you didn't have to used to show in order to vote. new kinds of documentation that millions of americans do not have. then republicans added a plank requiring that you newly prove your citizenship in order to vote. the voice vote on that one was unanimous. it is the new republican consensus. half a century ago, the consensus in the republican party and in this country was that we should make it easier to vote. as a nation, we liked voting with, or at least we were embarrassed to admit otherwise. that was the consensus. but that was then, now in 2012, that consensus is falling apart. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." have a great night. big surprise. bat-crap crazy republican senate candidate todd akin refuses to abort his candidacy. >> nicole wallace, when he was talking to nicole six months ago, and he was like, it's about -- you know, do i want to be in the conservative party, do i want to be a moderate, but i'm just tired of it being the

stupid party. >> and the clock is ticking for congressman todd akin. >> todd akin is not leaving his race for the u.s. senate. >> he's digging in. >> stop digging. >> and now running a new ad -- >> asking for forgimpbs. >> i ask for your forgiveness. >> forgiveness? unlikely. >> todd akin is really inconvenient. >> he is thumbing his nose. >> the timing couldn't be worse for this. >> republican party leaders are calling for his ouster. >> i'm tired of us being stupid! >> there's just one issue for the gop. >> mainstream is really extreme. >> this problem goes all the way to the heart of their party. >> that platform has been a pro-life platform. >> this is the platform of the republican party. >> with no exceptions for rape or incest. >> this is the platform of the republican party. >> is there a war on women? >> women. >> women. >> women. >> absolutely. >> why do republicans have such a problem with women. >> it's something that paul ryan believes. >> the akin/ryan proposal. >> the mistake i made was in the words i said. >> this is the cost, isn't it, of paul ryan?

>> the vice presidential nominee is tied directly to this. >> i ask for your forgiveness. >> the republican brand has been a mess. >> this really insane thing. >> just insane. >> the mistake i made was in the words i said. >> and the clock is ticking. >> the clock is ticking. >> ticktock. >> i ask for your forgiveness. >> forgimpvenessforgiveness? unlikely. ♪ a republican strategist who knows bat-crap crazy republican congressman todd akin tells "the washington post" today, "he marches to a completely different beat. he believes that his race is providen providential, that god has willed his win." rush limbaugh, karl rove, erick erickson, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, and mitt romney, and refused to drop out of the missouri senate race. here's congressman akin on sean

hannity's radio show today. >> if this becomes a big enough distraction that you lose this race and it hurts mitt romney and paul ryan in missouri, how are you going to feel the day after election day? >> well, obviously, terrible. and if i thought that were going to happen, then i would get out of the race. >> congressman akin then touted a new robo poll conducted after his, quote, legitimate rape remark, showing that among likely voters in missouri, todd akin polls now one point ahead of democratic senator claire mccaskill, 44-43, within that poll's margin of error. the poll asked if todd akin's remarks on, quote, legitimate rape were appropriate. 75% said inappropriate. 9% said appropriate. today, todd akin suggested to sean hannity that mitt romney was using akin's remarks to

close his deficit among female voters. >> if you were in romney's position, don't you think that he may have bid this thing up and made a bigger deal about it than he needed to? why couldn't he run his race and i run mine? >> the interview came moments before a 6:00 p.m. eastern standard time deadline for todd akin to easily exit the senate race, leaving that race now will require the complexity of a court order. as the deadline approached, mitt romney released a statement reading in part, "i think akin should exit the senate race." earlier today, todd akin released a new television ad that will air in missouri. >> rape is an evil act. i used the wrong words in the wrong way, and for that i apologize. as the father of two daughters, i want tough justice for predators. i have a compassionate heart for the victims of sexual assault and i pray for them.

