of smoke and mirrors. today's launch of his latest path to prosperity budget. for the last two years he's introduced budgets brutally unbalanced and mathematically impossible. this time we've had the chance to peer into his mind. first we learn of mr. ryan's delusion. >> will the president take every one of these solutions? probably not. are a lot of these solutions very popular and did we win these arguments in the campaign? some of us think so. >> a lot of these solutions are very popular and did we win these arguments on the campaign? many of us think so. for the record, mr. ryan fought a presidential election campaign in which he was roundly thumped. in fact, nothing within close proximity to mr. ryan went the republican way. neither his state, nor even his hometown. all voted for the incumbent president. but today, mr. ryan tells us that he won the economic argument. so for delusion, mr. ryan scores at the very top of his class. but he's also utterly

disingenuous. especially when it comes to taxes that were raised as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. >> isn't that disingenuous? >> not at all. we're not going to refight the past. we know that's behind us. what we're showing here is that with the fiscal cliff and all the other things that have occurred in the past, which spending is going down on this baseline as well, that clearly makes it easier to balance the budget. >> so mr. ryan spends the campaign opposing tax hikes, but then uses those very same tax increases in his own magical budget? he also says in the same sentence that he's not going to fight over the past, but then promises to repeal the affordable care act. delusional and disingenuous. the third edition of paul ryan's pathway to hypocrisy. thanks so much for watching. chris matthews is next. ryan shrugged. let's play "hardball."

good evening. i'm chris matthews. in washington. let me start tonight with this. you know the book atlas shrug, about what happenedst when the elite of the world, people calling the shots go on job action, decide to walk away from their position, stop being captains of industry and let the country fall all around them. today, paul ryan, a total believer in "atlas shrug" philosophy did it like in the book. mitt romney's running mate came forward with a plan that gives the biggest tax rate in the world to the richest. paying for it with huge slashes in programs for middle class working people and the poor. call it ryan shrugged. it kills the president's health care plan outright in its crib. dumps medicare for a cheapskate voucher scheme. and offloads medicaid on to the states and steals from the ordinary people, that old 47%, and gives a bundle to the elite at top. why is ryan doing this? you have to ask, why after getting beaten and rejected in

the presidential election last november is the vice presidential candidate coming out here trying to etch a sketch the whole thing, pretend the election never happened? tell me, where's ryan express, taking the republican party further off the cliff? what's he doing? giving us a souvenir roadmap where they went wrong? we're going to be joined by congressman debbie wasserman-schultz. with us now, "washington post's" ezra klein, mns political analyst. thank you, ezra. i want to get to the basics. the boxcar information here. why in the world is paul ryan writing a budget that's supposed to be somewhat realistic that assumes the termination, outright elimination of the president's historic achievement with the health care plan? >> because he doesn't think the politics of the republican caucus will let him do anything else. that's one answer, but the bigger one, and i think it's actually a really important thing to recognize about his budget, he can't balance the budget if he doesn't get rid of the spending. he doesn't get rid of the president's entire health care plan. he keeps all of the costs control, so he keeps the $700

billion in medicare cuts he ran against and i think a lot of people don't recognize he also keeps the new taxes in the president's health care plan. the part he gets rid of is the care in obama care. he gets rid of the spending in it. if he didn't do those two thing, get rid of the spending but keep cost controls, he couldn't get anywhere near balancing the budget and he also couldn't pass those two policies. new taxes and medicare cuts within the next ten years. over his own conference. so he's actually piggybacking on a lot of president obama's work in this balanced budget. >> yeah, a lot of times this guy gets a free raid in washington, journalism. he's supposed to be the brainiac. yet, portrayed as some sort of a deficit hawk. yet when i'm reading your article, your analysis and others, what i'm getting to, he's not a deficit hawk at all. basically he's a guy who wants to shift economic wealth or opportunity from the bottom of the top. . he wants to create an ayn rand existence where the winners make all the money. the looters as they call them in those books get screwed.

how does h he keep getting the image of being a deficit reducer? >> washington has a short themry. ryan was not a deficit hawk. go back in his career. he voted for the bush tax cuts, unfunded wars for iraq and afghanistan, voted for the medicare prescription drug benefit, a social security privatization proposal. in 2005, the george w. bush administration rejected because it would be too expense i. the transition costs would be in the trillions of dollars. what he found later on, the way he could get these policies taken so seriously, not seen as so radical, was to bring them in under the cloak of deficit reduction, under the guise of preventing a debt crisis, it would be worse than anything he was proposing. but these budgets have sort of deactivated i think a lot of normal defenses and skepticism in washington. because they sort of -- such a broad bipartisan acceptance of the idea you need deficit reduction right now people are willing to accept things they wouldn't normally accept as long as it's called deficit reduction.

