rejections. "the rejected stone." thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. confederacy of hate. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. fight, fight, fight. that's the echo of this week. you hear it in every remark or grunt from the hard angry right. they call themselves the american people as if the majority that voted for president obama are an invading force of others or group of l s lesser americans. it's that fight again. i once think of a man standing at the robert lee mansion yelling to keep up the fight.

he meant the old confederate fight against change. brought back in the 21st century to battle anything marked obama. anything that says this man was elected president of the united states. now in this third battle of bull run, the rebel cry in stars and bars are rejoining the cause. they speak of secession and nullification and all the old language leading up to the war between the united states. they cheer openly at ripping apart the political party. this time it's the republicans, to free them from total war. alongside the battlefield where the women and children once watched we saw the limbaughs and ericksons that turned out to cheerlead. like the women who got their name back in the earlier time from general hooker. yes, there's money in war. even this phony war of filibusters and jibes at part police. david corn for mother jones and sam stein with "huffington post." i kept thinking and watching, gentlemen, i don't know whether

just the name or the brand is the right way to do it. the obama brand. they see red when they see this. the people not just from the south or the southwest, because even in new york state there's 10% or 20% joining the tea party. they're there. they have an attitude of anger that's almost inexplicable. almost hard to define. yet when they hear obama, that's where they flash to. that's the sound of the guns they rush to. >> we've been involved in the political cultural war for the last five years. and it's getting worse. as obama continues to be president and as he racks up policy wins particularly with obama care it's just driving the other side crazy. now, people like jim demint and heritage action and tea partiers, i'm not sure they're motivated exactly by hate of obama. but they are exploiting that. that is the fuel for their libertarian ideology, whatever. >> that's the brand.

the united states senate which i used to look up to in the country. he gives that up. he says i want to fight the enemy out there. he joined the heritage foundation. nobody in past history could explain it. why would you give up to help legislate unless you're not interested in legislation? >> he's probably making a lot more money. >> could be. >> personal angle here. but these people, you're right. they're not interested in governance or policy. the tea party people, this is one thing i don't think boehner -- >> i think it's the fight itself. >> they want to disrupt. they want to fight and disrupt. they don't want compromises. they don't want deals. they don't want policy wins. they want to fight and destroy. >> sam, respond to this. seems to be the republican party itself caved. here's rush limbaugh the cheerleader on the hard right this week. let's listen to rush. >> i was pondering if i can ever remember a greater political

disaster in my lifetime, if i can ever remember a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist. >> congressman tim huelskamp told "the washington post," we'll be looking for any opportunity. we took a shot at it and we fell short. i think we're waiting around for another battle over obama care. meanwhile, conservative blogger eric erickson said conservatives should pick off so-called moderates in the gop. quote, the last time the major leaders of an american political party tried to compromise their way to party, the party broke apart giving way to republicans. this fight too will break apart the gop. there will be a fundamentally altered party of new faces. never before have the people seemed less dependent on a party apparatus to play in primaries. over the issue of secession. that was particularly the democratic party that came from that. but this idea that our job is to

basically take over and alter a major political party, take the party of lincoln and use the name because it's out there and turn it into a right wing thing that's capable of fighting all things modern. >> well, you know, i guess what's remarkable for me is the bubble that this exists in. for rush limbaugh to call it a cave without any context to how bad they were being damaged in the polls. and to how much pain it was causing a good chunk of the country is silly. and so, yeah, i understand there are a lot of conservatives who think if they just held out a week longer or a month longer that maybe they could have achieved the impossible which was to defund obama care. >> who's he talking to? who's rush talking to if he's not talking to the governors and senators. is he talking to people in garages or traveling sales? who's he talking to? regular folk who want to hear

this language of anger. that's all i'm asking about. he's making money talking like this. >> i agree with you. i think he's talking to a segment of the population that looks at the republican party and thinks for some reason they've abandoned their ideological roots. this traces back to the george w. bush presidency. i think he's talking to them and tapping into resentment they have over spending, over government. and he's basically leading them down, you know, a faulty path. he's promising them and this isn't just rush, they are promising them the idea under this president you could somehow convince him to uplift his signature domestic achievement if you just hold out long enough and it's a mirage. a lot of people bought into it. but a lot of consequences happened as well. >> the reality about the debt ceiling is the two people that said don't cut the baby in half as in king solomon's story. in other words, we don't want to win, we just want to save the baby. we don't want to see us default and get us killing economically. and they were, the people like