the fact is, rape can lead to pregnancy. the truth is rape has many victims. the mistake i made was in the words i said, not in the heart i hold. i ask for your forgiveness. >> a just-released nbc news poll shows that paul ryan provided no bump to the romney/ryan ticket. among registered voters nationally, the obama/biden ticket leads the romney/ryan ticket by four points, 48 to 44%. before the addition of paul ryan to that ticket, president obama led mitt romney by six points, 49 to 43%. joining me now, msnbc's krystal ball and "the huffington post's" sam stein. krystal, as this day as unfolded and akin has dug in, it seems now that he is ready to go the distance in this campaign. how worried do you think republicans should be about that? >> well, i think they should be very concerned about it. i mean, frankly, this seat,

holding on to this seat for claire mccaskill is really going to be a long shot, if she got any sort of normal, reasonable candidate in the race, she didn't get a normal, reasonable candidate in the race, though. she got todd aakin. and this really harkens back to what happened in 2010. republicans were perfectly happy to ride the tea party wave, as long as it was providing them with momentum and energy to make gains in the 2010 midterm elections. but even then, it wasn't without a cost, as we recall, sharron angle, ken buck, et cetera. but when you let your party be taken over by nut jobs, essentially, occasionally those nut jobs are going to run for office and they're going to say nut jobby things and it's going to screw up your chances of taking the senate, for example. and that's exactly what happened here. >> akin discussed his conversation with paul ryan on the hannity radio show. let's listen to that. >> he just said he recognized i had to make a tough decision here, and we talked about it

some, and he said he thought i maybe should give some thought to stepping down, but he didn't tell me what to do, and that's because he's a very respectful and a very decent guy. >> sam stein, "he didn't tell me what to do." ryan seems to be saying he did tell him what to do. >> this is complex for paul ryan, much more so than mitt romney or other republicans, because obviously paul ryan co-sponsored the bill that codified what akin was talking about. and we keep talking about, you know, where he stands in this, and his whole premise is he didn't say anything inappropriate, he just said it in the wrong way. and for paul ryan, this is complex. this is complex stuff. he actually believes in sort of defining what type of abortion is, you know, appropriate and which one isn't, in order to have an abortion. and so for him to call akin would be to draw more attention to his own policy platform, which is in itself problematic for the romney campaign.

>> let's listen to rush limbaugh's reaction to what akin said. even rush -- even rush has a problem with this. >> that belief that a woman's body shuts down and the whole notion of the legitimate, illegitimate rape, it's just -- that's the thing that bothers me about it. that's just absurd. it's not intelligent. >> krystal, when you can't get any kind of defense out of rush limbaugh, it's -- it doesn't get crazier than this. >> it's a bad sign for akin. but rush limbaugh and sean hannity and mitch mcconnell, all of these guys want to say, oh, this guy, he's out there. we don't agree with him on anything. he's not representative of our party. and i'm sure the vast majority of republicans don't actually buy into the junk science that todd akin was peddling. his positions, on the other hand, his policy positions,

where he actually stands on abortion and a woman's right to make her own decisions are right in line with everything about the republican party. and that's the problem. when the republicans are couching their position in these lofty terms about life and a culture of life, it's one thing. when you have very graphic images of women who have been raped being forced to carry that baby to, you know, to actually have that baby, against their will, that's a totally different image for the american public. so, yes, they want to distance themselves from his words, but they're not doing anything to distance themselves from his actual policies. >> and sam stein, what akin has served to do is to highlight a component of the republican anti-abortion stance that they do not like to highlight, especially in presidential elections. and that is the refusal to allow any exception in the case of rape or incest.

and this week, the highlight is about rape. that is a serious problem for the republican party. >> yeah, and it couldn't come at a worse time. i mean, we are literally days before the republican convention, and a moment when mitt romney is suffering a gender gap. this is terrible timing for the republican ticket. and obviously they don't want to be talking about. they would like to be talking about anything but this. but it's more than just highlighting a bad policy platform vis-a-vis women's health issues. it paints the party as somehow unscientific or defying logic. my colleague, laura bassett who reports on this stuff, it took her two minutes to find a woman who had a pregnancy as a result of rape. anyone who considers the issue understands that it happens. it's a logical consequence. it's a terrible, but logical consequence of rape. for them to deny that this happens, for them to throw out junk science, i guess todd akin is the far end of that, but for them to put into policy the definition between forcible and nonforcible rape sort of highlights the head in the sand approach to logic and science