>> you know, when i listen to him and listened to chris van hollen last week on this show, i'm beginning to realize what's perhaps more interesting than who's the better deficit cutter, because neither of them are, neither party really is, is what they see as the purpose of the federal government. people watching this shoes are looking for those differences. chris van hollen doesn't talk about cutting the deficit but what government can do to expand this country, socially, economically, what tools we have. it's rich with ideas on how you can encourage things you want to happen. what would you call ryan's plan? in a sense, it's more of a statement of what government can't do. how would you describe the message, the lyrics behind his budget? what's he saying about america and its government? >> ryan believes that what government fundamentally does, what the federal government does, at least at this point in history, is it stifles a basic individual creativity and the family and the community and the city and all these other units of association we have in american life. it is a very classically and fundamentally libertarian way of

looking at what the government does and doesn't do. he's very explicit. >> he's cashing out. >> of his budget. >> cashing out government, basely sbase ically saying we're going to give people money back and get rid of the government? >> in doing that, the key move he makes, he says we he does that, when h he cuts government, he's not taking government away. he's adding something to the country. takes go government away, creat room to use genius in order to make america better. the cost is 35 million people according to the nonpartisan kaiser family foundation who won't be getting health care insurance through medicaid or the affordable care act. >> paul ryan and mitt romney ran on a similar fiscal vision last year and lost. let's take a look at what he, ryan, told reporters today. let's watch him in action. >> the election didn't go our way, believe me, i know what that feels like.

that means we sir rendurrender princip principles, means we stop believing in what we believe in? look, whether the country intended it or not, we have divided government. >> joining us right now, the chair of the democratic national committee, debbie wasserman-schultz, the congresswoman from florida. congresswoman, let me ask you about this. what do you make of ryan? you work in the house with him. here he is coming out with his ayn rand "atlas shrug" ideological right wing engineering as newt would call it. are they trying to get rid of health care now? >> it felt a bit like a needle stuck on a broken record or maybe he had his iphone earbuds in his ear, his ipod earbuds in his ear during lunch last week with the president. i mean, let's -- i'm willing to give paul ryan the benefit of the doubt that it is hard in a few days, near impossible, to retool an entire budget to make an adjustment to look like you're trying to move toward some compromise. but this was pretty disappointing and shows that his response today on that they --

on whether they lost the election was pretty tone deaf. >> it's like going into a labor negotiation and saying, give me $1,000 an hour and we'll start from there. i mean, what he's asking for, or nothing, if you're the boss, i'll give you nothing if you're the boss. i mean, this is supposed to be the kumbaya season between the two parties when you're going to try to find common ground. he says, let's start off with the fact i want to erase your whole first term, then i want to get rid of medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher program. these starting points don't seem like they're realistic in terms of what we hear the president is trying to accomplish and some republicans are beginni inning like they might play ball with. >> with my dnc hat on, you know, arguably, i'm -- it's not terrible that paul ryan and the republicans don't see that the voters rejected the path that they laid out. and, you know, that's going to give us more opportunities in 2014. but the responsible legislator in me who understands that we

can't engage in my way or the highway politics wants us to sit down and try to continue to hash out common ground and close that trust deficit. that's what we have to continue to work toward. maybe this is just an opening salvo and the next step would be to peel back the layers and hopefully have an opportunity to come closer together. >> one part, congresswoman, of the ryan budget that's getting a lot of attention is something we talked about earlier, this decision to maintain the $700 billion in cuts to medicaid that were included in medicare, and obama care, rather, as "talking points memo" illustrated, ryan reversed himself so many times on that issue, there are reasons to be cynical. back in 2010, for example, ryan blasted obama's new health care law, said, "what the bill essentially does is creates medicare like a piggy bank." ryan was including the same medicare cuts in his own budget, not too worried about consistency there. ryan changed course again last year while running with mitt romney, the attack on the president, "here comes raid on medicare" became a major

