good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. leading off tonight, what texas miracle? since he jumped into the presidential race, rick perry has presented himself as a job creator. 1 million jobs in his eleven years in office. but today, we learned that the texas unemployment rate hit 8.5% last month, the highest in texas in 24 years. and the state actually lost jobs last month, even worse than the national figure of zero jobs created. so where's the texas miracle now? and how long will it be before mitt romney, or the obama white house, sink their teeth into these new numbers. also, voting blights. from coast to coast, republican state legislatures are searching for and finding ways to restrict access to the voting booth. passing stricter voter i.d. laws, curbing early voting, restricted registration. and what do all these have in common? they're all aimed at preventing democrats in general, and some believe african-americans in particular, from getting to the polls. that's a dangerous game and it's our lead story tonight. plus, why does wall street hate president obama? hate him.

and that's the correct word, hate. some on wall street say it's because the president hates them, and even business itself. really? let's get into that one. and joe mcginnis' new book on sarah palin "the rogue." if palin does decide to get in the race will this book hurt her chances? and let me finish with the hard test president obama faces reminding the country that republicans are willing to stall the economy, in order to defeat him. we start with what texas miracle. and we're asking that question. what texas miracle? david, washington bureau chief, and the delightful diana millbank of "the washington post" joins us after far too long hiatus. i do miss you. let's go to this whole thing, let's take a look at these numbers here. if you look at the numbers this way, the unemployment rate is rising up to 8.5% in texas. texas. but it's coming down nationally, at least it has been down, from something like well over 10% nationwide, in 2009.

so in a way the directions are off. a guy who's saying i'm the big job creator is having unemployment rise. the president's got a problem at least going in the other direction. >> rick perry always had a claim with the texas miracle before now. because there's been a tremendous population increase in texas, which has led to jobs going up there. and also, high energy prices have been good for texas. bad for us in the northeast, good for texas down there, and created jobs. but now, with all of that being put to the side, we see unemployment going up, there's a lot of low-wage jobs, too, in texas. so his claim to be a model for the rest of the country is falling apart. what made texas, you know, somewhat better than the other states in job creation, up to now, was something that couldn't be replicated in other states. it wasn't because of his policies. it was because of the weather and the conditions there. >> the key word. here's a guy who lived by conditions, attacked obama by conditions and now finds himself suffering the consequences. because presidents and governments don't necessarily

control the unemployment rate. >> no, right. >> you've got the texas miracle meeting the texas chain saw massacre right now. and the bass kerr is, this nationwide economy. now, it's not rick perry's fault that he has 8.5% unemployment. >> was it his fault -- was it his claim to fame that it was lower? >> it shouldn't have been. and it's not barack obama's fault that there's 9.1% unemployment nationwide. look, the president is going to get blamed for the economy no matter what. so he'll suffer from that regardless. but i think this is another lesson here that these guys don't actually control anything. the trend in texas has been this way for 20 years, as mitt romney loves to point out. the job growth rate was triple. under ann richards, and george w. bush. it just happens, it's the luck of the draw. when you show up in office and when you leave. these trends are larger -- >> here's the defense. perry's spokesperson weighed in on the jobs numbers by saying, quote, texas is not immune to the effects of the national recession. even during thownsouthern which

president's misguided policies have onlies would rned tbs rae mains the nation's top economy attracting jobs and growing by more than 1,000 people. excuse me. this is still a problem. i contend it's a problem. when your unemployment rate is going up but the nationwide unemployment rate is coming a bit down. >> listen. rick perry had a glow in the race from people who didn't know that much about rick perry. now, as he's in the debates and he's saying all sorts of pretty outlandish or stupid things, people are taking a second look at him. independents are falling off in droves and now we're looking in detail. not at the headline, texas miracle, but at the actual numbers and what's happening currently. there's no way he can sustain the, i did great in texas story line if unemployment comes up in the next few months there. >> guess who's noticed? romney. romney is putting up this e-mail. they're out there, aren't they? >> oh, yeah this is the beginning of the opposition wars. >> mitt romney's campaign is putting out e-mails like this

one. they were quick to circulate the jobs numbers in his e-mail blast this afternoon. so the fight is on. to get romney trashing mr. job creation for losing jobs. let me go to this last night. here's perry last night in his fight, it's an interesting fight that everybody's watching between perry right now and romney. let's take a look. here's perry last night in jefferson, iowa. he has taken off the gloves. he is singling out mitt romney. going after the governor of massachusetts. the ex-one by name, or not by name, but by position. let's listen. one of my opponents in the republican primary, while he was the governor of massachusetts, their job creation in that state was 47th in the nation. government mandate d, government-run health care is what of what he put in place as the governor of massachusetts. it is time, and i think it's very important that we put someone as our nominee that does not blur the lines between president obama and republican party.

