Wow - Dylan Ratigan, a host who I have found to be relatively conservative when I have watched him in the past, absolutely tore into Betsey McCaughey today during a mini-debate between McCaughey and Anthony Weiner on healthcare.
A highlight included Betsey McCaughey saying, "This is going to go down as one of the most brow-beating interviews in television history." (edited to correct the quote)
Ratigan kept demanding that she answer his question - what was her proposal to address the "corporate communism," in which health insurers don't compete against each other. When she finally answered the question near the end of the interview after several calls of "let me finish" and "you aren't a moderator, you're a partisan" - she cited the CBO proposal to push medicare to begin later and later for seniors (from 65 to 70 over the next decades).
Weiner tore into her and asked her when he would be getting medicare - and she had no answer for him. There was no let up in the entire session, just brutal truth. As soon as McCaughey brought up tort reform she was silenced by statistics which exposed how stupid of an issue that is. On the defensive the entire time.
I wish that Weiner had been arguing this way a month ago - he had previously had such a muddled message that confused average viewers on the difference between single payer and the public option. He's completely on point now, discussing why the public option is a necessity and how the Republican claims of "Democrats destroying medicare" are garbage.
What Weiner needs to do is debate the even more well-spoken Republicans now, the Limbaugh, Gingrich, Scarborough crowd who are against the public option and would still collapse in a debate where the facts are so obviously against them. The only problem with this debate was that it reminded me of Alan Colmes debating Sean Hannity...when one person holds such a more commanding presence than the other, it sort of destroys the debate, even if the facts are on the worse "debaters" side. Weiner needs to move onto the bigger fish with this sort of ferocity.
Updated with Video:
Updated again - credit to Kitty for finding it first:
http://www.politico.com/...
Ben Smith at Politico writes:
I'm told it got even more bitter after the cameras turned off.
"You are a disgrace to journalism," McCaughey told Ratigan, according to a source on the set.
"You were a great guest, except that we usually want answers to our questions," he responded.