campaign theme and worked its way into ryan's convention speech. take a listen. >> they needed hundreds of billions of more, so they just took it all away from medicare. $716 billion funneled out of medicare by president obama. an obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. >> and yet a few months later those very cuts from a program he called an obligation to our grandparents find their way back into his budget. he's back doing it again. i want to go back to our analyst here. ezra. it seems to me, i know you're an expert at the nuts and bolts here, but the larger doishonest, he's showing crocodile tears about parents and grandparents. at the very same time, he's saying let's throw medicare out the window, replace it with a voucher program so someone 80 years old can go around shopping

for a health care plan. by the way, let's throw out obama care, too. he's so radically different, he seems to be focusing on the nuances of his discrediting inconsistencies. the small point here. why do you think it's important to point out he's inconsistent? what's the point there if he's so radically right wing to start with? >> i don't think the inconsistency is the main point. i broadly agree with you there. i think the deep issue in ryan's rhetoric and budget, the thing that actually is very telling is ryan on the one hand has his whole persona where he's making the very difficult choices, he's doing the hard things the president won't do. he talks about that all the time. unlike the president, he understands the scope of our challenges and he'll do the very, very, very difficult things that need to be done now. on the other, he won't actually admit any of these things are in any way difficult. there's a kind of sunny side where he's actually strengthening medicare. he's helping social security. he's helping medicaid. he'll make it better by putting it to the states. if you want to cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, if you want to cap medicare as growth and turn it over to private insurers, if you want to

make it so medicaid loses $750 billion over the next decade, there are real consequences and real people who get hurt there and that's why i actually focus on the nuts and bolts because it is in the nuts and bolts when you get down from the level of distraction that he likeses to remain at that you see who gets hurt and by how much. you can't save that much money without hurting people. he doesn't want to face up to the implications of the choices he's making. he wants to make tough choices but not say what's tough about them. >> all my life i've heard about waste, fraud and abuse. get rid of that by striking off some sort of budget item. it's not that simple. a check you don't write doesn't get to somebody. thank you, congresswoman debbie wasserman-schultz. thanks for joining us tonight. ezra klein of the "washington post." coming up, how w. killed the gop. a mountain of lies that got us into iraq. two mismanaged wars. a surplus. katrina. that failure. an author says no republican can be president in the near future unless they deeply distance themselves from george w. bush.

how do you do that if you're his brother, jeb? also the papal conclave is under way with as many as 20 so-called front-runners. we have no idea who is going to become pope. we do know whoever is selected will face the enormous task of reconnecting the church to american catholics. another intersection between hollywood and washington. "olympus," looks like a great movie, i've seen part of it, about terrorists taking over the white house. north koreans. that's scary enough, isn't it? we'll have that. hard to believe, larry craig, the old wide stance guy, the former senator from idaho who lost his job in an airport bathroom has just made things worse for himself. this is "hardball." the place for politics. a talking car. but i'll tell you what impresses me. a talking train. this ge locomotive can tell you exactly where it is, what it's carrying, while using less fuel. delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it.

♪ after all, what's the point of talking if you don't have something important to say? ♪ here's a good one for you. which state had the highest voter turnout in the 2012 election? that surprised me. minnesota which topped the turnout list for the eighth time in the last nine presidential or midterm elections. more than three quarters of

eligible voters cast ballots in minnesota last november. they take it seriously up there. neighboring wisconsin was second. colorado, new hampshire, and iowa rounded up the top five. take a look. those people vote. the state with the lowest turnout was president, hawaii, just 45% out in hawaii. we'll be right back. rfirmation. hey, this is challenger. i'll be waiting for you in stall 5. it confirms your reservation and the location your car is in, the moment you land. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz.

i don't think there's any bush baggage at all. i love my brother. i love my brother. i'm proud of his accomplishments. >> hear that noup hear this. there is no bush baggage. jeb bush denying there's bush baggage. he says he's proud of his brother's -- this is going to kill him -- accomplishments. there are a lot of accomplishments to choose from. starting a war an false pretenses with a country that had nothing to do with 9 /11. when president bush made a surprise visit to iraq in 2008, an iraqi journalist showed bush how thankful that country was for our input.

