hour. whether or not political campaigns have a natural life span, campaign websites do not have a natural life span. campaign websites do not just die on their own. if you want them to die, you have to overtly kill them, and somebody forgot to kill tim pawlenty's presidential website. after a third place showing at the ames, iowa, straw poll this weekend, former minnesota governor tim pawlenty quit the race for president, he quit during an appearance on an abc sunday morning show called "this week," but if any of the 300 million americans don't watch that show missed the announcement and were still interested in tim pawlenty, you would not have known from the website today that mr. pawlenty had left the race. this is what timpawlenty.com looks like right now. pawlenty 2012 and the big slogan, tomorrow begins today.

>> our morning in america, our new beginning, our road to tomorrow begins today. right here, right now. >> tomorrow begins today. technically speaking, tomorrow ended yesterday for governor pawlenty. today even ended yesterday, but somebody maybe forgot to inform the webmaster as well as whoever tweets in mr. pawlenty's name. "congratulations to representative bachmann on her win, our campaign needed to show progress and we did. i'm eager for the campaign ahead." and then he quit. there will, in the end, be no campaign ahead for tim pawlenty. whether or not you thought tim pawlenty was going to win the nomination or the presidency, tim pawlenty is out of the race for a reason that statistically speaking makes no sense.

first of all, tim pawlenty initially said if he finished anywhere better than sixth he would see that as a victory and stay in the race. he ended up finishing third and dropped out anyway. second of all, the decision point for him here was the ames, iowa, straw poll. basing a decision about whether or not to continue a presidential campaign on the straw poll is like basing that kind of decision on who's going to win a game of bingo. if you can afford to play only one bingo card and you're playing against somebody else who just bought 50 bingo cards, the 50 cards person is more likely to win. yes, there is chance and some skill involved, but basically you need a 1st grader's knowledge of math. it costs money to vote, costs $30 to cast a ballot. some of the candidates who really want to win the straw poll buy the ballots for people

and then hand them out so the people to whom they hand out the ballots will vote for them. that's how you win the straw poll. you spend money to do it. michele bachmann reportedly purchased 6,000 $30 tickets. her campaign bought the ballots and gave them out to people, a strategy that resulted in her getting 4,823 votes, which was first place. the iowa republican party also sells essentially real estate inside the straw poll. they sell real estate, they sell locations inside the straw poll to the highest-bidding candidate. the highest-bidding candidate was ron paul of texas. his campaign paid $31,000 for the best, best-placed, largest, most desirable booth location at the straw poll, and ron paul in correlation with his willingness to spend that kind of money at ames came in second in ames. he was 152 votes behind michele

bachmann. do those votes represent statistical votes among iowan republicans broadly speaking? maybe. bingo. but they also might just represent the fact those two campaigns are good at winning a racket like this. and it is a racket. the refreshing thing about the people making money off this racket fully admit it is a racket to make them money. after the second-ever ames straw poll in 1987, the finance director said "the iowa straw poll was devised as a fund raising gimmick for the state party and nothing more than that." the current chair of the iowa federation of college republicans says the straw poll is "primarily a fundraiser," so good for iowa republicans that they admit it and that they have

figured out the way to make this money, makes a ton of money for their state party and good for the local community in ames, iowa, this fundraiser pumps a lot of money into the local economy, but based on the way the beltway media handles the ames straw poll, you might surmise the ames straw poll has predictive power, let's see how people do at this pay-to-vote, raised fundraiser bingo game determines who wins the iowa caucuses and who wins the presidential nomination. that's a great storyline and justifies exciting coverage, it does not, however, happen to be true. every once in awhile it does happen, in 1999, george w. bush won the ames straw poll, then the iowa caucus, then the nomination. other than that, if you were looking to the straw poll to see how things were going to go, well, the republican party would have nominated mitt romney last

