Scarborough Tells Fox & Friends: 'Moderate Republicans Don't Win Elections'

On Friday, after spending a week bashing conservatives and Tea Partiers on liberal networks and pushing Republicans to be more moderate, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough did not defend those views when he appeared on Fox News’s Fox & Friends.

Instead, the liberal Republican host said the belief that Republicans “need to get more moderate presidential candidates” simply “flies in the face of history.”

“Moderate Republicans don’t win elections,” he conceded, while promoting his book that argues Republicans can win again by going away from Tea Party “amateurs.”

Scarborough said that candidates had to be conservative and needed to be “moderate temperamentally.” His words on the channel he referred to as the “mothership” for Republicans were markedly different from what he has been saying on left-of-center outlets. On NBC’s Meet The Press and his MSNBC show, Scarborough called Tea Partiers “RINOs,” parroting a Bill Maher talking point. On The View, Scarborough said he would vote for a Democrat for president. 

Scarborough’s waffling on the issue to various audiences in order to sell books is reminiscent of Mitt Romney, the “moderate” presidential nominee who lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, and is remarkably different from someone like President Ronald Reagan, who had the same message for all audiences, whether they were liberal, conservative, rural, or urban.