chris: today we premier mitt romney as the artist. hi, i'm chris matthews. welcome to the show. with us today, dan ralingter. -- rather. first up, the hotter the republican fight gets, the bigger the battle for michigan and super tuesday. the more the antiobama language amps up. but for every republican vote that is turned out in michigan tuesday by shock talk, the obama team sees a possible gain from swing voters in the center. here's some evidence of the no-hold-barred climate out there right now from just last week. starting with franklin graham on "morning joe." >> under islamic law, they -- the muslim world sees barack obama as a muslim. >> we see a president who isistically trying to crush -- who is systematically trying to

crush the original judeo-christian principles in this country. >> this is the most dangerous president on national security grounds in american history. >> we moust not allow iran to have a nuclear weapon. if we re-elect barack obama it will happen. chris: the hatred these fellas have for barack obama is palpable. it's so far off the charts. is this going to hurt them when they get into the general election environment? whoever comes out on top. >> it could. but look for the pivot. once the nominee is settled, they'll pivot more toward the middle because i think they have to. this election is going to be decided by independents, suburban swing voters, particularly suburban and independent swing women voters. i can't believe that the party as a whole will say, let's stick to the primaries where we're trying to excite our base. they'll pivot in the summer. chris: but the idea after calling him almost a devil, if you listen to these people, he's basically in with the bad guys. he's on the other side. he hates america, he's bringing us down. can they switch to that and say, oh, he's a fine fellow

with a good family, just disdist agrees with us. >> it's going to be interesting come the presidential debates what happens when they rerun some of the clips from these primary debates because it's going to be hard to come back from that. but i'm not sure these guys really hate obama. i just think that the more extreme the primary gets, the more difficult it gets, the more unreal the debates become. because they're having to shift so far right in order to try and scrabble over primary voters. >> but democratic -- chris: democrats will certainly keep these tapes. >> of course they will and the white house will try to use this as well. but when dan talks about the pivot, i think we might already be starting to see the pivot or at the very least some worry among the republicans about going too far to the right and about overreach. you see what happens this past week in virginia with the virginia legislature and with that legislation that ended up getting tabled that was dealing with abortion and bob mcdonalds is believed to have stepped in

on that. and there's some concern now among republicans about losing these key -- this key block of women voters. chris: i got to say -- >> i got to say, this is jonestown. these guys have all drunk this cool aid that spews from places like the rush limbaugh program and certain things on fox. and i've done 10 of these, god help me. and i have never seen a field go so extreme and so characterure their opposition as the antichrist as this field has. the last time i think we saw anything even remotely resembling this was the way democrats felt about richard nixon in 1972. and you saw what happened to george mcgovern. chris: and on these sticky topics like, first of all, even if you go to church and you're a catholic, you don't hear birth control since the 1950's. >> i'm not defending them by any stretch of the imagination but can having to appeal to the

hard, most fundamentalist base to get elected in the primaries, i do think it's deep within the republican party, hatred may be too strong a word, they detest obama and that will work poorly in the election because that's a motivator to get people out to the polls. and they parted -- it has people saying, listen, i got to get to the polls. so whether that is seeping over, whether it's leeching over into other parts of the electorate will be very interesting to see. chris: i wonder about that, too. >> the turnout has been down in all these republican primaries. chris: last time around we had more people say they weren't going to vote for obama than did. he beat the polls and the spread. i wonder this time if there isn't this leeching, this undercurrent of negativity that's gotten into the vocabulary and it's not just about social issues, it's about him, getting him and his family out of that white house. >> there's no question that there is a strain of american votes -- a string of american voters mostly to the right who,

we saw that in the we want our country back. we have seen that. week been playing this game for three and a half years now. ever since obama was inaugurated. but at the same time i'm going to be interested to see how these candidates, who are playing so far to the base, are going to be able to walk that line when the general comes anded a ath the end of the day this country is not that far to the right. you're still going to have to be able to -- chris: most voters are women. >> as a woman watching it it is sort of fem that we're having interest this debate. you mention the 1950's. every now and again there are times where it seems to me that america is slightly on a different page from the rest of the world. usually it's been over the middle east. but this time i've been watching some of the debates this -- recently, and it really has been this idea that we're having a 1950's debate? seriously? about access to birth control, when america faces huge challenges, the rice of china, unemployment, the potential for a global recession. we're talking about access to