that i think paints the republican party in a very bad, antiquated image. >> and this is kind of an obvious statement to make, but it's particularly problematic, given the fact that the image of the republican party is almost, is very male dominated. so you have all these men professing to understand the ways of a women's body, and getting it just totally unbelievably wrong. >> and the republican party platform has always said that they are opposed to abortion in cases of rape. they've said it in the 2008, 2004 platform language reads, we assert the sanctity of human life and the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. now, that kind of statement does not include even the possibility of any possible compromise, depending on how the pregnancy was arrived at. and that is, that's something that they are never, never, never emphasizing, especially at

a time like this. >> but isn't sort of the more important point is that this happened -- very similar language was put into the platform in 2004 and 2008. and it basically went sort of unremarked upon. we didn't think about it as a massive political issue, simply because we weren't really talking about abortion at the time. todd akin saying these things, going back to the timing. two days before, they started considering platform language that was going to center on abortion. this thing has blown up into a deal that is far beyond the confines of a missouri senate race. this is now about the national platform, and it's engulfing the vice presidential candidate as well. so the timing could not be worse for mitt romney and paul ryan. it's hard to emphasize that. >> krystal ball and sam stein, thank both for joining me tonight. >> thanks. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, where did todd akin get his crazy ideas about rape? and bill kristol, one of the intellectual leaders of the stupid party, thinks mitt romney should pay more taxes. but can the stupid party actually have an intellectual

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with just an hour to go before today's deadline, sean hannity pleaded with todd akin on his radio show to quit the senate race over akin's comments on abortion. an exasperated sean hannity then tossed to a commercial break, which included an ad for a male enhancement product, quote, explosive results. the republican problem with women is way bigger than just todd akin. that's coming up next. and in the "rewrite" tonight, a republican who thinks mitt romney should pay more taxes. [ thunder crashes ]

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what i tried to do, first off, dana, i knew people had been hurt, because they had assumed or wanted to assume or by people who portrayed it this way, that the legitimate referred to rapists. there isn't any legitimate rapist. none, whatsoever. they're horrible criminals. and i have no tolerance for them whatsoever. i have a wife and daughters. i have nothing -- no respect, nothing. there's nothing legitimate about a rapist. but to rather, i was putting that in in the wrong play,

making the point that there were people who used false claims, like those that basically created roe versus wade. >> joining me now, erin carmoan, a reporter for salon.com, and ana marie cox with the guardian u.s. ana marie, did todd akin just clarify anything for you? >> i guess he clarified his own ignorance. you know, just when you thought he couldn't say anything worse, i mean, he really just sort of dig into it. this idea that there's some massive, you know, misreporting of rape, that women are claiming rape, just in order to get abortions, i think is, you know, a misunderstanding of women entirely. and also, actually, of the medicaid process that he apparently, you know, sort of wants to insert the government into. in the last year that there's information available, something like 80 women got abortions paid for under medicaid. only a portion of them claimed it was rape. it's actually very, very hard to get the government to pay for an abortion, even if you need one. even if it was whatever it is that todd akin considers a

legitimate rape. >> erin, we know exactly what he meant by legitimate rape. in legislative language, he called it forcible rape. that's what he called it with paul ryan. and that means that paul ryan and akin believe there is some kind of rape that is not forcible. >> yesterday they were saying that this is about forcible rape versus -- i swear to god, this is a word that you find on anti-choice literature -- con sensual rape. today he says it's about women lying. they both come down to the same thing. they don't believe women, and don't believe women to tell the truth about our lives. they see us as, you know, we love the criminal justice system, it's so much fun to go before a judge, to go before the police and have what you were wearing and your sex life interrogated. and the underlying logic is this real contempt for women and a complete lack of regard for our ability to have