mitch mcconnell. and at the last minute boehner and the president said look let's move on. i give credit to mitch who i normally don't salute much, but he basically said this is going to be a catastrophe unless we change our position. >> right. you now -- >> and they don't like that. >> this civil war that this whole episode revealed has gotten worse to the extent that you cite mitch mcconnell as the guy that prevented the republicans from pulling everybody else with him off the cliff. today the senate conservative fund endorsed the primary opponent. so there's no white flag for peace in the party. things have gotten worse. you have what eric erickson is saying. >> he basically said kiss off. he did. i have to hand him credit for the way he responded. >> he said kiss off, but this is not going anywhere. this fight, and when we come back january 15th, february 7th, the republicans still have to -- >> let's go to a tea party expert that on this show. matt kibe.

he said a split in the republican party is quote, a real possibility. let's listen to matt. >> grassroots activists have an ability to self-organize, to fund candidates that they're more interested in going right around the republican national committee and the senatorial committee. that's the new reality. everything is more democratized. they still want to control things from the top down and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. but my prediction would be that we take over the republican party and they go the way of the wiggs. >> what do you take from that? watching the democratic convention as a grad student and watching and thinking i think the anti-war people do want to take over the party in the instance of stopping the war in vietnam because it was going on too long. but they weren't thinking of changing the party necessarily. these people are interested in a total -- what do they call it?

an alternative using the shape of the republican party. >> the analogy is right, but then consider the context which makes matt kibbe's remarks unbased. you have a system in this country which giving more power and authority to solitary individual donors. it's taken away the party from the party committees and put it in the individuals' hands. so one person can say i want to bank roll this one candidate and suddenly you don't have to party structure. and the second thing is we're living in this time where there's an incredible libertarian bent. i think it's a backlash from the bush years and it's profoundly seen in the republican tent. they were upset with t.a.r.p. and the spending and medicare part d. but they were upset with what happened in iraq. they thought the party lost its roots. and there's a backlash to that. let me add one thing which is that the internet and social media has really facilitated a lot of this. candidates can now connect with so many more voters than they

used to in the past. that has put fuel to the fire when you look at ron paul and rand paul. >> look at this. none of the three of us can read minds or hearts. when we say somebody's a racist, i try to avoid that. but when you're trying to suppress the black vote, you're trying. you can see that as a policy. you may not like them because they're democrats, not because they're black. i understand that's the politics. it seems the big fight tonight is the real anger was against bush w. for spending all that money. the anger is there in too much iraq, afghanistan, more coming. so the real fight seems to be with their party establishment as opposed with obama. but yet the face they put up on their posters is not mitch mcconnell's face. they put obama's face up there. >> i disagree slightly. >> explain that. >> i think everything sam said is true.

but i do think the anger they've felt about obama is, you know, is an equal part of that. and they're looking for the republican party to express that. >> so republicans don't hate obama as much as they do. >> yeah. if you're funding -- if you're voting for anything that doesn't stop obama, obama care, then you're supporting obama care. all this is being driven in part by the donors that sam talked about but really because the base of the party, the primary voting base has moved so far to the right because of this political culture backlash against obama. >> so if you can find any bill like they used to set up bills just to get somebody in trouble. if you could find a vote on the floor of the senate any bill that is pro-obama and somebody votes pro-obama, they're criticized. >> you don't even need a vote. look at the senator whose crime was he liked the individual mandate before it was a component in the health care law. for that he was primaried by

