Is Rachel smarter than a third-grader!

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2013

She can't seem to figure it out: Last night, for the second straight night, Rachel Maddow was trying hard to figure something out!

More than one hundred Republicans have signed a brief in support of same-sex marriage. Many are former elected officials.

But only two of these Republicans are current office-holders. Question:

Why aren’t current office-holders willing to support same-sex marriage? For the second night in a row, Rachel was trying, very hard, to work this puzzle out:

MADDOW (3/6/13): Nicolle [Wallace] is a former communications director for George W. Bush. She was a senior adviser to John McCain’s the last presidential campaign. She is very bright.

She is also one of more than 100 Republicans who signed a brief to the Supreme Court in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples, ahead of the Court’s big cases on that subject at the end of this month.

In addition to Nicolle, 11 other high-ranking seasoned political operatives have signed into this brief, many of whom have worked for very anti-gay campaigns in the past.

As for Republican elected officials, seven former Republican governors, including Tom Ridge and Christie Todd Whitman and Jon Huntsman. Other signatures from ten former Republican members of Congress, including Chris Shays and Mary Bono Mack and Susan Molinari.

So seven former Republican governors, ten former Republican members of Congress, on the record in support of gay couples having a constitutional right to get married.

But what about Republicans who are holding office right now? Not former office holders, but current office holders?

How many, for example, sitting Republican governors are signed on to this brief? Zero.

How about sitting Republican senators? Zero.

Again, no Republican senator currently serving in the Senate signed that brief. What about the House? Well, there are a lot of members of the House from the Republican Party, right?...

How many of them decided to go on the record in support of marriage equality? Ding ding ding ding ding! Those two, jackpot! Two out of 233! That’s less than 1 percent...

Big picture: We are led to believe that something is changing on this issue in the Republican Party—leaders in the Republican Party evolving on the issue of gay rights. And that is true of some people who could be called leaders within the Republican Party by some measure.

But it is not true of the party’s elected officials. And why is that? Why is the party changing for everybody except elected officials?

Are you smarter than a third grader? If you are, you can almost surely explain why Republican office-holders are slower to embrace same-sex marriage than Republicans who don’t hold office. You might even recall that a Democratic office-holder—a guy named Barack Obama—wasn’t supporting same-sex marriage at this time last year!

If you’re smarter than a third-grader, you can surely figure this out. But last night, for the second straight night, Rachel burned a lot of time trying to get her Republican friends to help her puzzle this out.

On Tuesday night, she asked Nicolle Wallace about this deeply confounding conundrum. Last night, she called in Steve Schmidt, asking him to help her figure it out.

Is Rachel smarter than a third-grader? If so, why did she burn so much time these past nights trying to puzzle this out?

Last night, as we watched Rachel interview Schmidt, we asked ourselves a question: What do liberal viewers think as they watch Rachel killing time with this transparent nonsense?

Second question:

As a people, are we really smart enough to engage in self-government? Are we able to do it? We no longer have Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley to limit the number of things we hear.

Are we able to see past the tribal bullshit we get from out tribal gods?

Last night, were we liberals playing along with this silly discussion at home? Were we really trying to figure why Republican office-holders are slower to embrace same-sex marriage?

If we were, is there any real hope for our nation? Is there any real hope for for our tribe?

You can watch Rachel puzzle it out: To watch Maddow interview Schmidt last night, go ahead—just click this.

To watch her interview Wallace on Tuesday night, just click here.

Your question, should you choose to answer it:

Was Rachel really puzzled by this? If so, why is she she hosting a nightly show on a cable pseudo-news network?