MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Attacks Glenn Beck, Talk Radio for Mitt Romney's Loss: 'You Punch Them in the Face

(Photo: MSNBC)

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough had some strongly-worded advice for the Republican Party on "Morning Joe​" Monday.

In his opinion, Republican nominee Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election because he failed to "stand up" to the "bullies" on talk radio like Glenn Beck.  If future Republicans do the same, their path to victory becomes much harder, he says.

Scarborough began by saying that in previous decades-- particularly during the Reagan years-- the Republican Party had most of the intellectual clout.  Organizations like the Heritage Foundation emerged, and many positive economic changes resulted.  Now, though, he says that the message has been reduced in many ways to "Obama bad" and "Democrats Marxist."

He continued:

...you have nobody like Irving Kristol to go out there...to write and explain what this means, and explain how we are right, and how we have been right.  How our philosophy is a governing philosophy of the future.

But that's been stripped away by the anti-intellectualism of the past decade and the conservative cause...

[...]

These type of people who have the ability to make what [George W.] Bush called the 'compassionate conservative' argument [are] thrown to the side because they don’t sound enough like Glenn Beck, or a blogger.

When panelist Mike Barnicle asked whether there is enough "breathing room" between the "loudness and the shrillness" of both sides, Scarborough doubled down on his assertion that conservative talk radio needs to be put in its place:

What do you do do a school yard bully?  You punch them in the face.  You think any of these people in talk radio -- if they’re punched in the face by a Republican nominee — do you think they would push back?  No, they’re cowards. They’re bullies. Punch them in the face, and they back off.  Bullies do that.

Mitt Romney, and we said it nonstop for two years, he would never stand up to these bullies.  And so they framed his campaign and he got his tail whipped.

[...]

And we started saying this in 2010, when Glenn Beck said the president was a racist who hates all white people.

Watch the entire clip, in which the panelists proceed to defend Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol against recent criticism on talk radio:

--

Related:

• Outspoken Provocateur Penn Jillette to Glenn Beck: Every Problem We Have Should Be Solved With More Freedom, Not Less
• 'You Won!': Joe Scarborough Wonders Why Victorious Libs Are Still So Angry About 'Everything'
• Joe Scarborough Has Tense Exchange With Mika Brzezinski Over Romney's 'Binder' Remarks: 'Desperation'