is a conservative who’s been a conservative.  This is the problem with Rudy on immigration, and, and Mitt, both of them, on immigration, on guns, on you name it.  You can call it flip-flopping, you can call it pandering, but what, what it is is inconsistency and unpredictability of conservative principles.  Why do we care and why do we keep talking about and emphasizing the consistency of Fred’s conservative principles?  Because the only way we can beat the liberals is to be united.  And the only way we can be united and energized is an across-the-board conservative, which Thompson has a record on.  You can call him an actor, you can call him a lobbyist, that is not what his background is.  He’s a prosecutor who’s done a lot of intelligence and fiscal risk issues.  And these other guys haven’t.

MR. RUSSERT:  James, separating yourself from your wife’s feelings...

MR. CARVILLE:  Right, with effort.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...assess objectively the Republican race right now as you see it.

MR. CARVILLE:  Well, first of all, I, I think there’s—the Republican Party’s just disconnected with America.  Every time that I see them talk about this is the best economy ever, I just—I, I, I know that we’re taping that.  I think that the—I think the anger and angst in this country is at a level that I’ve never seen.  The Gallup Poll says that the economic insecurity is the highest it’s been since 1991.

MR. RUSSERT:  All right.  Excepting that...

MR. CARVILLE:  And I’m excepting it.  But...

MR. RUSSERT:  But assess the race as you see it.

MR. CARVILLE:  The, the, the race as I see it right now is I agree with Mike Murphy.  Third place in Iowa is going to be tremendously important, that somebody either from the Thompson, Giuliani, McCain group is going to come up and challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination.  And I, and I think that’s going to be the interesting part.  Who that is?  It could be Fred Thompson, it could be Rudy, it could be McCain.  But the third place finish, I don’t—I think that Huckabee is the most interesting and the best politician and the best campaigner of the Republicans, but my sense is he’s going to have a hard time carrying through.  I think this Ron Paul phenomena is, is very real.  I saw him last night on Bloomberg.  He’s going to raise over $12 million in his quarter.  I obviously don’t think he’s going to win, but he’s going to be a determining factor in this thing.  This guy has got a real following now.

MR. RUSSERT:  Bob Shrum, assess the Republicans.  If Huckabee happened to knock off Romney in Iowa or run a close second, can he go—can he play in New Hampshire?

MR. SHRUM:  I don’t think so in the end.  I think that, that it would be hard for New Hampshire to vote for somebody who was a fundamentalist minister, affable as he is.  He does seem to actually want to write, for example, a prohibition against abortion into the Constitution, which Ronald Reagan, for all his talking about it, never tried to do one time.  What I think is happening in the Republican field is that everybody’s got a problem. Everybody’s got a defect or a weakness, so there’s a lot of maneuvering going on to see where that’s going to come out.  And I, you know, I don’t agree with Mary very often on things.  She’s right about Rudy Giuliani in this sense.  He wants to run for president as the 9/11 Giuliani, and he doesn’t want anybody to talk about any other incarnation of his time as mayor.  As you know, he endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994.  He doesn’t want anybody to talk about that.  So I think that this race could actually go, as I said earlier, a fairly long time before it settles down and we come to a nominee.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah.  I, I, I agree.  I think Romney—it’s Romney’s nomination to lose, but he’s very capable of losing it now because he’s very vulnerable. I think Rudy has certain power, but ultimately in a Republican primary he’s vulnerable.  Rudy’s very fast on his feet in kind of the press exchanges, but when it gets down to the muscle of paid advertising, Romney’s got money and Romney’s got issues.

The last thing, though, is, if they all destroy each other, you’ve still got McCain lurking there ready to pounce and—as kind of the anti-politics candidate on a shoestring budget in New Hampshire, which is a bit of a long shot.  It’s hard to survive that Iowa bounce if he doesn’t kind of catch on in Iowa.  But he is the unpolitics candidate waiting in a situation where a lot of negatives could go up very quickly, and there could be a window for him.

MS. MATALIN:  Can I make a quick point before James talks about the Republican Party?

MR. MURPHY:  Sure.

MS. MATALIN:  Which he doesn’t, doesn’t know much about.

MR. CARVILLE:  Right.

MS. MATALIN:  And I don’t know much about your party.  We’re all talking about these early states, and we’re predicating our analyses on past experiences.  There’s nothing like this.  Between the four of us, we’ve probably been involved in 35 different presidential contests.  We’ve never seen anything like this.  We don’t know if this is going to be a momentum early state.  So if you go to the mid-map—this is both the Giuliani and the Thompson strategy.  You go to the mid-map, there’s states there on February 5^th that Rudy is favored in.  They’re contoured for Rudy—New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware—and there are states there that are contoured for Fred Thompson, not just because he’s consistent conservative, because geographically they’re in the Heartland or they’re in the South, and he has good organizations and leadership there—Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia.  So we’ve got to—everybody’s going to stay fluid...

MR. CARVILLE:  Mm-hmm.

MS. MATALIN:  ...till February 5^th, and the next time around we’ll be talking about the mid-map, which is the path to victory.

MR. MURPHY:  Just quickly, contrarian maybe.  But that would be historic. Just to bloviate for a second, I think if you don’t win early you’re dead. And the idea you can wait, I think, is crazy.

MR. RUSSERT:  First sense...

MR. CARVILLE:  Pontificate, don’t bloviate.

MR. RUSSERT:  First time since 1952 an incumbent president or vice president’s name is not on the ballot, and that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing on both sides, volatility.

MS. MATALIN:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Now, you two, happy anniversary.  And the first time you were on MEET THE PRESS was 12 years ago on your second anniversary, and this was the exchange...

MS. MATALIN:  Oh, no.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...when your little baby daughter was four months old.

(Videotape, November 26, 1995)

MR. RUSSERT:  And with us now, America’s political odd couple, James Carville, Mary Matalin.  Welcome.  Happy anniversary.

MR. CARVILLE:  Thank you.

MS. MATALIN:  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  Second year.

MR. CARVILLE:  That’s exactly right.

MS. MATALIN:  That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Together.

MR. CARVILLE:  Together.

MR. RUSSERT:  When Matalin Carville cried last night, who got up?

MS. MATALIN:  Who do you think?

MR. CARVILLE:  I did!  I got up.  Tell the truth.  Don’t sit here and give our last exit poll.

MS. MATALIN:  Who got up and fed her?

MR. CARVILLE:  I can’t...

MS. MATALIN:  He got up and rolled over.

MR. CARVILLE:  I got up.

MR. RUSSERT:  Who got up?

MS. MATALIN:  He got up and rolled over.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Ah, yes.

MS. MATALIN:  And nothing has changed, honey, in 14 years.  Your hair’s a little different, though.

MR. CARVILLE:  It is.

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, best wishes 12 years later.

MR. CARVILLE:  Thank you.

MS. MATALIN:  Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT:  And Mike Murphy and Bob Shrum, thank you all.  Great discussion.

MR. SHRUM:  Happy anniversary.

MR. CARVILLE:  Thank you.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, absolutely.

MS. MATALIN:  You’re a good man, honey.  (Unintelligible).

MR. RUSSERT:  We’ll be right back.  Politics makes strange bedfellows.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  On our Web site this afternoon, more on Carville-Matalin union, 14 years later.  And can you have good friends in the other party?  We’ll ask Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy in our Take Two Web extra, plus our MEET THE PRESS 60^th anniversary celebration continues.  You can find a retrospective on our first six decades, watch special interviews with former guests, a slideshow on some of the important MEET THE PRESS milestone, all on our Web site, mtp.msnbc.com.

That’s all for today.  We’ll be back next week.  If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

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