Tweety Getting Serious About The Senate

Not the cartoon character, nor the combination of Tweety Bird and Chris Matthews, but the whole Chris Matthews. He's apparently set on running for Arlen Specter's seat in two years and buying a house on the other side of New Jersey to prove it. Of course real estate in Pennsylvania is intriguing, but giving up his soapbox on MSNBC would mean a whole lot more.

From Politico:

As speculation surrounding his potential candidacy heats up, Matthews has also been asking advisers whether to step down from his MSNBC post well before his contract expires in June. At one recent meeting, he was advised that if he truly intends to run, he should resign from the network as soon as possible.

“We talked about the value of doing this now and six months from now. I advocated that he do this as soon as possible,” the operative said. “It’s the MSNBC stuff that’s going to jam him up. I said, 'If you want to be a U.S. senator, step up and get into the race.'”

As you may recall, Al Franken resigned from his much more liberally-minded gig at Air America in mid-February of 2007. Of course Air America had nothing to lose, since it is a progressive talk network. MSNBC on the other hand is supposed to be neutral and is afraid of wingers calling them the Fox News of the left. The reality is those nuts on the right will say bad things about MSNBC either way, just as long as there are people at the network that call them out on their rabid rightwing shit.

Still, if Chris wants to put himself out there and join the club of 100, then he should resign from Hardball ASAP.