time around and phil gramm in 1995, and pat robertton, and george h.w. bush the year they nominated ronald reagan. bob dole tied in 1995 but by the time iowa voted again, phil gramm after his awesome tie for first place performance finished at 9% in the caucuses. nate silver at the new york times crunched the numbers on this historically today and found that performance in iowa does actually have some predictive value of how you're going to do in the overall nominating process if you are a democrat, but if you are a republican, it really doesn't matter. that means the straw poll, that means the caucuses, that means iowa. one of the reasons for that, well, while iowa democrats seem to be kind of like the rest of democrats across the country, iowa republicans seem to not at all be like the rest of republicans across the country. all that their stated iowa

preferences tell you is what their stated iowa preferences are. and they like folks like pat robertson and phil gramm and this year, michele bachmann, they also like people who pay for their votes and feed them and provide good entertainment. don't tell the people who make magazine covers or book the sunday shows about this, but iowa, iowa is largely irrelevant to republican presidential politics. we know who the democratic nominee is going to be, the whole contest this year is about who the republican nominee is going to be, and for that question and context, iowa doesn't matter almost at all. which makes it both sad that tim pawlenty got out of the presidential race because of how he performed at something this pointless and irrelevant, but it also makes you think maybe mr. pawlenty is getting what he deserves, since he staked his campaign everybody knows in advance is irrelevant. in any case, no matter why

pawlenty got out, none of the other candidates will have tim pawlenty to forget to kick around this year. what does matter on the democratic side and republican side is this. >> we can't afford to lose up to a million jobs in this country. construction workers are lining up to find jobs. we can get this economy going again. get the economy moving. putting people back to work. we've got to focus on growing this economy. that creates a lot of jobs. >> president obama today on the first day of his three-day bus tour, a bus tour that looks very much like him campaigning, as you can see there, even though the white house swears he is not campaigning, president obama talking about the single thing that actually is the most predictive thing in almost any presidential election, that is the state of the economy, and that is why personalities and style and hype and gimmicks aside, that is why the entry of texas governor rick perry into the presidential race deserves

to get as much attention as it is getting, and it frankly deserves to obscure the nonsense in iowa. while democrats would love for rick perry to run on his michele bachmann-style, pat robertson-style, mike huckabee-style, credentials, which he would have had to run on to compete in iowa, what rick perry has decided to run on instead is this. >> hope is on the horizon, not the empty rhetoric of hope, but a record that gives us hope. that leader, rick perry. america's jobs governor. that was rick perry's first campaign ad now that he's announced he's running, calling himself a job's governor. the biggest question in presidential politics is can rick perry credibly call himself that? can he credibly base his campaign on that? does he have an economic message about the economy and jobs creation that's going to

resinate? you might recall i sacrificed to make the case i do not think rick perry's economic claims and jobs claims bare up to scrutiny, but if he goes far enough towards the nomination, will the white house be able to call bologna on that message? and beyond that, it's not just that we as a country are upset and worried about unemployment and the economy, we are also upset and worried about our future and about what we can count on in tough times that we are pretty sure are sticking around for awhile. here's the next presidential politics question, how big a deal with democrats make of the fact that rick perry says social security and medicare are unconstitutional and thus must be abolished? howard dean joins us next.

remember how the republican party developed sort of a paul ryan budget problem when they all overwhelmingly voted to kill medicare with the paul ryan budget? republicans can't wait to remind everybody about that, rick perry may have that same paul ryan problem in a really, really big way. that's next. [ female announcer ] instantly smooth wrinkles with a shot? wait a second... with olay challenge that. new regenerist wrinkle revolution... relaxes the look of wrinkles instantly, and the look of deep wrinkles in 14 days. ready, set, smooth... regenerist. from olay. when you switch your car insurance to esurance. i could save 'em 522 smackers.

you talkin' dough? bread. benjamins? scratch. greenbacks. moolah. cheddar... simoleons! don't try to out-save me. [ female announcer ] any way you say it, $522 is the average amount saved by people who switched to esurance. 522 bucks! [ female announcer ] to find out how much you'll save, call 1-800-esurance or visit esurance.com right now. that's 1-800-esurance or go to esurance.com. dr. scholl's custom fit orthotic center recommends the custom-fit orthotic that's best for your tired feet. foot-care scientists are behind it. you'll get all-day relief. for your tired achy feet. for locations, see drscholls.com. thank you... texas governor rick perry announced this weekend he's doing what everybody assumed he was doing anyway, he is running for president. beginning with the race for the republican nomination, rick perry not just tiptoeing around about running, now he is officially campaigning for president the old-fashioned way by actually running.