mike lee and lost his seat. god forbid he did like christie which was physically touch obama. >> you're not kidding. i will never forget the guy from the south that said i stood ten feet from the president and i couldn't stand it. that is tribal crap. anyway, thank you. i think we're on the same page. roughly it's the brand, it's the name. it may not be ethnic although a lot of it is i think. coming up, republican kamikaze caucus is back at work. insisting only if they stand firm next time, they'll defund the affordable care act. and guess who's leading the charge. mr. ted cruz. plus, mad money. many republican donors have had it with the tea party. they're still sitting on their checkbooks as one bundler put it. why do i want to fuel a fire that's going to consume us. and the canary in the coal mine, why gop troubles in virginia might be a sign of things to come countrywide. finally, i was lucky enough to attend the al smith dinner

last night headlined by stephen colbert. >> i am proud to be america's most famous catholic. and i'm sure the cardinal is thinking, stephen, pride is a sin. well, cardinal, so is envy so we're even. >> the most famous catholic. interesting. i never heard that one before. this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ banker ] sydney d some financial guidance so she could take her dream to the next level. so we talked about her options. her valuable assets were staying. and selling her car wouldn't fly. we helped sydney manage her debt and prioritize her goals, so she could really turn up the volume on her dreams today... and tomorrow. so let's see what we can do about that... remodel. motorcycle. [ female announcer ] some questions take more than a bank. they take a banker. make a my financial priorities appointment today. because when people talk, great things happen. make a my financial priorities appointment today. help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company.

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welcome back to "hardball." the government may be open now, for now, of course the threat of

default pushed off for now. but extremists in the republican party are getting geared up for what they call the fight. listen to ted cruz when asked about his resolve. >> so you would do it again? >> i would do anything and i will continue to do anything i can to stop the train wreck that is obama care. >> and in today's wall street journal, jim demint explains this fight is just getting underway. quote, it's worth explaining why the heritage foundation and other conservatives chose this moment to fight and why we will continue to fight. the reason is simple. to protect the american people from the harmful effects of this law. for anyone who thought the slap in the face chastised any of these guys, not so. you go against each other if you have a different view here, but i kept hearing one word from the right. fight. it wasn't so much an issue that obama care is the one on the table right now. it's this sort of -- the cause.

it is like the old civil war guys that never forgot the war and kept fighting. we got to win the fight. there's something so gut in this. i don't think it's going away no matter how many treaties they sign. >> you know, within the republican party, every republican does not like obama care. this is not a strategic fight within the republican party. it's a tactical fight. and for jim demint to say that the other republicans are part of the surrender caucus, he's doing it for one reason. he wants to raise money off of a tea party that hates obama and this is the best way to do it. >> let's talk about tactics. you go to a bank and take money out, or you go with a bank and shoot the bank teller to take the money b. that's tactics. i think it's a difference between robbing the bank and making a withdrawal. you can oppose capital punishment. you're not going to burn down the prison system. there's ways to oppose

something. >> all republicans outside of ted cruz thought shutting down the government was stupid. john boehner warned against it. mitch mcconnell warned against it. there's ways to do it. had we kept the focus on the failures of obama care, we'd have more. >> why were they into going along with this. why did they sustain this to fight for something and averting for it if they didn't have another approach. >> because this is where the strategy is. >> they were leading from behind. >> yes, they were. >> i think they had to walk members through it. from boehner's perspective, he didn't have the votes to do anything. >> you mentioned in the cluster, john boehner was asked by the president, what happened. i got overrun b. >> somebody briefed. >> i'm guessing that's what he said. he did get overrun. there's 50 or 60 tea party

caucus members that control that cause kus. boehner had to go through these steps to save his speakership. if he caved early, they would have taken him out. >> i don't think it was to save his speakership. he's not in danger. i think it had more to unifying this caucus to educate his member. most of his members -- >> they're too dumb. >> they're not too dumb. >> [ overlapping speakers ] >> suppose boehner had been original and say there are things to unite behind. like i'll come up with cuts across the board cuts in entitlements. take them back to where they were, whatever. would they have changed their direction or did it have to be obama? >> it had to be obama care. this is the thing they talk about all august. they had to walk through the process. it wasn't a good process. it was a painful process. the leaders said don't do this. so they walked through it and that's how it happened. >> chris is absolutely right.

