Dear GOP: If You Can't Be Moral, at Least Be Smart

Joe Scarborough: Heated rhetoric would be political disaster in 2012 race
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 18, 2011 12:43 PM CST
Dear GOP: If You Can't Be Moral, at Least Be Smart
Sarah Palin signs copies of her new book, "America By Heart," in Little Rock, Ark.   (AP Photo/Brian Chilson, File)

Joe Scarborough joins the chorus of those wishing for a more civil tone in politics, but he's not holding out much hope that the moral argument for civility will do the trick. After all, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and other "right-wing polemicists who make big bucks spewing rage" aren't admitting even a smidge of regret, he writes in Politico. For his fellow conservatives, then, Scarborough makes a more practical appeal: It will be political suicide to keep up the "cacophony of crazy talk" in the 2012 elections.

Palin clearly isn't going to "lead the discussion back to civility," and so-called leaders like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are apparently too timid. "So let me try a different tack by speaking to their politically expedient minds," writes Scarborough. Crosshairs on political maps might have worked in the midterms, but they'll backfire in the presidential race. "If you can’t be civil because it’s the right thing to do, then do it because it is in your party’s best interest." (More political rhetoric stories.)

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