self-determination. >> let's listen to more of akin on sean hannity's radio show today, where dr. sean tries to take him through the actual science here. >> so you accept now that woman is -- that the medical claim that you made, that a woman's not likely to get pregnant if she's raped is simply wrong, and you don't believe what you said yesterday was correct? >> well, yeah, and i don't know -- i'm no medical expert, so i don't pretend to know, you know, percentages and things like that. it was just an article that i'd read or a couple of articles that i'd read, and i think that they were probably in error. and um, so -- >> you say "probably in error." are they? >> i don't know the details of, you know, what the percentage, somebody who's a medical doctor would have to tell you that, sean. >> well, you know that a woman, if she is raped, you're suggesting that her body has ways to prevent pregnancy is simply wrong and medically discredited.

you do understand that? >> yeah. that's what i'm saying. >> oh, okay. >> ana marie, if he actually did read any article in this area, it would probably have been quoting dr. john wilke, who is the father of the pro-life movement in many ways. he has gone around, making wild assertions about exactly what happens in rape and how many he thinks he guesses, just wild guesses, end up in pregnancy. he also has some wild, unsupported assertions about, not to get too graphic here, but a firm belief that the sperm usually does not end up in an area where it can cause rape, it ends up external, in the body. it's crazy, crazy stuff that i don't even quite know how to describe, but that would be the only conceivable medical authority that akin has ever

heard say anything that could have sounded supportive of what he was thinking. >> that's correct. and he is -- he's very much an outli outlier. but i have to say, this particular controversy does highlight something that should be of concern to us, not just when we're talking about todd akin on twitter, which is all the massive amount of information that's out there. when a young person or a not-so-young person suffers a trauma of rape or abuse or incest, and are too ashamed to sort of get the right information. what they wind up getting are these old wives'' tails and things that they heard from someone who heard it from somewhere who heard it from somewhere. if i can put in a plug for the national sexual assault hotline right here, because i think that all kinds of women suffer this, all kinds of women need correct medical information about it. because if you just rely on what you heard somewhere, you're going to wind up with a theory like akin's and you're going to wind up in a situation where not only your rights are taken away from you, but sort of the choices that you have at all are taken away from you. >> sandra fluke wrote today,

mitt romney and paul ryan tried to distance themselves from the akin remark, but the fact is they're in lockstep with akin on the major women's health issues of our irin carmon, they are in lockstep with ryan on abortion. >> and mitt romney has had a lot of different positions on abortion, but either way, they have very absolutist positions, and they come down to one thing, which is to say, i mean, we all -- as ana marie mentioned, rape exceptions, in practice, involve rape victims having to go before a system and prove that what happened to them was bad enough that they should be allowed to not be pregnant anymore. we're talking about, i think it's actually great that they are so absolutist, because we can honestly confront their views and see that basically what they think is that women should be forced to stay pregnant and if we're going to start parsing and say, well, did you enjoy it? and were you raped? and did you asked for it?

well, then we're going down the same road as them. and it's time for everybody to realize how much of this is really misogyny, how much of this is not actually about saving babies, it's really about a contempt for women. >> ana marie, quickly, before we go, the ryan/romney ticket did its first and incredibly fast flip-flop yesterday, saying, oh, well, no, actually, if we get collected, we will not try to in any way interfere with women getting abortions in cases of rape. i've never seen such a fast flip-flop. >> well, i mean, i guess you haven't been watching mitt romney for very long. or, you know, he does usually go in slower motion, i guess. but, of course, that is a flip-flop, and i'm not even sure if i believe them. this is something that paul ryan has been very vocal about, as we've been talking about. and i see it as just simply a craven move. something they were pushed into by the outrage that todd akin's comments have generated. and i just hope that we are all paying attention to this.

because this is something that has gone into policy. this is not just a slip of the tongue that he made on some talk radio station. this is a point of view that was attempted to be put into, you know, legislation at the national level. and that kind of -- that kind of stuff is not going to go away, as long as we have people like todd akin and paul ryan in office. >> irin carmon and ana marie cox, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, the republican leader who thinks mitt romney should reveal his secret tax returns and that he should pay more taxes. his taxes should be increased. that's in the "rewrite." and later, sean hannity doesn't know that his crush on paul ryan is based on paul's lies. you do this every morning? it's the only way to get fresh coffee. not in my house! this new flavor lock pack from maxwell house helps seal in freshness. wow! that is fresh! am i still yelling? [ male announcer ] maxwell house flavor lock. always good to the last drop.