the words you're hearing from them now is fight. we're going to do this again if we have to. ted cruz said we will do whatever it takes. he didn't learn a lesson. he got what he wanted. he got attention. he's the front runner on the republican run. >> do you play within the legality and generally set the rules of politics. you don't attack people's kids, you don't do weird things that we don't do. you don't use gas in wars. this thing he said i would do anything. that's what appeals to the extreme right. they want that ruthless, anything goes stuff. i would do anything? >> yeah. i mean, i'm not going to defend ted cruz. >> i think he explained it himself. >> i think the fact of the matter is ted cruz does not run republicans in the senate. rich mcconnell does. he said we're not going down this path again. >> by the way, we're two to one on that one.

it was mcconnell. he did what the president couldn't do. >> he saved it. >> he did. which makes him hard tore beat. >> mitch mcconnell was running things when the government shutdown. he was running things when it was shutdown. mitch mcconnell didn't -- he did what the president and everybody else couldn't do working with harry reid. but ultimately the guys in the house had to decide to surrender. >> can i ask you a political question. let me ask you about this. who wins the primary in the general? >> i think that the primary is going to weaken mcconnell. he's balancing that all the way through. he needed to look tough. >> will he be re-elected? >> i think he's going to lose in the general election. >> i don't think so. i heard your voice weaken. i don't think you believe that. i believe he gets re-elected. the cajones he showed. >> getting rid of him would be a

huge mistake. the other thing about these tea party challenges, if you mount a real challenge, orrin match did, john mccain. if you go and fight it out, you're going to win. if you're like robert bennett -- >> i think it also helps to have a personality. >> it does. but you have to win. >> i will say this. mitch mcconnell did his job this week. >> he expressed confidence that extreme republicans learned their lesson in the shutdown. saying there is no education in the second kick of a mule. there will not be a government shutdown. i think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is. john feehery, i think that's true, but i do think there's more likelihood come january. that there could be a shutdown of some length, but i do think your party and the whole country got a wakeup call about screwing around with the debt ceiling. i think the people that read the financial pages, people with 401(k)s, retired people. once you're 75 years old and the people know this, you can't get

another job and make a ton of money. this is it. so what you've been able to save and build with compound interest, you don't want to screwed with. >> john boehner and mitch mcconnell had worked this out. there was never going to be a default. we said months ago there wouldn't be. >> why didn't he tell us? he said it but nobody believed him. >> he told 30 members of the moderate caucus he wasn't going to let it happen. it got out. >> my problem with him, the only big problem -- i have a lot of problems with boehner. but my big problem is at the end he knew he'd pull the plug. and for all those days the economy was getting hurt. and all the shakiness we showed to the world was not good for us in the long run. if an airplane makes a rough landing, you're not getting on that plane again. he hurt us. >> i think that john boehner had the cards he had and played them as well as he could. >> to save his seat.

>> to save his seat. he unified the caucus. >> thanks. have a nice weekend. last night i was at the al smith dinner where the great stephen colbert honored the first catholic to run for president. >> since he first shattered the stained glass ceiling, america has seen a flood of catholic presidents. >> much more colbert when we return. that's maria bartiromo right there. anyway, this is "hardball," the place for politics. the day we rescued riley was a truly amazing day.

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♪ [ male announcer ] more room in economy plus. more comfort, more of what you need. ♪ that's... built around you friendly. ♪ chris matthews is here. good to see you, chris. how are you? everybody knows chris is host of "hardball." got some good news, chris. it turns out that having "hardball" is now covered by obama care.

>> time now for the sideshow. last night i had the honor of joining the dinner in new york city. it was the 68th time the event has been held it honors al smith who was the first roman catholic to be nominated for president. the dinner celebrates politics and religion while it may be buttoned up, the humor isn't. this year was no exception with stephen colbert making a hilarious keynote speech. >> i love being up here in the white tie section. it's a bit of a gated community. don't get me wrong, you people down there in, let's say, the black tie neighborhood are very nice. i love black ties. some of my best friends are black tied. and as a catholic engaged in the world of politics, i love this dinner has no separation of church and state. as the journalist theodore white put it, the al smith dinner is a

ritual of american politics. so for those keeping track, the american rituals are this dinner and sacrificing 2014 to ted cruz's ego. >> colbert went on to recognize the contributions he and hez fellow catholics have made to politics o efr the years. >> this event has an illustrious history. a man who fought for government housing, public schools, labor laws to protect women and children, and went on to become the first presidential candidate of a major party who was catholic. and since he first shattered the stained class ceiling, america has seen a flood of catholic presidents from john kennedy to jfk to jack kennedy. you could got have found a more perfect keynote speaker tonight because i am proud to be america's most famous catholic.

