Democratic strategist James Carville is a seasoned political operative who knows something about working across the aisle, and walking down the aisle, or doing both at once — as Carville did when he married Republican political consultant Mary Matalin in 1993.
The two are still married, but they are less diametrically opposed politically than Democrats and Republicans have become since, with division now being the chief characteristic of the contemporary American body politic. At least on that point, there is broad agreement.
Carville has been rising up the trending charts due to some of his post-State of the Union address commentary. Specifically addressing the heckling of President Biden by GOP House members during the SOTU address, Carville claimed he wasn’t so much put off as entertained by the behavior in the chamber.
Carville: This was entertaining.. Let them expose themselves if you will, Lauren Boebert’s husband pic.twitter.com/NukEF9YloJ
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 8, 2023
“I’m usually pretty pessimistic about the state of American politics and to some extent the state of American culture, but I thought this was illuminating,” Carville said on MSNBC. “C’mon, this was was entertaining, man.”
“You know, if you like entertainment, you couldn’t see this and let them expose themselves and…” Carville is biased about policy, leaning left, but it’s a decorum breach, not policy, he references. SOTU decorum was also promised by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is no liberal, and who said before the speech that the GOP members would not play “childish games.”
Carville recently quoted former Pennsylvania senatorial candidate Kathy Barnette to explain that MAGA, the home arena of Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, existed long before Donald Trump made red hats that said Make America Great Again. It’s deeply embedded in certain segments of American populace.
James Carville: “Kathy Barnette said, ‘You’ve got to understand, MAGA was here before Trump.’…Trump has rented MAGA. This nativism, and God knows what else, existed before him. He certainly articulated it…It’s a big part of the Republican Party…”https://t.co/pSqEG45pNo pic.twitter.com/kqFYvnAfRN
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 15, 2023
“You’ve got to understand, MAGA was here before Trump,” Carville paraphrases Barnette in a talk with conservative Bill Kristol. “Trump has rented MAGA. This nativism…existed before him. He certainly articulated it…It’s a big part of the Republican Party…”
