Chris Matthews was apparently completely enamored with Mitch Daniels and his response to President Obama's State of the Union Address this Tuesday night and all I can say is thank goodness Rachel Maddow was there to at least beat back at part of Matthews' fawning praise.

She didn't really have much time to respond to Matthews since they were coming up on a hard break for a commercial, but it's too bad she also did not point out that one, there was nothing honest about Daniel's speech. It was full of one lie after another. And means testing "entitlements", and I hate that word by the way, but means testing Social Security and Medicare is nothing but a way to turn them into welfare programs and to later have an excuse to eliminate them. It's a terrible idea.

And this best kind of "honest" "fiscally conservative" Republican was George W. Bush's OMB Director that helped get our economy into this mess, who has no right to be criticizing that Obama didn't fix Bush's mess quickly enough and is in the middle union busting and pushing right to work in his state and is not looking out for the working class. He's just another Republican governor doing their best to make the economy as terrible as humanly possible at the bidding of the Koch brothers and the richest among us in order to keep President Obama from being reelected. Sadly if this was Matthews' immediate response, we'll surely be hearing more of this sort of ridiculous praise of Daniels' speech from the rest of the Villagers in the beltway media.

MATTHEWS: You know, I really liked that speech by Mitch Daniels. I thought it was really a Midwestern conservatism of the best kind, honest, fiscally conservative or course, but recognizing that we have to protect our safety net and we have to recognize that the rich cannot get all the pension money and all the entitlement money. There's not enough to go around. We're going to have to have means testing. We're going to have to close the loopholes.

A very responsible kind of look at fiscal conservatism that recognizes that the rich can't plunder the poor any more, that if you're going to have a true conservatism, in other words a society that will sustain itself, a society that will be at peace with itself, you need to help the people to get a break and that means it's not Libertarianism at all. There's nothing of Ron Paul in what that man said.

It was a responsible social policy of the right, which was really I think cast in old time Midwest, Bob Taft conservatism, except for some of the bromides, the idiomatic crap that he threw in there to make everybody happy. There was a seriousness to this speech. And now I understand why people like Mitch Daniels.

MADDOW: Chris I am very glad that we area all talking about this together because I could not disagree with you more about the speech. This was just my impression of it but I don't have time to go into that...

MATTHEWS: Why?

MADDOW: We're going to go into that in a moment.

MATTHEWS: What's wrong?

MADDOW: I think that Mitch Daniels there to say the world is on fire. Be afraid. Run to Republicans. I mean, he's talking about America as a country that... America adrift, quarreling and paralyzed going over Niagra. I mean this was a “Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid” this guy's trying to murder the country speech.

MATTHEWS: But he also had solutions. He had gutsy solutions. He wasn't afraid to take on the rich and that's so rare today in the Republican side.

MADDOW: I will take you on that Chris, absolutely.