the job creation in massachusetts, in that legacy of health care in massachusetts, even makes it worse today. >> i get the feeling that rick perry, who's always been a superstar and the pizzazz of politics, you know, the show, the hat. now he has to give the notes. he's got notes turned out. he's not fluent. >> not good to have notes for rick perry because he should be, you know, waving his hat, and riding in on his horse. i think romney has rattled him a bit. and i think in a strange sense, rick perry has been good for mitt romney, who finally found himself as sort of the economic maven in this race. but it really has embaldened romney. you can see during the debate perry almost feeling like, who are these people? how dare they question me? >> my advisers never told me this was going to happen. >> he's getting more like he's running "meet the press." i mean, because romney has now become the guy who says, let's take a look at what you said here.

let's take a look at what you said said a year ago on social security. and this guy's now got to defend it against a fellow republican. >> rick perry was a good prospect. but now it's like, welcome to the majors. and you remember the movie "bull durham" you get the sense that mitt romney wants to call, hey, this is how we do it here. you haven't been around the last few months but you're going to have to answer this and deal with bad news. because guess what? he is a functioning governor. rid mommy is not responsible for anything now except his own campaign. on death penalty issues. on the environment, on the economy, whatever he does in texas, in the next few months is going to be open to scrutiny the way that barack obama's governance is open to scrutiny. it's a lot -- >> in your sense guys, before i move on with my own notes here, do you think it's possible that here we are in september of the year before, which is coming up quickly on the iowa caucuses, could come very quickly beginning of next year, we're in that campaign now, do you think there could be a dynamic here

that romney could play the role of basically the press. he will be the interrogator, the old "meet the press," i mean the current "meet the press," too, he will just start taking them apart, point by point, every week, point by point, so there's not really much left of this guy? perry, and then romney will come along, as sort of like the prosecutor, but never that popular with the tea party people and become sort of their nominee by default? >> yeah. i think you really have the potential in this race to have the sort of donnybrook in the republican party primary that we've not seen in many, many years. i mean, not even really with bush/mccain. you have two solid guys, maybe not the party's best, but equally matched contenders. well financed. able to go at each other for a few months. the president is in a terribly vulnerable position saying how did he get so blessed to have this thing going on. >> one of the old thomas akins painting of the two boxes, fists

with no boxing gloves pounding each other until they're bleeding all over the place. >> think of a rocky film, 7, 8, 9. >> here's romney going after perry not just on this new jobs thing that they jumped on today, but his fundamental charge against -- fundamental essential charge against the existence of social security. i was listening to rundown this morning on this network and listening to one of these guys say look, they're not just against social security as it needs to be refined they're against it institutionally. if they level that charge that landed, doesn't perry have a hard time coming back and say no, i really do believe in social security? >> he's had a very difficult time of it so far, and the way the democrats have handled this so far is to say, actually try to link romney to perry and say they are identical. the truth is in terms of private accounts they are basically identical. in terms of social security. >> so for the next couple of months it looks like these guys are going to be doing your job for you? >> basically. we're going to go out for a drink. >> let's keep the e-mail romney

on perry and perry on romney. thank you. have a nice weekend, guys. david corn and really welcome back david milbank. you are a blistering critic. coming up, republican lawmakers across the country are rewriting laws restricting access to vote. but restrictions aimed at hurting obama's chances for re-election. they're changing the name of the game, changing the rules. guess why? so no one will actually vote. i would love to help but remember, you dropped us last month. yeah, you know it's funny. it only took 15 minutes to sign up for that new auto insurance company but it's taken a lot longer to hear back. is your car up a pole again? [ crying ] i miss you, jessica! jerry, are you crying? no, i just, i bit my tongue. [ male announcer ] get to a better state. state farm. it's nice 'n easy colorblend foam! permanent color with tones and highlights. now in a delightful foam. just three shakes, foam it, love it! it's foamtastic!