if you want to find the real start of rick perry's presidential campaign, you might want to look here to his big book of big ideas, which was released in november 2010, just after the congressional elections. the book is called "fed up!" because he's not just fed up period or fed up space, he is fed, all caps, all caps, exclamation point. page 49 he talks about the new deal, "certain programs massively altered the relationships with americans and their government, violently tossing aside our principles for federalism and unified government -- excuse me, limited government." the best example, he says, is social security. social security as a cocktail, tossing aside the principles of our nation, at least before he officially became a presidential

contender, rick perry was frank about his opinions on programs such as social security and medicare. last week, "the daily beast" dredged up an interview done last fall, things that didn't seem interesting enough to make the first cut of the interview before he was running for president, that's how these things go, context is everything. but in new context of him running for president, here's what he had to say, "i don't think our founding fathers, when they were thinking about a federally-operated program of mentions, nor a federally-operated program of health care. they said those were issues that the states needed to address, not the federal government. i stand very clear on that." very clear, in rick perry land, we're doing this state-by-state. alabama, you can hand out vouchers for cat food and human portions, massachusetts, you can

continue on with pensions for seniors and universal health care, as long as you can afford it, even though it's been a national safety net before now, today we got a hint of the rick perry who wants to live in the white house that his ideas on these things might not be all that popular. at the iowa state fair, ben smith from politico.com asked perry about his insistance, that's his position as of less than a year ago in his all-caps titled book. when asked about it today, all of a sudden governor rick perry did not sound so rick perry about it anymore. >> there's time for having a conversation with the country about how we find some solutions to have programs that are going to be sustainable, and i think having the states doing it is

one of the way. i'm not saying it's the only way. >> the old rick perry wants to talk social security as a violent overthrow of the constitution, the new rick perry who's running for president, wants to talk about stainability and many ideas, not just the ones he demanded last year when no one was looking, exclamation point. in joining the race, rick perry brings serious baggage from, but if rick perry does well, as many are expecting him to do, if rick perry is still in this several months from now, you will know that democrats are winning against him if the race is not about religious convictions or social conservatism, but instead about rick perry's belief that social security and medicare are unconstitutional and must be taken apart. joining us now, howard dean, former governor of vermont and former chairman of the democratic national committee, howard dean, thanks so much for

your time tonight. >> thanks for having me on. >> social security and medicare are unconstitutional in addition to what i quoted in the intro, he also called them a ponzi scheme. this sounds to me the same sort of republican argument that's been a gift for democrats all year, do you see it that way? >> this is going to be interesting, you'd think this might appeal to the tea party, the problem is he's got some other problems, for example, he talks a lot about the jobs created in texas since he was governor. there have been a lot of jobs created, but texas created three out of four of all the jobs increased in the state work force, state work force up 18% under rick perry, the supposed tea party candidate, it's really extraordinary, and the business about allowing states to do whatever they please and if the state wants to get rid of social security, that's fine, but here's the record in texas, 22% of all children in texas have no health insurance, 22%, one of the worst in the country, so,

you know, he's got a lot to answer for us, not just the stuff he said he's going to get in trouble for about social security and medicare, which most tea party people do not think should be cut. he's got some fundamental problems with whether he really understands what the federal government is supposed to do. >> i think back, though, on bill clinton running for the presidency in the early '90s, and the criticism of him from the right that okay, you seem to be an interesting guy, a charismatic young governor that has a lot to offer in terms of the way he talks about the country, but look at arkansas, at the bottom of the list on so many national indicators, never seemed that stuck as a complaint against bill clinton as a charismatic governor. can the complaints about texas, both in terms of its economy and its lifestyle and the way it fits into the country do rick perry any harm? >> i think it can. i think if people -- the worst thing you can do in politics is be a hypocrite, and if you're talking about cutting the size