>> anyway, then there's the budget surplus bush w. left and inherited and squandered by the way that big surplus and gave us the bush tax cuts which mainly benefited the rich and added $1.7 trillion to the federal debt, and then it was bush's passive response to the devastation of katrina when he finally engaged, by the way, he thanked the guy overseeing the screwup this way. >> i want to thank you all for -- and brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. fema director is working 24 -- [ applause ] they're working 24 hours a day. >> poor michael brown, he didn't even think he, himself, had done a good job. the next republican presidential candidate, however, for 2016 is going to have to further than just distancing himself from w.

like mccain and romney tried to do. they'll have to repudiate bush on many of them. no easy feat when your last name is bush, the brother. wayne slater, senior political writer for the "dallas morning news" and co-author of the book "bush's brain." let me go to peter, you always arouse my interest, peter. you always hit on something very smart. they always like to say, you'll notice my name is on the ballot, not george w. bush's, that old dodge. you don't think that's good enough. >> certainly not if your last name is the same as the guy who was president. i mean, if you try to distance yourself from your brother then you look like a jerk. but distancing yourself from george w. bush more aggressively than john mccain or mitt romney was able to do i think is going to be truly crucial for any serious republican candidate in 2016 because bush is the guy who destroyed the republican brand. if you look at the polls, the

polls, the republican party's doing okay including with young people when bush comes into office. by the time he leaves, the republican party is dead in the water, especially among the young and it has not recovered. just as bill clinton distanced himself from jimmy carter, because carter hurt the democratic brand, a republican is going to have to seriously distance himself in whays peopl understand. >> wayne, when do you think the convention is going to be? will it be in our lifetime when we see george w. up on that podium? are they ever going to show his face again yet alone have somebody run as his brother? let me two bago back to the bro problem. i like jeb bush. he has a catch 22. if he gets caught saying, i'm not my brother, he knocks his brother. if he says, i don't agree with the war in iraq, he's really knocking him. if he says he screwed up when clinton left him a budget surplus, he's really nailed p e. he's out there the last several days saying, i like my brother's accomplishments. what are those accomplishments?

>> look, peter is exactly right on this. the next republican nominee wannabe is going to have to be an anti-bush platform. however soft or hard you want to do that. fundamentally, there's even a bigger problem for jeb bush. it's not only, as peter said, that jeb is not likely to want to say, i don't love my brother, i don't agree with my brother, i want to distance myself very explicitly from my brother. it is he fundamentally can't distance himself from something that's even deeper than that, and there has grown up in the republican party across the board a deep sense of unreliability. that is to say, the father 41 came in as a social and fiscal -- i say fiscal conservative, but, read my lips. the son came in as a social conservative, many social conservatives, you talk today with them, they say, what did he deliver for us? fiscal conservatives, obviously spending and deficits is our problem. fundamentally, i had dinner the other night with the two very significant social conservative

leaders who said they're coming around to the view. now, these are very strong republican conservatives coming around to the view that the bush administration mismanaged the war. this is a -- >> mismanaged? >> -- across the board in party. >> what a dodge that is. i got to tell you, wayne. mismanaged? they went to war on false pretenses that they didn't even believe were the reasons they went to war. if you get them and get cheney, you waterboard cheney, he ain't going to say weapons of mass destruction. he's going to say, i wanted to get iraq and i saw my chance. >> what i'm saying is, these guys in this crucial part of the republican base, these aren't democrats, these aren't independents. tease aren't progressives. these aren't moderates. these are very strong social conservative republicans and they're saying exactly that. why in the heck did we go to war? >> yeah. here's george w. bush's iraq war, of course, it's his biggest blot on his presidency, i think, and the ten-year anniversary of that starting this next week. with time, even more has been

revealed about the false pretenses. i didn't believe in the pretense or lack of reality. here's the clip from the great documentary we've had on the air on msnbc called "hubris." >> the days of iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming to an end. >> powell walked into my office and without so much as a farewell, he walked over to the window and said, i wonder what happened when we put 500,000 troops into iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and find nothing? he turned around and walked back in his office. i wrote that down on my calendar, as close to verbatim as i could. i thought that was a profound statement coming from the secretary of state, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. >> peter, back to your brilliant thought in your piece. do you think there's teany way you were a brilliant consultant, any way to advise jeb to squirm around his brother? >> to. no. i think it's impossible. what the republican party needs is what chris christie is doing,

