Can Edwards break out from the rest?

MATTHEWS:  You skipped Iraq.

EDWARDS:  No, I didn’t mean to skip Iraq.  Iraq’s important.  But the war in Iraq is something I’m going to bring to an end, and we’re not going to have during the time we’re still there, we won’t have Blackwater and people like Blackwater roaming around over there lawless.

MATTHEWS:  Why are you different than Hillary?  Because every time you have a dispute and I just watched you in this big speech right in here.  It was impressive.  And you made it clear that you weren’t going to leave a residual combat force in Iraq, like Hillary wants to do.  Why does she want to do it, and why don’t you?  What’s the difference on policy here about Iraq?

EDWARDS:  On Iraq?

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

EDWARDS:  I think that we have to end the occupation and...

MATTHEWS:  And Hillary doesn’t.

EDWARDS:  ... that means -- well, she says she’ll keep combat troops there and continue combat missions.  That means there’s got to be somewhere for those troops to be housed, so I assume there will be bases there.  To me, doing those things continues the occupation, and this occupation needs to be ended.

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you about your electability because I did notice that after you dumped all over what you called -- let me get the right phrase -- the superficial media...I was in the back of the room and I was thinking, Well, that’s not me. 

EDWARDS:  No, of course not!

MATTHEWS:  This is the big shots.

EDWARDS:  Of course not.

MATTHEWS:  Then about 10 minutes later, you changed tune from knocking the media and the pundits and the polls to say, I did find one poll I liked.

EDWARDS:  There wasn’t just one I liked!

MATTHEWS:  Oh, come on!  The poll you liked is the one that we talked a lot about on HARDBALL a week or so ago, which shows that, ironically, despite the fact you haven’t gotten the media glare, the klieg lights, that you are the best bet to beat the Republicans.

EDWARDS:  Yes.  I think the evidence of that is overwhelming.  I beat them all and I beat them all consistently.

MATTHEWS:  Why do you think?

EDWARDS:  I think people in rural America, small town America, respond to me.  I think in the South, a place the Democrats traditionally have trouble, they respond to me.

MATTHEWS:  Right.

EDWARDS:  In the Midwest.  I think this message of change and fighting for them is something they respond to.

MATTHEWS:  You know, you’ve a Southern accent.

You have a nice, charming Southern rural manner.  You grew up as a mill worker’s son, and you have all those backgrounds in church life.  And yet when I hear you talk and I hear Huckabee, Mike Huckabee talk, he talks like he’s a religious Christmas card right now.  It’s all about religion.

EDWARDS:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  And you talk about struggle and economics and class and unfairness, but you don’t -- you don’t cite the Lord the way he does.  Why not?  What’s your thinking?  Why are you different than Mike Huckabee?  You’re both rural guys.  You both came up the hard way, maybe you more than him, and yet he talks God all the time and you don’t.  I listened to you in here, very passionate speech.  You talked about giving the breaks to people who need them against the big shots, and you didn’t, as a populist, ever talk about God.  Why not?

EDWARDS:  Well, God and my faith are enormously important to me personally.  They’ve gotten me through, my faith in the Lord has gotten me through some very, very difficult times in my own life.  But I don’t think it’s my job as either a presidential candidate or president of the United States to impose my faith on anybody.

MATTHEWS:  And so it shouldn’t be part of this election.

EDWARDS:  If I get asked about it, I’ll answer the question honestly. I’ll tell anybody how important my faith is to me every single day.  But it’s not something that I think is my job as president or presidential candidate.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think it’s healthy in America for a candidate to devote so much of his presentation to a sectarian argument about Christianity?

EDWARDS:  Well, it’s not what I’d do.

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