Joe Scarborough let loose on Friday, going on a wild tear about his loathing of Michele Bachmann and the fringe politics he thinks she represents.
Scarborough was speaking on "Morning Joe" about Thursday night's GOP debate in Iowa, where Bachmann--along with her memorable brawling with Tim Pawlenty--was a star attraction. Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and the show's panelists debated pleasantly about who had won and lost the debate for a few minutes. But Scarborough clearly had some things to get off his chest, because he unleashed an angry monologue for the ages.
Bachmann, he said, was symbolic of a kind of "conspiracy" that always happens in the early stages of presidential elections, where the base of the party pushes "somebody that is never going to win." This, he said, allows the media to "run articles on these people on the far right and point for a year about 'look how whacked out the Republican party is.'"
Scarborough said that the same thing happens every four years in Iowa, and pointed to Mike Huckabee's surge in 2007 as evidence of this.
"Michele Bachmann's first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted. Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost--some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way...they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines...Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke...Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again."
"Tell us how you really feel," panelist Michael Steele joked.
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed Michael Steele's comment to Jonathan Capeheart.