a guy willing to pick fights with those in the republican party. people in the republican party, and those issues in the republican party. >> teachers unions. >> that are destroying the public party. you can't squirm through this. you have to basically do what the democrats did in late 1980s. go frontally into the idea your party is going to have a civil war and when people outside your party see you're willing to take on the dick cheneys of the world, then they'll look at you in a different light. >> wow, do you agree with that, wayne? i was thinking back to the time of the democrats in '68. it was civil rights. they naught it withfought it wi democratic party. the war issue of vietnam, they fought it within the democratic party. they got hurt for it. take on these big fights to get to the soul of the party? >> yeah. fundamentally the only way jeb bush can succeed in this kind of milieu is that he doesn't disassociate himself with his brother but fundamentally is seen in the end as the only guy

who can beat the democrats down the road. if a christie or others emerge as more likely or as likely to win, then you're exactly right, i agree with that. >> who would you like to have if you had to raise money somewhere in the united states? which republican would you like to have at your dinner podium? you start, peter. you want to raise $1 million one night. who's the best bet to bring in and get the people excited an that person being there that night? >> the only person who's developed an independent brand in which democrats and independents, even some democrats look at him as separate from the republican party, is chris christie. because he's the guy who has the reputation as his own man. nobody else, yet. maybe interestingly rand paul. rand paul may be developing that reputation as well. you may not always agree with him, but you know he follows the internal drummer, not what the party establishment says. that's where the gop has to go. >> i don't think people would stop at starbucks to hear him talk. your thought, wayne?

no one is going to pay $100,000 to hear a libertarian park. >> i still think jeb bush is despite all his problems, but if i wanted to gather a dinner party together of real rich billionaires and millionaires, i would bring ben carson, not because ben carson, the pediatric neurosurgeon from johns hopkins, not because he's going to be the nominee, because if you really talk to sort of social and fiscal conservative folks in the republican party, they like it that this guy has upstaged obama on a republican agenda. >> he's a very bright, good man. anyway, thank you so much, peter breinart, and thank you, wayne slater. i think we have a tough bakeoff coming between jeb and chris christie. up next, she's got the airwaves at fox news channel. used to. that's not stopping sarah palin from speaking her mind. she's talking about people who work hard. what does she do for a living? i keep asking. what's her job? this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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ha! back to "hardball." now to the sideshow. first we welcome back sarah palin, weighing in on big news that happened yesterday. not at all close to alaska. in fact, it was a hot issue on "morning joe" today. here's a refresher. >> our top story, though, is about big sugary sodas. they came out victorious yesterday. as a state court invalidated new york city's ban on oversized beverages. >> let's go right over right now to our flash cam. >> yeah. >> and see -- >> lewis? >> see. >> oh my gosh. wow. >> lewis, what are the implications? >> joe, the constitutional implications are just remarkable. >> oh my god. >> i didn't know this was the daily show. >> sarah palin, twitter, here she goes on mayor bloomberg's 16

ounce soda limit had been blocked by a state supreme court judge. she said, "victory in nyc for liberty loving soda drinkers, to politicians with too much time on their hands, we say government, stay out of our refrigerator." there you have it from a former politician with all the time on her hands. she doesn't have a job. by the way, her next book, we ought to know this, has something to do with the war on christmas. we can expect palin's take on, "politically correct scrooges who would rather take the christ out of christmas. you know, people who choose to say happy holidays instead of merry christmas." actually as we all know, no one's ever told anyone of us to say, not to say merry christmas. next, remember larry craig? he's the former idaho republican senator arrested back in 2007 for inappropriate behavior in an airport bathroom. well, craig is now facing accusations that he misused over $200,000 in campaign funds for his legal defense in that case. well, the question is, was his use of the money legal since craig's bathroom fiasco happened during a job-related trip?

that's what craig's defense trip is saying. the trouble is craig and his attorneys are trying to have it both ways. back in 2007 a letter to the senate ethics committee said his arrest and conviction were, "purely personal conduct unrelated to the performance of official senate duties." but now they're saying spending campaign funds on his defense was part of official business. that's what's called taking a wide stance on your job description. next, take a quick look back at karl rove's election night meltdown over whether it was too soon to say president obama had won ohio. while you're watching, though, think about what it could do with the papal conclave. >> do you believe ohio has been settled? >> i don't. it may be barack obama wins the state, but it seems to me you have a lot of votes yet to cash. we had one instance where something was prematurely called. >> you know it well. >> they said this is not going to be another one of those scenarios. >> maybe not.

