allout assault on newt gingrich. nbc obtained an e-mail he sent giving supporters in congress a play book to attack newt including the line "gingrich creates theories, mitt creates jobs". and a pro romney super pac released this web ad. >> nut has a ton of baggage, like the fact that gingrich was fined $300,000 for ethics violations or that he took at least $1.6 million from freddie mac just before it helped cause the economic meltdown. then there's the $37 million gingrich took from healthcare and industry groups. and on the issues? newt's been on all sides. >> the litany of wrong dogz has begun. we've been waiting for this moment for awhile which is to say romney punching back now newt gingrich is a serious threat. newt responded yesterday saying "i'm going to stay positive. every time these guys have

attacked each other they've gone down". does playing nice work for newt and getting dirty work for mitt. >> very odd seeing mitt romney taking all the baggage gingrich has an stuffing it into one ad. you'd think he'd pace himself. too much to hear all newt gingrich's baggage in 30 seconds. there's so much there. >> it's like a taco bell ad, with guacamole and wrapped in cheese and double fry. just the guacamole is fine. >> too much. i'm not sure it's going to pay off in iowa where you have focused ads. everyone knows about newt's history. this explains everything we already know from republicans at least. maybe it's just pent-up frustration on mitt romney's part. remember during all the debates he sort of sat back, didn't attack anybody, tried to float above it all. and now newt gingrich is there eating his lunch rising to the polls everywhere. and now he's like, i've got to stop this guy like now. >> i think the other thing to

think about is that the strategic calculation of a primary when there's multiple candidates is very different when it's two people. that's when attack ads become extremely effective because there's some pool and are going to the two of you. when you have five or six candidates that's not operating calculus. you can tarnish someone's image but tarnish yourself a little bit. i think this signals the romney campaign does now think it's fundamentally a two-person race. the fact they are now going negative, their strategic calculation is that it's a zero sum contest between the two of them. >> the big question i think is whether 20, 27% is a floor or a ceiling for mitt. he's got to be scared to death that it is a ceiling, that the non-mitt candidate will always beat him in the end. there have been so many of them and we've got to believe that gingrich is going to got pay of perry and cain. >> well, i don't know.

the timing. >> before iowa or after iowa? >> let's talk a little bit about sort of the reality of the campaign head because the timing for gingrich on one level is perfect. iowa a few weeks away, but then there's the reality of how much money newt has in the coffers and how much organization he has. >> i question the organization point, though. i've spent a lot of time on the campaign trail. newt gingrich has so much momentum. he's drawing huge crowds to town halls, raising a ton of coin. i'm not so sure that whole narrative you have to have organization to win in iowa really applies to the cycle. things have changed with social media and tv. >> and so mitt is the establishment candidate. so he brings out sununu and -- >> chris christie. >> chris christie is an asset for him. >> he's not a conservative hero. >> but sununund quayle? >> it's electrifying. and i've been unable to sleep for three days. >> the dan quayle endorsement. >> you're going to be up for

hours just thinking about dan quayle back in natural conversation. but i think what robert just said is crucially important. i really do think this cycle we've seen a transformation of the sort of what makes a successful candidate in the gop field. and i think a huge part of it has to do with the singular domination that fox news has on gop primary voters. and if you're winning the fox news primary you don't have to be doing a whole lot else organizationally. newt gingrich is now winning the fox news primary. >> he's having book signings events. >> not just fox news. newt was doing every interview possible, take every interview. romney has been overly disciplined. now suddenly on a sunday show after days of avoiding. >> we tried to get him but he politely declined. >> robert said something before we went on air, the difference between republicans voting in an iowa caucus and democrats voting in an iowa caucus and how that might accrue to newt's benefit. >> that's right. well, in republican caucuses it's very much like a primary.

if you speak to republican strategists in iowa you show up and vote. democrats have to build coalitions in iowa on caucus night. that's much more important. obama mastered that last cycle of really building people once the thresholds are not met for certain candidates building new blocks together and winning caucus. republicans don't have to do that. >> i want it to talk a little about the realities of not only campaign structure and fundraising but the primary race ahead. a, we're having proportional 8 allocation. and ron paul could have some long term strategy and be a long term force in this campaign and how that changes the dynamic. >> i think it could be a brokered convention. if ron paul has enough delegates coming out of this states, that means ron paul could survive for the long haul. he's now second in the iowa poll, maybe. >> ron paul long haul. america you can have that. >> there could be an entirely

new dynamic that takes place in this election. which is that you have two very polarized candidates, and you can make the argument that both romney and gingrich have a problem with the public and that actually this is an opportunity for a third party candidate to emerge. there is this organization called americans elect that will have a line on every ballot 50 states. >> of or ron paul could run as a third party candidate. >> he can't run on the americans elect because then he won't have a slot if he just runs. so the americans elect structure, which is very well organized, it's judge webster, carla hills, it's a lot of very legitimate people. you have to run as a democrat and a republican. so there's no democrat who's going to run with ron paul. >> this has got to be a spoiler. who's going to be that spoiler? it only could be ron paul at this point. >> it could be mike bloomberg, huntsman, buddy romer. >> you just rolled your eyes.