of government and government's too big and we don't like social security and medicare and you find your work force is going up 18%, twice the rate private sector jobs went up, there's a lot of explaining to do, as they say in politics, so i do think that matters, jobs are going to be a big issue in this campaign, and if people think he created jobs by expanding the state work force, by the way, they have a $9 billion deficit, which is bigger than four states in texas, so he's got a lot of explaining to do. he's got a management problem on his hands. most governors don't, but it turns out texas is the weakest governorship in the country, the lieutenant governor presents the et has little management fluence. he's not really running texas. the governor of texas doesn't really run texas, the only state in the country that's true of. >> two schools of thought in the pundit world about rick perry's entry into this race, one is he poses potentially the starkest threat to president obama, he

offers a stark contrast and a style that's going to appeal to the republican electorate in a way that will provide a real challenge for the white house, the other thought is he's fred thompson, seems exciting because he's had no scrutiny. do you ascribe yourself to either of those schools of thought? >> look, i think he can be a good candidate. he's a good politician, i think, he had terrible numbers the last time he ran, before this, when he beat bill white, and he still managed to escape with 38% of the vote. this time he came back and beat a, you know, good democrat candidate, mayor of houston, to win, although it was a right-wing year. so look, i've said, and i'll say it again, anyone who gets a nomination for their party, and i think he could, could be president, so i wouldn't write him off, but he has a lot of explaining to do because of his inconsistent inconsistent inconsistents and budget

deficits in texas that haven't been dealt with. >> governor dooepean, how do you feel democrats in the white house are doing so far in terms of positioning the president for his run and trying to turn around the people that will be most important for the success of the president's campaign? >> that depends on what happens in the debt deal, which has a time bomb for everyone in it. if we raise the age limit, mail it in. you have to stand up for core democratic programs. this ought to be fought on three things, this race, jobs is the biggest one and social security and medicare are the other two, and we should win on all of those. the leading republican candidates haven't really created any jobs, except in the state government in the case of governor perry. michele bachmann has certainly never created any jobs and has taken a whole lot of federal money in her husband and her

business stuff. mitt romney, with his experience, probably caused more jobs to be lost what he did in bain capital than was gained. that will come out, depending on the nominee, so jobs, medicare, and the social security, we win. those are important issues to the american people, we have a great shot to the election, you can't cut the daylights out of social security and medicare and expect the democrats to rally around you. >> howard dean, governor, thanks very much for your time tonight. always good to have you here. >> thanks for having me on. so actually restarting the economy is simple it turns out. all we need, everybody agrees, is one lousy alien invasion, like from outer space. sci-fi economics may be our last hope.

the president today started his three-day bus tour with the town hall event in minnesota, followed by one in iowa, and although these are not technically campaign events, you can hear him start to address not just the citizenry as a whole, which is almost always the implied audience for any remarks he makes as president, you can hear the president today also try to engage the people he needs to enthuse most about his campaign. you can hear him at these town halls today addressing not just the overall electorate that wants to see him reasonable, the adult in a room, wants to

compromise, you can also hear him start to engage democrats, frankly, people who want to see the president to the fight to the republicans, who want to see a democratic president standing up and fighting for what he believes in and winning. listen. >> the point is something's happened in washington where we think that kind of compromise we do every day in our own families with our neighbors, co-workers, friends, somehow that's become a dirty word, and that's got to change. that's got to stop. we're going to choose country over party, we're going to choose the next generation over the next election. if we are willing to do that, then i have absolutely no doubt that we can get this economy going again, we can put people to work back again, small businesses can start growing again, but i'm going to need your help to make it happen.

