MSNBC = Mean-Spirited, Nasty, Belligerent Chris Award

Host Chris Matthews: “One thing I notice about black people at different conventions. You go to a Democratic convention with Donna [Edwards] and black folk are hanging together and having a good time. They’re smiling, they’re enjoying themselves. They feel very much at home. You go to a Republican event, you get a feeling that you are all told, ‘Individually now, don’t bunch up. Don’t, don’t, don’t get together. Don’t get together, don’t crowd, you’ll scare these people.’ Is that true in the Republican Party? Is that still true in your party? Did you fear that if you got together with some other African-Americans, these white guys might get scared of you?”

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “No! What are you talking about?!”

Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page: “Well this is Newt’s time to run....He has a good shot at winning the nomination. Winning the general is a whole different matter. But this-“

Host Chris Matthews, interrupting: “But he looks like a car bomber. He looks like a car bomber, Clarence. He looks like a car bomber. He’s got that crazy Mephistophelian grin of his. He looks like he loves torturing. Look at the guy! I mean this, this is not the face of a President.”

“The utter confusion in the Republican presidential nominating process results from two discernible facts. One: they hate. That’s the simplest explanation of the disastrous course of this selection process. They hate so much they are not in the mood to fall in love with a candidate or even fall in behind someone. Their brains, racked as they are by hatred, they lack the ‘like’ mode. They are in no mood looking around for a politician they like. The hating is so much more satisfying.”

“Is the Republican Party willing to risk economic Armageddon in the name of religion, that is the religion of no taxes? Well, the GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology....The Party’s being driven by fanatics and they’re determined to bounce America’s savings bonds and have the United States begin to become like Greece.”

“This incredible portrayal by the Republicans of themselves — first of all, they looked hot and horny for executions out in that Reagan Library debate. Then they talk about letting the guy on the gurney die because he doesn’t have health insurance. Then they mock the gay soldier. And then you’ve got Bachmann out there saying, ‘If you don’t have health insurance, fine, you can go to the poorhouse.’ And now this guy [Mitt Romney] saying, ‘Hip, hip, hooray for foreclosures!’ This party has become a cartoon of Ebenezer Scrooge, or worse.”

“What’s been the role of talk radio in fueling the heated language?...People like Mark Levin, Michael Savage, for example who every time you listen to them are furious, furious at the Left with anger that just builds and builds in their voice, and by the time they go to commercial, they’re just in some rage, every night, with ugly talk. Ugly sounding talk. And it never changes. It never modulates.... They do see the other end of the field as evil, as awful. Not just disagreeable but evil. And they use that language, when they talk about the other side, isn’t that part of the problem? And my question is doesn’t that give the moral license to people who have crazy minds to start with?”