>> i have my issues with mike bloomberg. but that's neither here nor there. i was rolling my eyes at that. but i also think that what's sort of remarkable to me about gingrich right now is that it's hard to think of a more widely we viled and polarizing figure than newt gingrich. the fact that newt gingrich has so much baggage, you could do a wire style series of seven seasons in which each one has its own distinctive narrative arc of sort of back room deals. >> that show needs to be on the air. coming up is president obama getting his groove back? we'll talk to reverend al sharpton later in the show. after the break, is rick perry still in this race. that's next on "now." [ male announcer ] notebooks,

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>>. >> you don't need to be in the pew every sunday to know when something's wrong in this country when gays can serve in the military but christians can't pray in school. >> you know there's something wrong in this country when politician politicians -- >> criticism of rick perry's campaign is piling up. some of it in the form of pair dislike that one posted on second city network.com. the campaign ad is reportedly driving a wedge between members of perry's own staff. joining the panel now is ""vanity fair" writer burrow whose article on rick perry is in the monday edition of the magazine. thanks for coming on. >> sure. >> for those of us watching the

spectacle that is rick perry, i think in some ways the pivot, if you will, to the hard core sort of anti-gay rhetoric has come as a surprise. and certainly it sounds like some of his own staff members have been if not caught off guard, maybe it's been met with some amount of displeasure. >> well, i think what you're seeing is kind of a desperation hail mary pass. this campaign and this candidate had done everything possible to try to hook the conservative side of this thing. believing that there still is one. and i think what most people have seen over the last three weeks is conservatives have looked and chosen gingrich. >> right. there's a lot of pontiffcation about when specifically perry's campaign began to unravel. a lot of people say it's the nuclear oops moment. but there's a certain set of for example that i have spoken to when he was asked about immigration and he said the heartlessness thing. to me this behavior would seem a real rejoineder to that, the suspicions i'm not conservative

enough and right wing nif enough. >> i think perry was well into his death throes when he used oops. he was polling as high as 30% at end of august and it took three or four weeks. several things, but i would argue overall it was the sense in those debates more than any single tag line or any single word that the man was -- i guess the nicest thing to say is he's not the fastest on his feet. but i think what most people have come to believe is what people in austin believe that he's just not the sharpest guy. >> i think also there's a certain kind of disingenerousness with him. when was strik striking to me was there was a disconnect between conservative activists in texas's feeling about rick perry and the rope that rick perry would be the standard bearer for the tea party. i mean, conservatives in texas have a lot of issues with rick perry. they hated that highway that he tried to build through the state, maded the gardacil decision. >> the hpv vaccine.

>> i thought that was actually one of the things that was most devastated and effective bachmann's attack on that. but i think it helped sort of discredit this kind of -- in soft focus he seemed like the perfect right wing standard bearer. then as you zeemd in that seems less and less the case. that was the only niche that he had going for him, that he could occupy. >> the job creation thing which sort of got unwound if you looked closer at what kind of jobs he created. >> i don't think the republican primary voters care about this. >> about job creation? >> i don't think that's the thing that's driving them. i really don't. >> i think what really hurt him was the observation someone made that he makes george bush jr. look like a rhodes scholar. that he's so lame. and you just can't be that lame. >> but he's also able to provide that imagery because in every debate performance, and it was the first debate where he made that immigration flub, if you will. in every debate performance he

looked like and proved that he was just not ready for the hot spotlight of the presidential election stage. just wasn't. >> we should also note that rick perry was completely 1,000% right on the merits in terms of his immigration policy. >> gingrich is saying the same right now and not getting hurt by it. >> because he's not an idiot. >> and gingrich has phrased anytime a way that was much more thought out and say you don't have hearts if you don't agree with me. i do agree though, chris, you think he's this arch conservative. and then he was asked, government intervention in healthcare. that's the hpv thing or immigration. these are basically progressive positions he's stakd out. and yet he had no sort of ideological spine to hang all of them on, which was fascinating. but to your point, brian, and in the story you say, it wasn't that rick was stupid, quoting one of i think his former classmates, it was that he came from a high school class of 13 people. he had no education. i mean, rick is not dumb, he's just not that educated. >> yeah.