birth control? that's not what voters want to hear about. i think that's the di disconnect that you're seeing. chris: it's not america. i can promise you. put it to the matthews meter. this fall, will the republican candidate try to cool it and pivot to the senter? or will he keep the rhetoric hot and heavy? seven say pivot to the center, that's i think conventional thinkings, but five say no. you say to the center but joe says they're going to keep it to the right, antiobama and vividly negative. >> not only that, but how does a guy like mitt romney make a pivot on immigration? he has thoroughly offended latinos in this country. and -- chris: deportation. >> they've got themselves so far out on a limb and they're living, they are living in an alternative universe where rush limbaugh is god. chris: let's go to the white

house. there's nothing wrong with being popular in your thinking. let me ask you this. that's a nice way to put it. not my way. let me ask you about the white house. you're there every day covering for "the times." do they think they might be a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of the joyousness you feel coming out of there? not just the singing with the blues group the other day, but a little too happy for the numbers right now. >> i don't know if i agree with you that they're dancing in the end zone quite yet. you hear a lot of caution when you talk to the white house people and in some ways they kind of are sorry that the unemployment rate -- not sorry that the unemployment rate went so far down but they're very worried and they bring this up all the time that it could go back up again at any time. they're really, really worried about gas prices and that's something you hear them talk about all the time. but at the same time i think with the whole singing and the blues singing, president obama is now exploring his musical

voice, i think in some ways he may think that that's also an effort to make himself seem more real, he's trying to get elected. >> the guy just can't win. when he doesn't do that, he's aloof. chris: let's start with dan. this is not an easy one. your name's on the game here. who will win michigan? romney or sanner to snum >> i have no idea -- or santorum? >> i have no idea. >> this race has been so crazy until now, almost every prediction all of us have made have been wrong. >> i refuse to answer. >> oh, what the hell. i can do it. romney is wall to wall on the air in michigan with positive and negative ads. he's going to win it i think. chris: just to be different i think santorum pulls it out. before we break, the artist is the odds-on favorite to get the best picture oscar this sunday night. the movie's about the perfect silent picture star who faces

his downfall when he has to open his mouth. and that made us think of the -- a certain republican frontrunner out there. here thren is our trailer for a movie we're calling "mitt: better off mute." >> i love this state.

it seems right here. the fees are the right height. [laughter] chris: we're very proud of that. when we come back, rick santorum says his beautiful 3-year-old disabled daughter would have been aborted by many parents. is it giving a new dimension to the abortion debate?

chris: welcome back. i'm going to play something from rick santorum about his daughter bella. >> one thing bella can do, she

dud as well as any of our kids, is that she loves. and she is able -- she is able to love us and is really in many respects the center of our family. and we feel very, very blessed. chris: joe has written about this in this week's issue of "time" magazine. quote, i am haunted by the smiling photos of isabela santorum. she struggles through many of her days but she also has been granted three years of unconditional love. the ability to smile. all right. i can hear you saying that santorum family's course may be admirable but shouldn't we have the right to make our own choices. yes, i suppose. but i also worry that we become too averse to personal inconvenience and i'm grateful for santorum for forcing on me the discomfort of having to think about the moral implications of his daughter's smile. joe, tell us about that. >> well, i do think, and it's not just this issue. in a number of ways santorum

has raised inconvenient issues. the fact that he thinks that parents should be spending an awful lot more time involved in their kids' education. and customizing that education. you know, i think that we get -- we let ourselves off too easily in a lot of things. by the way, i'm not -- i don't advocate forcing people to do one thing or another. but i do think that the santorum family has been enriched by this life and i think that bella has been enriched by their love. chris: what's the reaction been to your column? >> it's been pretty intense but surprisingly, well, maybe not surprisingly, it's been positive from a number of -- a lot of response is from women and especially from women who are the mothers of disabled children. chris: just before we get into the conversation about this, to back up your concerns about this. the latest polling out there says that 13% of people say abortion is morally acceptable. like one in eight. four times that many say it's

morally wrong. so four times as many are willing to offer a moral judgment and 25% see it as another medical procedure. they don't offer a moral judgment. so it's not like you're alone on this in raising the issue. what do you think of that? >> i think that it's not necessarily that surprising. there are a lot of people who believe that, for instance, that abortion is personally a choice that they would not make who are at the same time pro-choice. and that gets i think to the heart of sort of the abortion debate. that we've been living with for decades now. and i think so many americans as well, there's an am bive lens and an ambiguity about their feelings, about when it comes to life and at what point do you choose to raise a child who has difficulties and what point is it your responsibility to do to is it -- to do so? that's not an easy yes-no