you've got to send a message to washington that it's time for the games to stop. it's time to put country first. but i want everybody to understand here that i'm not here just to enjoy the nice weather, i'm here to enlist you in a fight, we are fighting for the future of our country, and this is a fight that we are going to win. that is a promise that i make with your help. thank you very much, everybody. >> we are going to win, he says, we are going to win because i'm going to fight and you're going to fight with me, and also compromise is too much of a dirty word. it is tough to do both of those messages at once, right? just as it is tough to use the campaign slogan the republicans used against you in the last election, country first, as this year's rallying cry against the republicans. i don't say that's tough to do, because i mean it is wrong-headed or wrong, i literally mean the president's reelection campaign strategy

appears to be to try to do something that is difficult, naming republican hypocrisy, calling them out for not going for their reported ideals and calling them out for blocking action to help the economy while not trying to sound harshly partisan. this is hard, what the president appears to be trying to do. is the president rallying up allies to try to do this hard thing? ed rendell joins us next.

okay, bare with me here, it has an excellent political point, but we have to go through a bad movie and a god book and a really old tv show, but trust me, the arc is perfect. okay, in 2009, a movie was released that was based on the graphic novel "watchmen," it was an action movie, directed by the man who directed the movie "300," i don't mean it to be rude, but it was not a very good movie. do not let it distract you from the fact the book on which the movie was based is a really good book, considered to be one of the first of the great full-length complicated graphic novels period. the back drop is the nuclear

threat of the cold war era, and one of our heros decides to save the world from nuclear war by convincing everybody that earth is under attack from aliens. its thinking is all the people of earth are going to have to put aside the stupid things we fight about and unit to face down the alien threat. the editor has talked about having wanted to drop that plot point entirely, the ending for the whole book. the author of "watchmen," the brilliant allen moore said while he was in the middle of writing "watchmen," he found out the same idea had been done and done very well in a 1963 episode of the tv show called "the outer limits." >> gentlemen, monday's near miss was a incident since the nuclear age began, so much as the

nation's on the earth were armed against each other were bound to have more such accidents, and eventually, soon, one must prove fatal. these nations must unite. we, we must make them unite. and gentlemen, we can make them unite. >> and their idea for making the nations of the world unit is fake alien attack. earthlings need the threat of a fake alien attack in order to get us to do the right thing on earth. the comic's alliance blog wrote about it today and noted the way allen moore got around this problem in "watchmen," that this plot point had been done before in 1963, the way allen moore got around it was he put in a hat tip in the book, randomly one of the characters happens to be watching the tv show, allen moore's way of saying he's not stealing from the tv show.

my favorite part about the idea that fake aliens can make real humans do the real thing, my favorite part is not just the bad movie in 2009 or the great novel, my favorite thing about the idea is ronald reagan talked about it all the time. he raised the idea of a fake alien attack on earth frequently as president, i think, without ever knowing that he was being kind of cartoon-y in doing it. >> i couldn't help but in one point with our discussions privately with general secretary gorbatov when you stop to think we're all god's children, wherever we live in the world, i couldn't help but think how easy his task and mine might be in the meetings we held if suddenly there was a threat from some other planet outside in the

universe. we'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries, and we would find out once and for all that we are all human beings together. perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bound. i occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. >> imagine all the people in the u.n. there listening to that, waiting for it to get translated in whatever language they are listening, did he really -- did he say that in your language too? if only we were afraid of alien invasion, then we'd do the right thing. noble prize winning economist and "new york times" columnist argued that the u.s. government needs to spend some money doing

some stuff to employ people in order to stave off a double-dip recession, in order to get the economy going, we have to do it soon. he said, he argued on cnn this weekend, that if we had to invent a fake invasion of space aliens in order to get the government to do that, in order to motivate us to do some economic stimulative government activity, then fine, frankly, fake space aliens have been used for worse in the past. >> if we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive build up to counter the threat and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. >> fake aliens will save us. president obama is out doing campaign-style bus tour events in the midwest today, tomorrow, and wednesday, talking about what everybody wants to talk about, which is the economy. so far he's making two essential points, neither about aliens,

arguing republicans are trying to block economic process and arguing that in order to get any economic progress, we are going to have to overtly do stuff as a government. >> congress right now could start putting people to work rebuilding america. at a time where interest rates are low, contractors are begging for work, construction workers are lining up to find jobs, let's rebuild america. we could be rebuilding roads and bridges and schools and parks all across america right now. could put hundreds of thousands of folks to work right now. there's a bill sitting in congress right now that would set up an infrastructure bank to get that moving, attracting private sector dollars, not just public dollars. congress needs to move. >> it's not men from mars, but does it take men from mars?