if it's going to happen, let the votes begin to show it. >> any collections to the conclave there? did you see any? here's karl rove earlier today. >> thank god we don't have exit polls or early returns. they do it the right way. they get to the final vote and the decision then they let the smoke -- maybe there's a message there for american media. maybe we better wait, rather than call it, let the election go to its final conclusion and let the results speak for its. >> we'll follow your lead. unto god the things that are gods, i think i'm safe in saying that one. up next the papal conclave is under way in rome. my big we is whether the cardinals will select a pope who can connect and be progressive. that's ahead. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 seems like etfs are everywhere these days. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 but there is one source with a wealth of etf knowledge tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 all in one place. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 introducing schwab etf onesource™. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 it's one source with the most commission-free etfs. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 one source with etfs from leading providers

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i'm hampton pearson with your cnbc market wrap. the dow manages a slight gain rising 2 and change. the s&p falls 3. the nasdaq loses 10 points. employers plan to continue hiring in the second quarter. according to a survey from the staffing firm manpower on the earnings front, profits at costco came in better than expected sending shares higher today. and aaa says gas prices are finally coming down. they're 3 cents lower than last week. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." well, welcome back to "hardball." black smoke emerged from the sistine chapel chimney tonight indicating the 115 voting cardinals have not yet chosen a pope to lead the roman catholic church. tomorrow voting will continue four times per day until a new pontiff is named.

while much is being made of who the new pope will be, tonight we're going to take a look at the issues he must tackle. it will be a he in the catholic church. including corruption within the vatican, sex abuse scandal, role of women in marriage, and of course, contraception. michael wrote the book "left at the altar: how the democrats lost the catholics and how the catholics can save the democrats." mary johnson was a nun for 20 years with mother teresa before leaving the church. she's the author of the book "unquenchable thirst." legal settlement of nearly $10 million in child sex abuse, catholic diocese of los angeles. $10 million. this is what most catholic lay people read in the paper, will read it in the "times" tomorrow, every paper in the country. they'll say, the priest, what are they doing? a lot of these cases are old. >> i think the church has done a great deal since 2002 when they

dop adopted the charter to ferret this stuff out. what i think the hierarchy doesn't understand, the church abuse scandal started the way watergate started with burglary. it's no longer about this priest or that priest who did it with a little bit or little girl. we understand that happens whether penn state football or the church. the problem are the bishops who oversaw them in so many cases did not react -- >> why not? why didn't they throw them out? >> the culture, you know, whether, again, whether it was penn state or the clergy, they rally the wagons around. it's the most frustrating thing. i will say -- >> let me go to sister on this because i have a suspicion when people cover up, they're covering up for themselves. they've got a little embarrassment in their own sex life, perhaps, they're not supposed to have a sex life. somebody comes up and says, let's not be hypocritical here, joe, maybe you keep your mouth shut on this one. such an elaborate cover-up. so many people involved in it. you wonder, i don't know if it's like cops looking out for cops because they're cops, i think a

lot of it is cover up for your own world. i'm speculating. i admit it. i don't like the looks of it. your thoughts, your memory, your history. what do you see? >> i think the church has been building up secrecy for 20,0,00 years. they do it better really than anybody else. the hierarchy in the church has become such a boy's club really. just, one of the reasons i wrote my memoir, "unquenchable thirst" is because i wanted to start open dialogue about what it's really like to live celibacy in the church. what does that feel like? nobody is really talking about that. even when there were these revelations about the depths of the pedophilia crisis, people were talking legal things, historical things. but no one was talking what is that really like? priests are lonely. of course, pedophiles is an entirely different party. but if we're going to solve any of these problems in the catholic church, we have to begin to think about marriage for priests. we have to think about women priests. leadership -- >> i'm with you on all that. let me ask -- >> has to be responsible.