it's difficult to argue with a guy who came out of paint creek high and went to a and m where he wasn't able to get into vet school. the fact is if you line up his bona fides against newt, rick perry might win a foot race but he's not going to win a presidential race. >> we have this idea out there we don't want book-learned presidents and that they're education elitists and then here's someone who -- >> we say that. people say that but they n't -- >> i think the republican field doesn't feel that way. i think part of newt's allure right now is this notion that he is this sort of intellectual giant who will reveal barack obama to be the intellectual fraud that republican debate base suspects him of being. sort of like victimology politics, newt gingrich is going to show we've got a smart guy, too. >> it's what bill clinton said, the voter would rather have someone strong and wrong rather than weak and right. and newt gingrich is coming across as strong. he takes on the fox commentators

and when he takes on whoever comes his way, that's appealing to people. >> he will go after obama and create a contrast. i think that's why he's doing well. >> thank you to ""vanity fair"" bryan burrows. after the break, con petimpetin. we'll look back at what just happened when we look back at the week. one more gift...

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>> it looks like the commander in chief has got his swagger back. >> everybody should be on notice. >> i am here to say they're wrong. >> ask osama bin laden and the top al qaeda leaders who have been taken off appealed whether i engage in apiecement. but swagger ain't just for democrats. >> you could make an argument that i helped mitt romney to be rich. >> newt gingrich whose head is so large no football helmet would fit him in high school saw his poll numbers surge. >> most of us are terrified to death he would become the republican nominee. >> but it might get lonely at the top. >> he's as establishment as you get. >> i'm not inclined to be a supporter of newt gingrich. >> for romney, the mitts are off. >> you're going to see me all over the country. >> and he's releasing the attack dogs. >> he is a typical, cynical, chicago ward politicians. >> meanwhile, another swelled head is back on the scene. >> i would certainly think about running. >> and hosting a debate. >> i'm surprised that mitt romney said no.

he really wants my endorsement. i mean he wants it very badly. >> ron paul has zero chance of getting the nomination. >> mr. huntsman called my office a number of times trying to set up a meeting. i didn't have a meeting with him. >> unless we forget the man who put the word "ego" in superego. >> i've got this thing. and it's golden. >> rod blagojevich is back. only this time it's for an ego-bruising 14-year prison sentence. >> rudyard kipling in his poe many "if" if you can meet with triumph and disafter thor and trees those two imposters the same. >> if we know anything about politics, no head is ever too big, and no one is ever really gone for good. >> and see you soon. mod what did just happen? who, my panel, are the big winners and losers this week, bob kosta? >> i think the big loser of the week is donald trump. every single republican

contender is running away from this deright after christmas. however the winner has to be newt gingrich. the whole romney machine is going at him and he's still at top of the polls. this guy is posting ahead. >> i heard an audible sigh after that video. winners and losers. >> the losers are the american people. that this great country has that list of jokers being so prominent. >> oh, please. >> i think it's really sad for the country. >> on a list of jokers, these are form speaker of the house -- >> gingrich, blagojevich, ron paul. this is the best we can do. >> romney is a former governor. it's a solid field. >> where ais kennedy, where is reagan? reagan is a giant. >> chris hayes, i think to be sort of annoyingly serious for a second, i think the big loser this week were the 16-year-old girls in america who are now not

going to be able to get plan b over the counter and are going to have to get a prescription. there are girls out there who are going to be terrified and i think dissuaded from actually going and getting this very safe medication the day after and instead are going to be having either abortions later or carrying to term unwanted pregnancies. and i think it's -- >> you're speaking of course of the health and human service decision to override the fda request to make -- >> on plan b. >> plan b available to those under 17. jonathan capehart? >> my winner i agree with robert on newt gingrich for all the reasons he explained. but for meet loser is rick perry for that unbelievably horrible ad he did talking about president obama and his one religion and gays in the military and all of that. spewing hate through a smiley face, i think, is beneath the people of this country. >> it wreaks of desperation. >> i will say my winner and loser are the same person. the winner is donald trump because he's got us talking about him again and he is out

with a book "time to get tough, making america number one again". he's also the loser because a he's donald trump, but b, the book is i think ranked somewhere near 253 on amazon. >> give it time. >> he's so public in his views about the top presidential candidate. after courting him for the whole year now they're saying no thanks to the donald? >> it will be an interesting forum whatever shape it takes. >> probably just newt and the donald talking. >> its own miniseries. >> drinking games. >> when we come back, appeasing no one. president obama's hard line towards the republicans in congress and those running against him. that's next on "now." this was the gulf's best tourism season in years. all because so many people wanted to visit us... in louisiana. they came to see us in florida... nice try, they came to hang out with us in alabama... once folks heard mississippi had the welcome sign out, they couldn't wait to get here.

