MATTHEWS (12/19/06): Bob [Herbert], I know you`re a liberal, but when is a politician like Hillary Clinton or anybody else going to admit they have the "A" word—ambition—and stop with this coy thing about [fluttering eyelids], “I’m so flattered by so much interest?” It’s like a stripteaser saying she’s flattered by the attention.

[1/21/07] ... Matthews invited the idiot Fineman to share his recent thoughts about “Miss Perfect”—the fatuous thoughts he’d first revealed in that damn-fool Newsweek column. Indeed, to help the pundits along with their mockery, Matthews’ producers had even created a visual — a laughable photo-shopped image of “Miss Perfect,” Hillary Clinton, clad in a big poodle skirt.

MATTHEWS (1/26/07): Out here, this array of states, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, are going to be in play [in 2008], more so perhaps I would argue than the south, which tends to be Republican, or the industrial midwest, which may have a problem with a modern, as Bill Clinton would say, uppity women like his wife.

MATTHEWS: OK. Suppose [Edwards] opens a cut on her eye - using the metaphor of a boxing match - and that cut above her eye is the fact she took corporate money. She takes lobbyist money. Can she ignore that kind of punch?

MATTHEWS (to Chris Dodd): Do you find it difficult to debate a woman?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Let me tell you how short Hillary’s leash is. She was asked by [Russert] about whether we’re going to get full disclosure of contributors to presidential libraries. And she did not feel that she had the latitude in her husband’s absence to give [] an answer. She said, you’ll have to ask my husband, as if [] a guy [is] going door to door trying to sell someone and says you’ll have to wait for my husband to get home.