>> let me challenge you on one thing. why would anybody, i mean, i am maybe an old boy's club guy, myself, in some ways. some ways. that's pretty much the past. my question to you is, why would anybody want to hang out -- what guy do you know would want to hang out with another guy, old-school reference there, who has sex with older boys? why would you want to have the same -- be sitting at the same meal table with him, be in the same rectory with him? you wouldn't want anything to do with that person. why to you say they protect each other knowing this horror is going on, this disgusting behavior? what's this old boy's club reference got to do with it? >> i think that as you said, nearly everyone in the priesthood has some sort of skeleton in their closet. richard sipes spent his entire history, his entire life studying celibacy among priests in the catholic church. he's a former priest, himself. he estimated through intensive sociological studies that at any given time in the catholic church, only 50% of priests are

actually living their vow of celibacy. and when he went to rome and talked to cardinals about this, he was told that they found no reason to dispute those findings. >> what do you make of that? that's a good estimate. what do you think of that estimate, half of them are having sex of some kind with somebody else? >> you know, i'm not a prude and i'm not going to be throwing stones -- >> no, no stones. just facts. throw some facts. >> if people don't live up to their marriage vows or celibacy vows, this is human nature. i think what's different about the pedophilia crisis was "a" the enormities of what was done, and secondly failure of a response to deal with it. again, i've got to give the bishops credit. i think in the last ten years they enacted a zero-tolerance policy. what worries me is when a bishop is caught not following the policies that they've pledged to enact, nothing happens. >> okay. let's talk about something happening. i'm optimistic. i think you are, too, michael. i hope you are, too, mary. i don't know you. i know michael. let me start with you, mary. what's the chances we get a good

pope? a person who can walk in the door with a broom and say, look, we have to get connected to the people, give sermons that connect to real people out there in their real lives. women, huge roles as deacons at least, vastly increase the role of women behind the altar. vastly increase the chances of people having at least open to the idea of contraception not as a morton sin. look back. all the big things catholics would like to have looked at again. what are the chances of that happening, mary? >> i wish that i could tell you that the odds were really good, but i can't. i don't think they are really good. change in the catholic church comes very slowly, and right now all of the bishops there have been chosen by conservative popes. all the cardinals who are going to choose the next pope. and because of the way that the history of dogma is constructed in the catholic church, because of the way papal infallibility has been built up, especially in the last century, it's very hard to take a step back and apply common sense. >> you're so smart.

>> i want to push back on that. i'm sorry. to say that benedict was a conservative and just let it go with that. on january 1st in his world day of peace message, he listed three threats to world peace. terrorism, international crime, and unregulated financial capitalism. if barack obama had said that, fox would talk about nothing else for a month. yet it got no coverage, and there it was in one of his most prominent annual messages. the fact is both the left and the right conspire in this idea the only important thing you need to know as a catholic is what -- >> we'll be better off with a ceo, young ceo rather than a theologian? >> i think we need a holy man. i don't think we need a theologian. a holy man who knows how to deal with people. >> i think we need matt dylan. your thoughts, mary. what kind of pope do we need? >> we need a pope who connects with people. we need a pope who has an open mind. someone who is open to change and to imagining new things for the church. somebody that can make people excited about living lives of meaning.

>> i think we need pope john xxiii come back. i bet pope john xxiv. thank you, michael winters and mary. up next, stars of the new movie "olympus," what an exciting movie it is. it's about north koreans of all people taking over the presidency, getting into the white house. real terrorist operation. a real thriller. looks great. gerard butler, aaron eckhart, angela basset all come to sit at this table in a minute. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. [ nyquil bottle ] you know i relieve coughs, sneezing, fevers... [ tylenol bottle ] me too! and nasal congestion. [ tissue box ] he said nasal congestion. yeah...i heard him. [ female announcer ] tylenol® cold multi-symptom nighttime relieves nasal congestion. nyquil® cold and flu doesn't. relieves nasal congestion.

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virginia's governor, lieutenant governor bill boling says he won't launch a third party campaign for governor. a republican, made the decision this morning, saying the financial difficulty as running as an independent as well as concerns about taking on his own party. that means the marquee matchup for this year's election calendar will be a likely face-off between clinton right-hand man terry mcauliffe and ken cuccinelli. i love that race. it would have been better with a third guy in there. we'll be right back.