and i'm sure the cardinal is thinking, stephen, pride is a sin. well, cardinal so is envy, so we're even. >> up next, mad money. republican donors angry at the tea party aren't opening their wallets. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics.

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i'm milissa rehberger. nbc news has learned the spanish enrollment tool will not be rolled out next week as planned. and there will be repairs next week on the english. the state supreme court denied chris christie's request to put gay marriages on hold while the appeal is heard. and the hunt is for two convicted murderers who escaped from prison using forged court documents. back to "hardball."

♪ welcome back to "hardball." the republican party has suffered a self-inflicted trifecta. they've been dealt a humiliating rebuke in the polls. they're more fractured than ever all while alienating a once reliable source of funding in the business community. they have this guy to thank. ted cruz. there he is who graces, if you will, the cover of this week's bloomberg business week. the tea party won. cruz has become the de facto leader o v the kamikaze caucus. you don't drive the economy to the brink and threaten to do it again without making a few enemies out there. especially among the big money backers who help payroll many republican campaigns.

or should i say helped bank roll those campaigns. politico reports today after getting squeezed last year by an array of campaign committees and party committees and superpacs, many donors are still sitting on their checkbooks. a worrisome sign for the party with the 2014 midterm elections fast approaching. simply put, donors are also revolting. fred zeidman a major donor in texas told politico why do i want to fuel a fire that's going to consume us? al hoffman said in my view we're becoming a party of irrelevancy. and dirk van dongen didn't mince words in an interview with blook berg who said i don't know anybody in the business community who takes side of the taliban minority.

let me ask because you've been on both sides of this world politics in tennessee and of course up there in new york. and when you go to those power breakfast up there in the morning, what do you hear from the businessmen. are they worried about this new strange right wing of their party? >> you could probably answer that too. i've seen you at the same breakfast. i'd say two things. one, people have to remember and i'm sure josh's reporting may have revealed this. the tea party grew up out of two things. one, opposition to george w. bush's spending policies. and two, the introduction of t.a.r.p. without that fuel, the tea party would not have gotten going. two, they don't enjoy their primary source of funding from traditional sources that republicans have had in the past. mainly the business community. the democratization of money raising has made it available for them. here they are faced with the big dilem dilemma. this fight and what it means for the future of the party. i as a proud democrat hope they

are able to get their act together in some ways because a vibrant republican party as your great new book, chris, clearly illustrates is positive for the country. i want my party to prevail, but you need two parties that are strong and respected and credible. and regrettably for the republicans and americans, the party we see today, it's hard to even imagine how the party compares. because it doesn't to the republican party of the last 50 years in this country. >> josh, for years the republicans went out and recruited populists, evangelicals, segregationists from the south who were dissatisfied with the democrat party's liberalism. they brought it along to this big tent. and now those people on the right who have been used to get votes for presidents like reagan onward, they're saying we want to run the show now. we don't want eastern business guys. when you put that cover out today on bloomberg, what was the

reaction? >> any time you put ted cruz on the cover, you get a reaction from anybody. but i think the business community is newly alert to the danger that he represents just to the economic climate. >> yeah. >> what you had is -- in the past there was actually quite a bit of overlap between tea party republicans and business republicans in the sense that -- >> lower taxes. >> they're both for lower taxes and less regulation. the problem is the business community discovered in this last crisis is that the tea party doesn't believe in the basic principles of economics. the idea that the debt ceiling is a real thing and default would be catastrophic for business. i think they've just woken up to that in the last couple weeks. >> the gop may have been banking on the idea no matter how bad things got in the party, donors wouldn't defect. this came up in a conversation with andrew ross sorkin and jim cramer. let's listen. >> i don't think anybody in the business community has said oh, my goodness, i'm going to become a democrat tomorrow. >> i don't know about that. i actually heard ceos say i hope