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todd akin's not the only potential problem facing republicans at their convention. and facing me trying to travel to that convention. tropical storm isaac, the national hurricane center predicts the storm will grow into a hurricane over the next few days, and some computer models predict it could move through tampa, florida, where the republican convention will be. long-range predictions can be off by hundreds of miles. planners of the republican convention say they have backup plans in case the storm hits tampa. and i'd better start working on a backup plan of gets myself to

tampa. coming up, mitt romney and sean hannity have fallen for paul ryan in a very big way. the three-way crush of romney, ryan, and hannity, but mitt and sean don't know the real truth about paul. that's coming up. and the bump that wasn't. what paul ryan did not do to mitt romney's poll numbers. karen finney and jonathan capehart will join me. ♪ why not use all your vacation days this year? get points you can easily redeem for your vacations, with chase sapphire preferred.

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get two times the points on dining in restaurants with chase sapphire preferred. you know, it was one of the most moving conversations i've ever had with anybody. >> that's how paul ryan described the experience of mitt romney offering him the vice presidential nomination. a moving experience. too bad for romney, ryan has not moved the polls in his favor. there has been absolutely no ryan bump in the polls for mitt romney. in the new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, only 22% say ryan's selection makes them more likely to vote for romney. 23% say ryan makes them less

likely to vote for romney. and 54% say ryan does not affect their vote, in any way. paul ryan's opponent, joe biden, thinks he knows why paul ryan hasn't helped the ticket. >> congressman ryan, a good man, like romney is a good man, has given definition, given definition to governor romney's vague commitments up to this point. congressman ryan and the congressional republicans, as one person said, have already passed in the republican house what governor romney is proposing for the whole nation. so in a sense, this is sort of like two incumbents running. you know what you're going to get. they call their new plan for the economy new, bold, and gutsy. if i asked a rhetorical question, what's gutsy about giving millionaires another tax break? >> joining me now, msnbc's karen

finney and jonathan capehart, opinion writer for "the washington post." karen, no bump. no bump whatsoever. sarah palin gave john mccain a big bump. i mean, it didn't last, but you're supposed to deliver something with the excitement of the naming of a vp. >> yeah. and instead, look what he's gotten for all of that trouble. he's gotten a lot of headache. not a good week last week and not a good week this week heading into the convention. you know, here's why it's not surprising, though, because one of the things i think the polls showed is that the fundamental underlying problems that mitt romney has cannot be masked by, you know, sort of the shiny new object like the vp candidate. so, you know, if you look at those -- dig into those numbers, one of the things we saw that we've seen, frankly, in some of the other polls, recently, is that romney's negatives are going up. the more people learn about him, the less they like about him. the less they like his business experience, the less they trust him. and just because you put paul ryan out there or frankly any vp candidate at this point was not necessarily going to change

that. and on top of that, ryan actually made it worse, because he tied romney to some specifics, which he'd been trying to avoid desperately. >> and paul ryan's numbers have gone up too. his negatives have gone up, mostly because he was much less known before he was picked. if you look back in june, he had a negative of 18%, which is very, very low, actually, for a political negative. he had a positive of 17%, which is also very, very low. now he's got a negative of 32 and jonathan capehart, he's got a positive of 33, which just adds up to nothing. >> right. a bunch of nothing, the only vice presidential nominee who's done better than paul ryan was dick cheney, who i think his positive/negative was plus two. and i think paul ryan's is minus one. but, look, even paul ryan, as you showed in there, his positive numbers have gone up, but they're not going up enough