situation. it's something that should be thought through. chris: people that have moral concerns about it, when asked about it, they may have moral concerns and they probably do because i take people at their word with you also we have a new statistic from an institute which everyone believes is quite credible, 40% of people who have unwanted pregnancies have abortions. so even though they have qualms and concerns they go ahead in many cases and have an abortion. >> moral certainty is very difficult and perm. and we've reached the point in this country where not often enough do we have tolerance for people's personal decisions when faced with remarkable challengeless. we each have to respond to it in our own personal way and joe's column moved me. look, whatever you think of rick santorum and his family, what they have done with this child, since the child was born, how they've treated this child and how he speaks about the child is moving. but again, it's about tolerance for other people's points of view and what they're going

through when they're faced with do i or don't i on any difficult call. chris: it's also that people have a greater ability to handle problems than they are willing to accept up front. people are really strong. i think that's your point. >> yeah. and i think that on some level we may be depriving ourselves of our own humanity as a people when we, you know, shy away from these kind of inconveniences in our lives. not just in terms of children. chris: the politics of this thing. santorum has made this a big issue. >> he has. i think the politics are interesting. i'm interested by the reaction to joe's column there and the fact that he's had so many positive responses from women and particularly women raising children with disabilities. i suppose the only counterpart might be that you're unlikely to hear from women who have had am knows and then made the opposite choice. there wouldn't be people who would necessarily reach out to you. chris: that may tell you a lot about the whole situation as well. when we come back, scroops -- scoops and predictions. right from the notebooks of

these top reporters. right from the notebooks of these top reporters. tell me something i don't know.

>> tell me something i don't know is brought to you by -- chris: welcome back. dan, tell me something i don't know. >> well, if the defense department and the white house aren't, they should be taking another hard look at chinese hacking into even our defense department secrets. with the new high-tech f-35

american stealth fighter, the chinese apparently hacked into a conference call and took some of the high-tech and stealth tech normal and put it into their f-20 fighter. this is an indication of how extensive this chinese hacking into even our best secrets, both government and in terms of business, is. chris: this is the nature of work today, isn't it? >> chris, this week we all lost two very valued colleagues in syria. marie and remi and what they were trying to tell us is how bad things are in the city of homs. we are watching crimes against humanity before our eyes and there is no political will anywhere to do anything about it. russia is the stumbling block. and people are trying to put pressure on moscow but vladimir putin is so far resistant to it. no safe havens. chris: what country wants to get in from the rebels? >> you're getting pressure from the americans and the brits and europeans as well on this. >> next week the israeli prime

minister is going to be coming to washington and this is sort of crunch time for prome and mr. -- president obama and netanyahu to figure out how they're going to address in the next few months, we had a politically perilous time, the iran nuclear question. chris: our big question goes right to that coming up. >> we have a parliamentary election in iran next month. and in true arraign -- iranian fashion we already know who the loser is. mahmoud ahmadinejad. because the supreme leader and his allies have wiped all of ahmadinejad's allies off the election list. they haven't been allowed to run. and the big question after that is, will the new parliament impeach ahmadinejad? chris: when we come back, the big question of the week, will barack obama back israel if it decides to strike iran this year? this is panel that knows a lot about that.

chris: welcome back. this week's big question, it's a big win. will barack obama back israel if it decides to strike iran this year? >> publicly or privately? i think that he's publicly going to have to do it but i think that there's tremendous pressure from the administration right now on the israelis not to do it and by the way, i don't think that the israelis are going to do it. because they're not stupid. chris: will we passively say go ahead because we can't stop them? >> i don't know. chris: ok. >> the pressure at the moment from the white house is to try and persuade the israelis that they have the timetable on when iran will have access to nuclear weapons. it's very hard -- chris: will he face down ben when he gets here? >> it's hard to see america opposing israel. chris: but beforehand?

will he say don't do it? >> that's what they're going to try and say. privately. >> i don't think israel will do it. this year. but that's a guess. but particularly in an election year, i want to say any other election year, united states presidentworks this kind of decision, if israel says, we think we have to do this to defend ourselves for survival, he's got to go with them implicitly or explicitly. chris: it smells to me like iraq. the drums have been beating for months now. it seems like they're going. thanks for a great round table. dan rather will be covering election night on super tuesday. thank you all for joining us. great show. thanks for watching. we'll see you back here next week.