the democrats win in congress. >> this whole question about -- there seems to be a difference of temperament too. you were a political figure of moderation. i know that. this idea of ted cruz saying i would do anything to kill obama care. that doesn't seem like a business person talking. it doesn't seem like a regular -- i hate to say the word -- gentleman talking. >> it seems like a fanatic. there are some democrat who is exhibit those qualities at times. it's not good for the entire body of politics when you talk about achieving real serious sustainable public policy results. the politics of it, you said so well on this show, health care represents the baby for president obama. and to believe you're going to yank any person's baby from them is childish. what you and others have talked about is the challenges that the health care exchanges are having

from an enrollment standpoint, you would think they could sustain from that. the ugly message that ted cruz represents. and the way in which he chooses to conduct himself. i would agree with andrew ross sorkin, i don't hear an outcry -- we talk about business people as there's this one guy or woman it represents. but i don't hear them saying they're going to make a switch. i hear they want results. i would hope my party would view this not as a moment to vote. we have a weak adversary in the republican party today. i hope we use this moment to find common ground with the mainstream republicans around entitlement reform and tax reform and push something before all of us are faced with the near zbadisaster we faced over last several weeks. right before john boehner and president obama and others were able to foster and hammer out an

agreement. >> but i think one of the things the business community is worried about is not what ted cruz is worried about. what business people want is a stable, predictable, economic environment. and it's this crusade against the law that has disrupted that. that provides these debt ceiling scares. and now we're going to have another shutdown scare. >> when did it occur that you need law to enforce a market. markets have to be protected. by law. that's how it works. >> i think what josh is saying in and fairness, he can speak for himself, but you need stable political environments for market places to work. >> exactly. >> people who work every day were for them to feel some sense of certainty as they go to work each day. not to mention the american who is are not working and who miss paychecks because of the incompetence because of those in washington. >> harold, it seems those around

the country who have wealth have been used to voting against their own personal economic interests. they will vote for more progressive taxes and environmental legislation. they'll vote for a lot of things. republicans have had the luxury of being able to vote their pocketbook all the time. now they're getting a feel of what it's like to be a democrat maybe. if they vote straight party for guys like cruz, they're hurting themselves. >> i'm not in -- you put me in this category with a lot of people, i wish i was in some level because of the wealth accumulated. i would argue when you vote to ensure with your franchise to ensure that young kids in the country regardless of where they live and what their parents do for a living will have access to a good and decent education. when you vote for people to afford their own health care and veterans are taken care of, i think that's positive for the country. i don't view it as voting against -- and i've said that when i was in congress and campaigned when i ran for the u.s. senate and campaigned and

raised money amongst those in that class of people you referred to. i made clear and many of them agreed this was about making the country better and stronger. as president clinton said best, a rising tide lifting every boat. even the boats at the top and those boats that need more lifting than others. >> big thought. >> well, to go to sorkin's point, i don't think you'll see a lot running to vote. but i think you may see businesses thinking we're going to run our own candidates in primaries and hope to knock off tea party guys. >> thanks so much for your perspective. >> congrats on your book. >> thank you, sir. up next, republicans are struggling across the river from here. that could be a bad sign for things across the country. virginia has a predictable way of voting. it doesn't look good for the republicans this year. odd year. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

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in order to go visit my family, which means a lot to me. ♪ we're back app after their defeat in the 2012 elections, republicans conducted an autopsy, if you will to find out what went wrong. that republicans alienation of african-americans. the young. and women. and its opposition to these groups of voters cost them at the polls. the gop might be blowing their chances in their first elect electorial test.

