Chris Matthews and guests slam Rush Limbaugh over his Sonia Sotomayor criticism.
Co-host Diane Sawyer: “The battle begins: How will President Obama’s Latina powerhouse handle the opposition?”...
Correspondent Claire Shipman: “Even as a little girl, growing up in a drug-ridden South Bronx housing project, stricken with juvenile diabetes, she had that trademark knack: instead of seeing dead ends, young Sonia saw possibilities; instead of giving up, she investigated every angle…
“It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech....You know, a friend of mine said, ‘Oh my God, we have a President again!’ Now, in some ways, that’s not fair to Bush, but that’s the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”
— NPR’s Nina Totenberg discussing President Obama's address to Congress, February 27, 2009 Inside Washington.
“But our president seems remarkably unruffled by all of this, serene in an inner confidence that he’s got what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight....It was quite a performance.
...It occurred to me watching the president last night, Wolf, that he was born to do exactly what he was doing. He had that place in the palm of his hand for the entire time he was in that room, and that…
“It was his debut and he wowed us. That’s the running headline from last night’s presidential address to the Congress.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews opening Hardball, February 25, 2009.
“[President Obama] came right out of the box and said, 'make no mistake about it, we are going to recover.’ That’s the most important thing he wanted the country to hear last night. He began on hope. He ended on hope. Now, in between, there's a lot of hard things to be done....But I think he made a start at inspiring hope out in the country.”
— ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning…
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann: “What can the Republican response be?...How do you come out against recovering the nation's sense of self and its optimism? How do you come out against words like ‘boldly,’ ‘wisely,’ ‘swiftly,’ and ‘aggressively?’”
Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “[Bobby Jindal]....is running for the outside rail of the Republican Party, the right-wing rail....That’s all the room that's left on…
“The larger question raised by [Senator Judd] Gregg’s about-face, is it a sign that Republicans have no desire for real bipartisanship? Have they, in fact, declared war on President Obama?...Do developments today also speak to something deeper, a war, an insurgency by Republicans against the President, against Democrats in the House and against their agenda?”
— CNN's Anderson Cooper on Anderson…
“Mr. President, you got no honeymoon. Not a single Republican vote in the House on your first major piece of legislation....I wonder if, coming into the presidency, maybe you were too nice. If I’m a Republican Senator, or a Republican Congress, I think you’re a very nice guy, but maybe I don’t have enough reason to fear you.”
— ABC's Terry Moran in an interview with Obama shown on World News,…
“You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics-as-usual culture here. Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?”
— CBS’s Katie Couric to Obama in an interview shown on the February 3, 2009 Evening News.