For GOP hawks, the tactic is "so easy, like taking candy from a baby," says Hardball's Chris Matthews. 
Let me finish tonight with this.
Think about this bait and switch number.
Keep it in mind – how it’s done
First they find something you really don’t like, a matter that really burns you up.
Then, when you are white hot with anger, they present something “different” for you to hate or fear or whatever they’re trying to get you to do.
Sothey find veterans of the Vietnam war who don’t like what John Kerry said in opposing the war after he got home.
Then, they take these angry men and say they’re angry not at what Kerry said in opposing the war but what he did during the war.
Nobody notices the trick that’s been pulled. The swiftboating is completed.
We all get angry with the people who planned 9/11. While the anger is still hot, they say we need to attack…a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Bait and switch!
So easy, like taking candy from a baby.
They know we Americans are afraid of a nuclear attack but they can’t prove Saddam has nuclear weapons so they switch to another, vaguer threat – W. M. D, “weapons of mass destruction” – meaning biological and chemical.
Since so many countries have them, they know that some country in the Mideast having them wouldn’t get us into a war. But since they got us focused on “nuclear” weapons being in Iraq, the bait has been set.
Bait and switch. Look for it next time you see a pitch from the hawks.
Check out the video above: Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for the Huffington Post and Joy Reid, managing editor of TheGrio.com/MNSBC political analyst discuss the GOP’s latest efforts to bait and switch.