or is the actual economic crisis that we are in motivation enough for some of the stuff to actually get done? joining us once again, ed rendell, our second former governor of the show tonight and our second former national democratic chairman, thanks for being here. >> i'm absolutely stunned listening to that, rachel. my mind is boggled. >> you are being very, very diplomatic. you remind me of somebody confronted with a hideous child that says madam, that's quite a baby. let me ask you, though, about this overall idea we need some sort of sense of political extremist, circumstantial extremist in order to justify doing something right now to create jobs. do you think that's true? >> i don't, and the reason i don't, rachel, is i think the american people want very much lis, they want to see common sense things that will increase jobs in america, put people back to work, put investment into our

economy, and i don't think it's a stretch, i don't think we need outside aliens to attack us for that to be motivated. i think there's self-motivation here, they just want to see a common sense approach and an approach that's likely to work. >> i think that you're right that the infrastructure stuff in particular that we heard the president talking about is popular, the polling bears that out. even republicans like to talk about infrastructure in a popular way, but do you think the president and congressional democrats have a plan for turning the popularity of those things into political feasibility? >> well, the infrastructure bank is a great idea and the president deserves credit and he's funding it at the $30 billion level. that's very important, but that's going to take time to set up, to play out. it's important, and, you know, just last monday, building america's future, echoing what you've been saying for a long time, said we've got to invest in our infrastructure for the long run, a ten-year program

like every other developed nation has done to do big things and leave our infrastructure in great shape for future generations, but having said that, we can take infrastructure and do things that would put people to work in the next four months. if we passed the bill on october 1, we could have people working when the march construction season starts on roads and bridges. we have 70,000 structurally deficient bridges in this country, the states and local governments don't have enough money to work on all them, half of them, or a quarter of them. we could do it and the president, all he has to do, is put in something he liked during the transition when 50 governors met with him in philadelphia on december 1, 2008, and that's lose it -- use it or lose it. meaning you give the states a certain time to have work underway. if they don't have work underway, the money is taken away and given to states who do. we have to use infrastructure for the short-term impact and for the long-term impact, and there's other things we could do

that would have a short-term impact as well, rachel. >> do you think that what the president is doing on this bus tour, asking people to pressure congress, for example, i'm trying to enlist you in a fight, he said, is that the sort of thing that's going to get that bill you were talking about passed. does that create pressure on republicans to pass something like that? >> i think it can help, but it's not going to do it by itself. the program has to speak for itself and have common sense things that don't cost a lot of money. let me give you another idea, americorp and vista. for less than $1 billion we could create 60,000 jobs for high school kids, that's the demographic that needs jobs the most, by just filling up those slots, and by the way, our kids do great things in our neighborhoods. we have, in fha and fannie may and freddie mac, we have 300,000 foreclosured homes that belong

to those agencies, sitting there waiting for someone to buy them. it's not going to happen in this market. fix them up, spend money fixing them up, it will put a lot of construction workers to work and rent them to families and use the rental income to offset the cost of the money to fix them up. you know that part of the most successful part of the stimulus was cash for clunkers, but there was also a great rebate for buying energy efficiency environments and weatherizing your homes, that was sold out. put it back into place right now, october 1, it will create a lot of new activity and jobs and do good for the country, so there are a lot of good ideas out there, and if he spells it out and shows the price tag, people are going to look up and say you mean we could create those decent jobs for "x"? let's do it. the republicans then would have a choice, rachel, do it and get the country moving again or explain why not.