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well, this is a hot one. welcome back to "hardball." elections are always about getting your voters out to the polls to vote for your candidate. but republican controlled legislatures across the country and the states from coast to coast are pushing efforts now to rewrite election laws themselves in order to restrict access to the voting booth. more than 30 states this year alone debated changes to their voting laws according to the "washington post." and this is it. in 12 states, legislators passed laws now that either created photo i.d. laws or made existing laws stricter. in some states, the governor vetoed the legislation, but not all. at least five states passed laws

limiting early voting. three states made it more difficult for ex-felons to vote, and two states, texas and florida, placed restrictions on voter registration groups. and they're all rewriting the rules of the game in an effort to prevent, let's face it, democrats from getting to the polls, minorities, poor people and younger people in particular. cynthia tucker is a pulitzer prize winning columnist with the university of georgia. judith brown diane is the co-director of the advancement project, thank you for joining us, and as always, cynthia, thank you, my colleague. this is such obvious gamesmanship. when you start saying, if you do have some voter irregularities somewhere, you fix them, you catch them, you prosecute. but there is no real examples out there floating around of cheating. >> none. >> so why did they change the rules so you have to -- an older person, 80 years old, who obviously doesn't drive a freaking car, obviously doesn't have a driver's license, has to find some sort of document. where would an 80-year-old go to find a picture i.d., government

picture on it. how would they do that even? >> in some cases, they have to go to the county seat. if they don't drive, they have to find a ride to get to the county seat. >> and somebody has to tell them have to do it. >> exactly. >> and they don't know this until they get to the voting booth, probably. >> let me be very clear about this part, chris. i come from a rural part of alabama. i know many little old church ladies who fully participate in society, who have never driven a car and never been on a plane. it is not true that you are marginal just because you don't have a driver's license. >> sure. >> furthermore, they've lived in the same place for the last 80 years. >> and let me tell you about city people. they don't all drive cars either. >> so when they go to the polls, the poll watchers know who they are. how are you today, miss susy? they don't need voter i.d. but this is the republican's way of trying to construct barriers so those little old ladies can't vote. >> there's a name for this,

voter suppression. >> that's right. >> sometimes suspected back in 2000 in florida. hint, hint. >> i remember that. >> let's talk about it now, here we go into 2012, which could be a close election, we don't know. but if it's a close election, this stuff matters. tell us what's going on. >> we have not only the voter identification laws, but we also have rollbacks on early voting. in florida, for example, african-americans are twice as likely as whites to vote early. >> why is that? what makes that happen? >> well, early voting is important because it's convenient. you don't have to wait until tuesday. you can vote on a saturday. in fact, the sunday before election day, there are drives by the churches to get out the vote because the polls are open the sunday before the election. but the florida legislature -- >> where do you go to vote, by the way? >> you go and vote down at the county seat. at the election. so what happened was, this year, they cut that back. and they specifically cut out that last sunday before the election day, because they know who it's going to impact. the people who turned out more in 2008.

>> you know this stuff. what do the democrats and state legislatures do when they see this being passed. don't they raise red flags? >> this is mostly in the states where republicans took over the state legislature. so they can't do anything to slow these things down. this is like poker. it's really stacking the deck. we are going to see a different game. >> let me go home to the state i grew up in, pennsylvania. they're now talking up there, the republicans, of getting rid of the effectively blocked voting of the electoral college, the unit rule. that everybody fights for pennsylvania. democrats usually get it. not always, reagan got it. why are they trying to break up the electoral college? so it's not going to be by congressional district rather than by state? >> because obama might win pennsylvania. and if he gets the most votes in pennsylvania, he gets all the electoral college votes. that's the way it has worked in most -- >> 23, i think it is. >> -- in most of the states forever. >> but you have to give republicans credit for this much. they're all about power, they're