to provide the bounce, provide the lift that mitt romney was hoping he would get from a paul ryan. and, you know, i agree with karen 100%. paul ryan's nomination, while it might have seemed good for mitt romney at the beginning, at least tying down the base and allowing the base to view mitt romney as, okay, he's one of us, he's a true conservative, if he's going to pick someone like paul ryan, the problem was and continues to be, while mitt romney is still a bit of a blank slate, paul ryan is not a blank slate at all. we knew what we were getting when we chose paul ryan, because of his medicare stance and his -- and the paul ryan budgets of the last two years. what we're now talking about is forcible rape, the whole issue of legitimate rape, personhood, all of these bills that paul ryan co-sponsored with todd akin. so, again, mitt romney did

himself some favors, probably with his base, but not exactly doing himself a whole lot of favors with the rest of the country, it would seem. >> karen finney, jonathan just raised something is what makes it so dangerous to take a member of congress or a senator, put him on these tickets. because they have voting records. and in the case of a member of this republican congress, they have the most extreme, crazy voting records on the right in right-wing votes that we've ever seen and ever recorded in washington. and mitt romney has taken all of those votes, including the forcible rape concept, and put it on the ticket with him. >> and here's the question that i keep asking myself. either they did do a good job of vetting it and didn't think it would be a problem or they didn't do a good job vetting it. either way, that's not somebody i want sitting in the white house, making decisions, because clearly, as we saw last week, they were not prepared for the

most obvious questions. it is -- regardless of akin, this issue, this question about forcible rape and the fact that ryan played such a prominent role, despite the efforts of the gop, i think to try to de-emphasize social issues with the ryan pick like, you know, abortion and those issues, it was going to come out. we were going to be talking about -- there was no way that they were going to be able to run away from it. so, again, either they thought they could, which was particularly disturbing, or they knew they couldn't and they were okay -- they thought somehow that that would be a conversation that america would just, you know, we'd say, oh, okay. either way, it's a terrible calculation. the other very important point is, this is the last conversation they wanted to be having. and these are not the numbers they wanted to have heading into their convention. because they wanted to use their convention next week to reintroduce romney for about the tenth time and introduce paul ryan and have their own narrative about what the romney/ryan ticket means. and the numbers are telling us something very different. as jonathan points out, the conversation we're having is very different, which means it's

going to be a rocky couple of weeks for them. >> jonathan capehart, some more very bad numbers in this poll for mitt romney about how the campaign is actually going. this is a very good measure of that. when asked if these voters have seen or read or heard anything that gives them a favorable consider a less favorable or more favorable impression of mitt romney, that could include campaign ads, could include anything in the paper, what we do here, 44% said that what they've seen, read, or heard has made them less favorable to mitt romney. 32% said more favorable. 10%, no difference. >> and you -- that sound you hear, lawrence, is the campaign headquarters in chicago, the obama re-election effort, cheering. the whole plan has been, before the convention, to -- either convention. to define mitt romney before he has a chance to define himself, and then to do it again before the romney/ryan ticket has a chance to define itself, and so

it looks like their tactic is working. that the more people find out about mitt romney, the more people find out about paul ryan, the more people find out about the two of them, the less favorable the american people -- the less favorable view they have of them. >> karen finney and jonathan capehart, thank you both for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, one of the intellectual leaders of the republican party is trying to rewrite the stupid party's stupid position on taxes, specifically mitt romney's taxes. that's coming up. and later, the secret ways paul ryan tries to spend taxpayer dollars, even though he pretends he's against that sort of thing. oh, if sean hannity finds out what his hero, paul ryan, has been up to, that's coming up. [ mrs. hutchison ] friday night has always been all fun and games here at the hutchison household. but one dark stormy evening...