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takes 15 minutes for your armed forceses to rea s ts to r house. we took it down in 13. >> the president's in the bunker. he's being held hostage. >> what do they want? >> we're trying to find out. >> who is in charge? >> trumble, are there any survivors with you? >> negative, sir. wait this out. they have command, roaming the hallways with enough explosives take out an army. >> we're back. that's a clip from "olympus." a story about disgraced actually fallen secret service agent mike banning, who finds himself trapped in the white house after the president is held hostage by north korean terrorists. and pentagon intelligence officials are relying on banning's expertise about knowing every nook and cranny of the white house to get the president out safe and stop the -- they're not terrorists, they're north koreans.

the movie hits theaters march 22nd. with me the stars of the film. aaron eckhart plays president asher. angela eckhart. angela basset. and gerard butler. just recently i saw you play a surfer in "chaisie in"chasing m" then in this movie about the father getting divorced. >> "playing for keeps." >> how many movies you do a year? >> recently not that many. >> you play a secret service agent. a great guy named jerry parm saved the president, saved reagan. when he was growing up he saw a movie about a secret service agent. guess who played the guy who made him want to be in the secret service? reagan. this connection between the chief of secret service and president of the united states is fascinating. >> maybe one day i'll be president now and we can repeat the same story. >> that's the way it works. >> no.

so i play mike banning. and we've been great friends. i was the special agent in charge. a tragedy happens. >> can you talk american? >> yeah. i play mike banning. a very good friend of president asher. basically, we move enough to this tragedy. i'm working at the treasury. we have the backdrop of the tensions and korea. out of nowhere, totally by surprise, this insane terrorist attack happens in the white house. >> you're the president, how do the koreans -- we sort of worry about the middle east. every once in a while we hear about the crazies in north korea. we're going to bomb the hell out of seoul. bomb the hell out of south korea. we're hearing from the north koreans as this movie opens. >> our tentacles are, you know, very powerful people in hollywood. no. it just happened like that. it's hard for hollywood to pick a terrorist anymore. there's so much happening in the world that you make a film, we made this film a year ago. this is happening now.

it's part coincidence and part just the way the world is right now. >> angela, we got to be politically correct. we have to pick enemies that are sort of acceptable to pound on. the taken movies are the albanians. now the koreans. what do you feel about this movie? do you think it's believable? >> it's -- i mean, there's so much authenticity and pl plausibility in it. that's what's making the experience of it so exciting for the audiences that have seen it. >> you're sitting in a restaurant. you're having breakfast with this guy. it's a neat looki ining restaur with great pictures of presidents on the fall. it's supposed to be around 15th street. where is that in hollywood? >> shreveport, louisiana. >> no! >> we built the white house in shreveport, louisiana. >> no. >> yeah. they were loving it. >> was it a good tax deal down there? >> good tax deal down there basically, yeah. >> when we see what looks like

signs from the white house and camp david, how about camp david? where's that in the movie? >> that's just outside shreveport. >> really? that is great. when you watch these movies, as guys who do the movie, after you do the movie and realize you were in some set. you come back, take six months, go watch again, are you taken by the movie again, too? my god, i am in the white house. >> if the story is good enough and tacti ithe acting and direc good enough. you know the stories behind the scenes and that sort of stuff. >> you know what days people were tired, hung over, didn't know their lines. >> you can't help but, yeah. >> you remember it? >> i to. absolutely. >> i went down and watched -- they let me come out and do a cameo on "good wife" on cbs. i go to brooklyn. industrial, brutal neighborhood with terrible stuff going on. when you watch the show every week, i always watch it, you think you're at a high-rise chicago law firm in chicago and you completely fall for it again. >> that's why i try not to watch it too many times before i see

the finished product. >> one thing i want to talk about is this affection we have for the president. i know "west wing" did it beautifully. aaron sorkin's thing. you may have a couple presidents in a row you don't like. there's still the magic there. angela? that white house. that building. the obamas there now. >> absolutely. i was just there three weeks ago, you know. you're in awe. there is. you know, you're coming from, you know, smalltown florida or wherever you're from. it's the highest -- >> do you remember the smells there? i always smell the paint. the brand-new paint and rododendrum smell. >> even sm scotland, especially in america, these are buildings and institutions and a position you're taught to respect. it contains so much emotion inside you. so when suddenly you see this attack and the president being held hostage, it is incredible

what a powerful experience that is. obviously, it recalls, you know, not such distant history of some tragedies. i have to tell you, you're talking about harvey weinstein. i watched it with him last night. we had a screening. you say is this opening scene, the attack, is it believable? it is so believable, you're there. and he was shouting out. he's like, yeah! >> you're a scottsman. i have to say one line to you. something we've never had. a country of our own. remember that? "braveheart." "olympus has fallen." in the theaters march 22nd. aaron eckhart, angela bassett, gerard butler. thank you. ? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy.

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