and i think jobs, explaining why for a jobs bill is going to be hard than debt limit and deficit reduction. >> i'll tell you, the more people i talk to about what's economically feasible right now, the more people are zeroing in on getting granular, get specific, talk about specific programs here. >> think about that, 60,000 high school students, the biggest unemployed demographic we have in the country, doing good things for the country. >> ed rendell, former pennsylvania governor, msnbc contributor, thanks for joining us tonight, sir, appreciate it. >> fan of aliens. >> fan of aliens, see, he's on their side. prepare for the mail, sir, it's going to be overwhelming, trust me. all right, thank you. the billionaire coke brothers have grown famous in the past couple of -- resegregation of public schools

or the deintegration of public schools. ed schultz as the details after this show on "msnbc tonight," and here's the best new thing in the world, which involves ruining the day of a bunch of neo-nazis. that's coming up.

now that tim pawlenty has quit the republican primary race, other candidates will begin the process of seeking his endorsement. that's how it goes. even if the endorsement won't have an impact on your campaign, you want to keep the other guys and gals from getting it. it wasn't a surprise that governor rick perry placed a personal call to the former minnesota governor yesterday morning, called him personally even though we'll look back at in awe at the endorsement bump of 2012. before it was apparently pawlenty's campaign wouldn't get off the ground, he was widely anticipated to be a top tier candidate this year. he set up his campaign staff early. that early start in those high hopes helps tim pawlenty attract high level professional republican staff. now what happens to those staffers now that there's no campaign? what happens to those staffers who are some political spoils that might mean something in a

republican campaign? we'll have to say. where would you go now? who would you want to sign up? tim pawlenty's top staffer in new hampshire has decided to sign up with -- john huntsman. one i think vaguely way to think about the republican contenders right now is to think about it in terms of the last republican ticket which competition to the sar ra sarah palin style. there's competition among a candidate to be john mccain. not super religious and populist and not as social issues focused. the competition for wants to be sar ra sarah palin is crowded. the more establishment conservative mccain side used to be mitt romney, john huntsman and tim pawlenty. it's a two-guy race now for that

side of the republican contest. so even though romney is definitely the front-runner and favorite, here's your wildcard issue. you ready? michele bachmann won the ames straw poll over the weekend, for what that's worth. who came in second, republican congressman ron paul who doesn't fit into an pigeonhole. after a strokingly strong ron paul shows in 2008, a lot got co-oped over the last four years by other republican candidates this time around. criticizing the federal reserve, ar contain ideas about gold bars. leave me alone while being big government to abortion. a lot of candidates have adopted those issues. what ron paul got cheers for this year beyond his dead kalted ron paul cheers session. he's connecting on the public debate is the part of his

message that is to bring the troops home. bring the troops home, end the wars now, isolationism that's always part of his message. john huntsman who picked up a top pawlenty staffer from new hampshire is the only other candidate who is trying to tap into that well about the wars. who is trying to work public exhaustion with the wars and the desire to finally end them into his political message this year. who knows. maybe john huntsman will be out soon, too, leaving that side of the nomination fight to mitt romney. watch for bring the troops home to be the political wildcard for him.

best new thing in the world today is something i found out about on one of the websites that justifies the existence of the entire internet. boingboing.net. there's about 15 of the most interesting minutes online on any given day. boingboing posted this. about 1600 white supremacist skinheads turned out to rock out to bands like radical and burning hate. the first 250 skinheads to show up got this free t-shirt. it says in german, hardcore rebels, national and free. unbeknown to the racist skinheads who admire that design on the free t-shirt, they were donated to the concert by a group called exit deutschland that counsels them to change from the movement. exit deutschland gives 250 racist skinheads these t-shirt, but they have an anti-nazi trick

when you wash them. it goes away, and what appears in german is what your t-shirt can do you also can do. we will help you free yourself from right wing extremism. this is the kind of activism stunt you can try once, but it's great that first time. aside from punking neo-nazis which is fun for the whole family in any country, this is also really kind of cool t-shirt washing technology, and it's today's best new thing in the world. all the details we have on this plus a link to boingboing's coverage is at maddowblog.com. hitting the road -- president obama fires back against his republican contenders on the first day of his campaign-style bus tour. manic