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bill kristol, who in the past has bent the entire republican party to his will, has made them all follow his lead, now wants them to raise mitt romney's taxes. it's the clash of the republican titans. bill kristol versus grover norquist, next in the "rewrite." . [ voice of dennis ] ...allstate. really? i was afraid you'd have some cut-rate policy. [ kyle ] nope, i've got... [ voice of dennis ] ...the allstate value plan. it's their most affordable car insurance -- and you still get an allstate agent. i too have... [ voice of dennis ]...allstate. [ roger ] same agent and everything. [ kyle ] it's like we're connected. no we're not. yeah we are. no...we're not. ♪ ask an allstate agent about the value plan. are you in good hands? ask an allstate agent about the value plan. mid grade dark roast forest fresh full tank brain freeze cake donettes rolling hot dogs bag of ice anti-freeze wash and dry diesel self-serve fix a flat jumper cables 5% cashback signup for 5% cashback at gas stations through september.

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and having stupid people saying stupid things. >> in breaking stupid news tonight, one of the intellectual leaders of the stupid party is finally trying to "rewrite" the stupid party's provably stupid position on taxes. now, being an intellectual leader of the stupid party, as paul ryan has shown, doesn't actually require all that much, you know, intellect. but william kristol's intellectual credentials, unlike paul ryan's, would be acceptable in elite faculty clubs anywhere. bill kristol's very first flashes of intellectual cred actually appear on his birth certificate in his father and mother's names. his father and mother, irving and bea kristol were both college professors and renowned intellectuals. bill kristol glided through

college in the 1970s and worked briefly in politics as a democrat before returning to harvard to collect a ph.d. he first achieved fame, or at least washington fame, as dan quayle's brain. he took on the seemingly impossible task of being vice president dan quayle's chief of staff and won praise from republicans for helping dan quayle seem not quite so, you know, stupid. except at spelling bees. >> add one little bit on the end. >> think of potato. how's that spelled? >> you're right phonetically. >> after being rudely knocked out of his white house job by the clinton/gore victory over the bush/quayle re-election ticket, bill kristol took his revenge quickly. when bill and hillary clinton rolled out their health care reform plan, republican

congressional reaction was the standard capitol hill move of offering counterproposals that republicans hoped would in some way water down the clinton health care reform bill, which most republicans and all democrats firmly believed could not be stopped from becoming law. bill kristol was the first, and for a while, the only republican in washington saying, simply, kill the bill. he circulated a memo to all republican members of congress, explaining to them how they could, and why they must, kill the clinton health care reform bill, and then the republicans followed bill kristol's leadership and did exactly that. bill kristol successfully led the republican charge against the clinton health care bill, while he wasn't even holding a position in government. he was surprisingly effective as an intellectual leader of the republican party back then, when the republican party wasn't so,

you know, stupid. tonight, we can only hope that bill kristol hasn't lost his touch. >> i, personally, if i were, you know, designing a tax code, would have a tax code in which mitt romney paid more than 13%, i would say, given what i know about the kind of investments he made money from. i'm just not a believer that he -- that he needed -- you know, that there would have been any economic detriment to him paying more, and i think it just seems kind of weird that he pays a lower rate than an awful lot of middle class people. especially with carried interest. >> and that was after he said that romney should release his tax returns. that's republican intellectual leader bill kristol saying that he would raise taxes. in fact, he would especially raise taxes on investment bankers who used the carried interest provisions to pay absurdly low tax rates. that's bill kristol saying it's weird that investment bankers like mitt romney pay a lower

rate than an awful lot of middle class people. that's bill kristol saying that for the mitt romneys of this country, the tax code is not progressive enough. he personally would design a more progressive tax code. every word that bill kristol just said is now republican heresy. but it used to be republican orthodoxy. ronald reagan believed in a progressive income tax code. ronald reagan believed that the mitt romneys should pay more than 13%. ronald reagan believed that the mitt romney should pay a higher income tax rate than the people who made less money. way less money, than the mitt romneys. and there is another stunning bit of current republican heresy wrapped in the middle of what bill kristol just said. >> i'm just not a believer that he -- that he needed -- you know, that there would have been

