Seriously: what is Chris Matthews’ beef?   Interviewing Nancy Pelosi today, Matthews seemed put out that the Senate Dems had to make compromises on the stimulus bill to win the support of three Republicans necessary for the bill’s passage.   The Hardball host, incredibly, even appeared peeved that the Republicans threatened to vote against the final bill . . . if they didn’t like it.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Why do three Republican senators get to write the–to toy around with a bill of this importance historically? It seems like they get to decide what’s in, what’s out and whether there is in fact a recovery bill. I’m talking about Senators Specter, Snow and Collins. They were treated by the Senate Majority Leader as if they were the profiles in courage, the key people in passing this bill.

Matthews returned to the theme later in the interview, and again he seemed peeved at the small-d democratic process itself.

MATTHEWS: Does it bother you as Speaker of the House, the chief constitutional officer, the only one, really, in the Congress, that every time you have a bill that’s of historic importance you have to woo, person-to-person, individually, a handful of Republican senators, who then get more power than practically the entire House of Representatives in designing these bills.  Because they can say no to–this time around three Republicans said “well, this is in and that’s out and we might not vote for this unless it goes our way in conference.” They actually said that: unless the conference goes the way they want it, they’re not going to vote for it in final.

Senators saying they won’t vote for a bill they don’t like? How dare they!  There ought to be a law. I mean, in Cuba and North Korea they don’t run into these problems . . .