Just Getting Warmed Up

His father's reaction: "That's great, Joey, but I'm voting for Earl."

But Hutto decided to step down, and Scarborough, who knew no one in politics, bought time on a public-access station, spending hours taking calls on the air. The party establishment was against him in the conservative district, which includes several military bases, and he was one of five Republican candidates in the primary election. But he pulled off an upset.

In 1997 he was one of the GOP rebels who led an unsuccessful coup attempt against Newt Gingrich, the divisive House speaker. "Newt Gingrich was becoming more of a liability," Scarborough says. "We couldn't do anything without the Democrats wrapping Newt around our necks."

Not content just to practice politics, Scarborough started the Florida Sun, a free weekly, writing many of the stories himself. He bailed out after the paper became a financial drain.

In spring 2001, Scarborough faced a personal crisis. He had gotten divorced two years earlier, and the older of his two teenage sons was having problems. Scarborough says a counselor told him that "Joey needs you in his life as much as possible." The congressman resigned, moved back to Pensacola and had Joey move in with him.

"It was the hardest decision I ever made and the easiest decision I ever made, because there was no choice," he says.

Scarborough went back to practicing law but became a frequent television guest. He caught Griffin's eye after a series of appearances on "Hardball," including one in which he predicted that Trent Lott was toast as Senate Republican leader after having praised Strom Thurmond's segregationist 1948 candidacy for president.

"We took a guy that was pretty raw and took a risk with him," Griffin says. "I tweak him all the time: 'Don't try to be like everybody else.' Cable demands a certain rawness in who you are. We don't want formality. . . . He's comfortable talking about everything from Shiites to Paris Hilton."

At first, Scarborough admits, "I was horrible." Referring to Fox's Bill O'Reilly, he says, "Some people here thought I would be Little O'Reilly. They wanted me to be stridently pro-Bush, pro-war. That wasn't me. I was playing a role."

As a congressman, Scarborough championed George W. Bush's election in 2000, and as a commentator he backed the Iraq war. But he has turned against both, and MSNBC now runs commercials touting him as an independent voice.

"The Republican Party has been corrupted by power," Scarborough says. "George Bush and the Republican Party have done more to hurt the conservative cause in the last seven years than Ted Kennedy ever could."

Such comments have cost him friendships, says Scarborough, who recalls receiving a "nasty e-mail" from a White House aide after one broadside against Bush. But he is accustomed to that: "When I went after Gingrich, I lost most of my friends" in the party.