and guess what. the guy's losing. republican ken cuccinelli recently compared abortion to slavery in comments to an online radio host. >> if you go back to abraham lincoln and the civil war, he looked at the civil war as a sort of a national penance for slavery. the evil of slavery and the founders do. and we have other things in this country today and abortion is one of them. >> wow, 2012 virginia vote d moe closely like the rest of the country than any other state in the union. basically, a great weather vane. the governor's race this year maybe the post shutdown and the past nine elections for governor, virginia has chosen a governor from the opposite party

of the president in the white house, but the political winds seem to be blowing in a different democratic direction. joining me now, joan walsh and margie o'meara. this thing about slavery, don't compare anything to hitler. don't compare anything to slavery and you're better off. here he is. because abortion, unlike slavery, which would be a crime today. if you enslave someone, you might be in prison for a number of years. abortion is not a crime. you may not like it. but it's not a crime. people shouldn't be making these comparisons. >> you said republicans are looking for a moderate makeover. there is no makeup artist alive that could make ken cuccinelli up to be a moderate. >> why are they running? >> he came of age, if you will, in this class of extreme tea party folks. sort of feeded off, he fed off the energy he got by being this crusader and now, by realizing

that's not popular anymore, he is trying to paper over these extreme views and nobody's buying it. he's just continued to sink in the polls and now, he looks like a typical politician that just wants to say anything to get elected. he said as recently as a year ago, look, chris, there's a difference between trying to appeal to women and actually appealing to women and that's the problem that ken cuccinelli has. the problem the national republicans have. >> this will stir the blood of a lot of women watching, if women were not allowed to vote, cuccinelli would be winning. among men, he leads 44 to 36. by eight points. so, this is the importance of the 19th amendment right here, but the 19th amendment was passed a long time ago and women are allowed to vote and 20 points among women. if republicans were trying to court the women's vote, cuccinelli may not be the best. here's mcauliffe's newest ad.

>> tried to ban a common form of birth control. >> the pill. >> way to extreme. >> way too extreme for virginia. >> joan, i love the fact one of the guys looks like a pretty conservative guy and he's saying he's too extreme. >> reince priebus is now going to have to do an autopsy on this autopsy, chris. >> you think they pay for someone to decide it was unfortunate for them to go after women's issues and make women angry? it's not an interest group. >> we're the majority, but they can't help themselves and this is the ideology of the party. we've got some guys that have a language problem. they use the wrong language. they talk about race. it's not just that. it's the underlying ideology of this modern republican party. actively repels women.

we saw this gender gap increase during the shutdown because women were more upset about the shutdown than men. everybody hated it, but women hated it more. >> why is that is this. >> for one thing, we always see a gender gap on economic issues. they're more sensible. may feel more vulnerable. they've been more of a pro government voting block and i think we're seeing that in this race, too. >> do you know what you just said, my friend? >> women are more sensible than men. now, if i said something like that -- >> oh, forgive me. >> i think you may be right. because i think in many ways, women are more logical and folk in the here and now. men are going off into their separate spaces. thank you. >> pragmatists. >> and we're sent mental, us guys out here. dreamers. thank you so much. i think it's a serious politics to be watching. we'll p right back after this. when you have diabetes like i do,

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the week's behind us, but not the fight. the country is riled and will remain so by those who can't stand the way of the last election. the only twinkle of hope is lit by the two committee chairs, a compromised budget between the two houses of congress and two political parties. senator patty murray of

washington and paul ryan of wisconsin. i hope they understand that finding common ground is far harder than finding compromise. compromise can be as simple as putting the difference over numbers and it can also mean each of the two sides finding something to important to them, it means balancing the need for action. i've worked for the senate budget committee during the 1970s. i remember how the chairman of the committee was able to forge a common budget each year and do it on time each spring where the top republican. yes, things like that can be done. i hope you can get out this beautiful fall weekend and pick up a top pi of tip and the giper. it fits with these great ads running on msnbc about my work in politics before coming to "hardball." if you read it, i'm really asking you to do it, you'll know where i'm coming from here.

i'll be speaking tomorrow night, saturday, i'll be at north central college just outside of chicago on sunday. moving around. and that's ha"hardball" for now. "all in" starts right now. good evening. it is day two of the government working an open and day 18 of obama care open and kind of not working. it's the biggest social program in over 40 years and the fortunes democratic party an the live of tens of millions of our fellow americans rides on its success and it's been in the cross hairs. >> i will do everything necessary and anything possible to defund obama care. >> well, it turns out the republicans