all about getting elected. and any advantage they can get to turn an election in their favor, they're willing to go for. so destroying the electoral college system, that's fine with them if it gives -- >> -- tom delay having a new redistricting halfway through the decade. >> exactly. >> what about this breaking up the electoral college vote? first of all, it destroys the power of the small states that tend to be republican, so this could be counterproductive, right? >> well, we'll see. i mean, except for the fact that, you know, in states where they took over the state legislature, we'll have to see what the outcome is. i mean, if you move to this new system and you've taken over the state legislature and you've redistricted yourself into power, then you're always going to get the vote. >> bill clinton joined us, he told a group of liberal youth activists that republican governors and legislatures around the country were trying to limit people from being able to vote. let's watch the pro. here he is, bill clinton. >> there has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of

the poll tax and all the other jim crow burdens on voting the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today. >> well, he was comparing this to the worst of the stuff. >> well, and let me just say that many activists have made that same comparison, and it doesn't apply broadly. i will have no problem voting, because i have a driver's license. but they will try to shave off enough votes of elderly folks, poor folks, young voters to affect close races. and a lot of these races are going to be close, chris. >> look at this. 25% of african-american voters do not have valid government-issued photo i.d.s to compared to 8% of whites. 50% of voters earning less than $35,000 a year don't have photo i.d.s to. so it's almost perfect, isn't it? >> why don't republicans just campaign for the votes of

african-americans and latinos and poor people? why don't they just go out there with some policies that would appeal to african-americans and latinos and poor people instead of trying to restrict their access to the ballot box? >> are you being sincere here? >> yes. >> even though you know why they won't, because it's too much work to make the case. anyway, it's great having you on. but this is the kind of thing voters, i think, in both parties have got to look seriously at. because you start playing these kind of games, both parties start playing this kind of game and we don't have a fair system. thank you. coming up, mitt romney is again on both sides of an issue. big sbries that belongs in the side show. you're watching "hardball" only on msnbc. ♪ ♪

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back to "hardball" now for

the sideshow. first up, so what is it? in an interview yesterday, gop candidate mitt romney was asked for his reaction to his opponent, rick perry, calling president obama a socialist. let's hear what he said. >> the words have had a lot of unintended meanings and calling people socialists probably goes beyond the fact that it is true that president obama's team and the president himself seem to believe that government has a better approach to our economy than does the private sector. i don't use the word "socialist," or i haven't so far. >> oh, yeah? it seems like a reasonable approach, but he seems to be omitting a well-documented statement from his own book. in that 2010 book, romney wrote, "it is an often remarked upon irony that at a time when europe is moving away from socialism and its many failures, president obama is moving us toward that direction." well, perry accuses obama of being a socialist and romney accused of him of moving towards socialism, big difference.

next up, how to avoid a crisis in an interview. yesterday, speaker john boehner gave a glimpse of some of the insider moments of his job. perhaps most interesting was boehner's strategy for getting some stray house republican freshmen to change their minds on that deficit reduction bill. let's listen. >> there were a couple of freshman who, a couple of young whippersnappers who seemed to have all the answers, so i brought them to my office and closed the door and i know these two pretty well and i looked a at them and i said, boys, that door's not going to open until you say yes. it's going to be 30 seconds, 30 minutes, doesn't matter, could be three hours. i said, i've got a week and a half's worth of cigarettes in that chest over there, so -- it still took about 45 minutes. >> wow. well, tip o'neill's version of that little effort was to hold a meeting in his office, light up his big cigar, let the heat rise and the air grow thicker.

i could remember, by the way, how great, how clear and cold that air was in the hallway afterwards when you got out of that room. now for the big number, a new cbs/"new york times" poll out today puts disapproval of congress at an all-time high. not much surprise there, but here's something to consider. now people are including their own members of congress, their own representatives in a group of lawmakers who should be shown the door. what percentage of voters don't think their own congressmen deserves to be re-elected? 57%. it's typical for voters to want to see fresh faces in congress, but not at the expense of their own congressmen. now, 57%, that's tonight's big number, want the guy or woman out! that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. up next "your business" with j.j. ramberg. or creates another laptop bag or hires another employee, it's not just good for business -- it's good for the entire community. at bank of america, we know the impact that local businesses have on communities, so we're helping them

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those groupon coupons you get in your e-mail are great for consumers, but are they bad for small business? find out why some entrepreneurs love groupon, and why others hate it. that's coming up next on "your business."