any economic detriment to him paying more. >> that's one of the intellectual leaders of the republican party saying there is no economic detriment to increasing mitt romney's taxes. here is the actual leader of the stupid party, in the house of representatives. >> it's a very simple equation. tax increases destroy jobs. >> not according to bill kristol, they don't. bill kristol says there would be no economic detriment to raising mitt romney's taxes, but john boehner says tax increases destroy jobs. and boehner says that, even though he's been proven wrong about it. john boehner, like every republican, voted against bill clinton's tax increase in 1993, saying it would destroy jobs, and destroy the economy. but as all republicans know, job growth and the economy soared after, after bill clinton raised taxes. so tonight, the stupid party has

a choice. who to believe? the congressional leader of the stupid party or an intellectual leader of the stupid party? and that is a wicked tough choice for a stupid party. this happy couple used capital one venture miles for their "destination wedding." double miles you can "actually" use. but with those single mile travel cards... [ bridesmaid ] blacked out... but i'm a bridesmaid. oh! "x" marks the spot she'll never sit. but i bought a dress! a toast... ...to the capital one venture card. fly any airline, any flight, anytime. double miles you can actually use. what a coincidence? what's in your wallet? [ all screaming ] watch the elbows ladies. [ all screaming ] one is for a clean, wedomestic energy future that puts us in control. our abundant natural gas is already saving us money,

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he basically said, you share my values. and you have the kind of experience i'm going to need to help fix this country's problems. our experiences complement each other quite well. >> and that's it? that's how he asked you? >> that's it. >> sort of like a proposal. >> yeah. >> ohh, a proposal. that is just so, so romantic.

there is nothing quite as cute is a republican guy talking about his crush on a republican guy, especially when it turns into a three-way crush that includes sean hannity. but love is blind, which is why sean will never be able to see why paul is really so wrong for him. paul ryan voted for the war in iraq, the bush tax cuts, the bridge to nowhere, the bank bailout, and nearly $2 billion worth of additional defense spending, all of which ripped the deficit wide open, wiped out the surplus left there by bill clinton, and paul ryan, who lobbied the obama administration for stimulus money for his district, while attacking the stimulus tonight just told sean what he wanted to hear.

>> what i call crony capitalism, when you take money from successful small businesses, spend it in washington, on favor industries, on favored individuals, picking winners and losers in the economy, that's cronyism. that's corporate welfare. it doesn't work, it's never worked. the president is still wedded to it. >> of course, phony political hack paul ryan has no problem with spending taxpayer money. and of course paul ryan has no problem with cronyism, as today's "huffington post" reports, "veep pick paul ryan lobbied on behalf of companies who gave him campaign cash." "the post" reports that in one instance, ryan lobbied president bush's transportation secretary unsuccessfully to stop more regulation on the transportation of hazardous waste on behalf of a chemical company that was and has continued to be through this

year a reliable ryan campaign donor. but poor sean hannity doesn't know any of that about paul, and, you know, how love is. if sean finds out about it, he's not going to want to believe it. nothing, nothing now could make sean quit paul. joining me now is ari melber, correspondent for t"the nation" and an msnbc contributor. ari, what poor sean doesn't know about paul. turns out he's just a classic congressional political hack doing what they've all done for so long. >> well, lawrence, a man crush is a powerful thing. and a fox news man crush can, as you say, be blind you. paul ryan was for earmarks before he was against them. he was for deficits before he was against them. and he's part of a political party that inherited a surplus from a democratic administration in 2001, and as you said in the

introduction, spent their way into this big deficit. they are the party that goes out with you for dinner, orders not just appetizers and dessert, but two big bottles of fancy wine, and when the check comes, they start yelling at you and the restaurant and the waiter. this is not acceptable behavior among your friends and surely not by your opponents. and that's the big problem here. there was an analysis of the congressional budget office numbers, which are nonpartisan, looking at the $4 trillion that was added to the deficit under bush. paul ryan voted not a quarter of the time, not half the time, about 91% of the time for all of those deficit increases. >> and "the boston globe" recently reported, in 2005, ryan boasted in a letter to constituents that he had voted for a five-year federal transportation bill that would provide wisconsin with $711.9 million, a 30% increase in annual funding for