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it's easy to see what subaru owners care about. that's why we created the share the love event. get a great deal on a new subaru and $250 goes to your choice of 5 charities. with your help, we can reach $20 million dollars by the end of this, our fourth year. mod welcome back to "now." we have breakingish news, a term we have just coined on this show. donald trump has released a

statement saying that he will announce his candidacy for president of the united states as an independent and that "unless i concluesively agree not to run as an independent that certain candidates will not agree to the news max debate scheduled for december 27". he may not actually run for president. he will announce it on the final -- sometime after the final episode of "the apprentice" on may 20th for those of you in the viewing public. >> for the love of god. every time i talk to mr. trump, i ask him this question. and he gives me that very same answer. "i might jump into the race unless the republicans pick someone who i think is acceptable". this is -- his world is imploding around him. the news max trump ion debate is falling apart and he's trying to inject himself in a more positive manner. >> this is his way of keeping one foot in the game and also covering his own tracks, which so far have led -- >> he can't stand to not be in

the conversation. that's it. i mean, first of all, to get on the ballot he would have to come in on an americans elect ticket. and to come on an american elect ticket he would have to have a democrat run with him. he would have to have hundreds of thousands of people around him. >> donald trump if he runs will run as an independent and it will be a wild ride. >> he can't get on the ballot. it's insane. >> donald trump's hovering up there in this cloud. it's going over the entire primary. republicans have to find a way to ignore this guy. he's not part of the process. >> i think they did, though. i felt like they said we're not going to do this idiotic doe bait. >> speak of legitimate characters including one we have in office, the president has gotten his swagger back this week in my humble opinion. he didn't take kindly to republican candidates's view of his foreign policy record. >> internationally, president

obama has adopted an apiecement strategy. >> apiecement. >> consistently engaged in appeasement. >> nothing but appeasement. >> ask osama bin laden and the 22 out of 30 top al qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether i engage in appeasement. or whoever is left out there. ask them about that. >> well, whoever is left out there. boom. basically. i mean, we've talked a lot about obama having a very more partisan, a stronger sort of message from a left standpoint in the last few weeks. the payroll tax debate i think has given him a lot of fuel to sort of stand on principle. he seems to have the general public with him, if not his party. foreign policy is one of those areas where he has thus far had a pretty good track record, although republicans have found a way to try and attack him. >> i found his response to the question politically deft but

substantively awful. it strikes me as really a sign of a sick political culture in which the response to a totally baseless charge of appeasement, which is a very specific meaning, is to list the amount of people that you have had killed. and in fact, if that is the political response precipitated by the accusation of appeasement, those who are making the accusation of appeasement are winning. because if the only rhetorical defense to the accusation of being appeasement is to show how many bodies, to list the body count, then that's -- that means our political culture is never going to find a way out of this sort of escalating arms race of calling the other side weak and responding by holding up the bloody shirts. >> it's not the nail on the head. it's not swagger from the president. he's playing the republicans' game. he's responding to their calls for appeasement. not make, his own argument. it's just lobbing it right back at them. i don't see swagger there. i see a confused, diminished political figure who he does have a good record on foreign policy in a lot of areas but not explaining that. >> sorry, robert.

the president -- i will beg to divider with the the swagger back this week. i think the president got his swagger back on september 8th in a joint session of congress when he changed the dynamic and presented for the first time a piece of legislation to congress and said, get this done. the american jobs act. and he has been fighting fighting fighting in a manner that progressives and liberals and democrats have been wanting the president to fight for years now. and this is just one more in a continuation of that. and i agree with what you say, chris. but when you say people coming at you with simplistic jargon, i think the president did the right thing. i think the president did the right thing in smacking back. he gave as good as he got. and there's plenty of time to get into the substance of what he's saying. that was not the time -- that wasn't the time to do it. >> in fact i feel like on foreign policy it's one of those areas where to a certain degree the president must think, are you kidding me?

are you actually kidding me? so some part of that is born out of frustration. that doesn't necessarily make it right on the terms that you outlined. but i just wonder, lynn, how much you think he has or has not gotten the swagger back and whether this can carry him into 2012. >> i think that moment, answering that question was a good moment for him. but the underlying problem is that for him and for all of us, we're talking about his swagger. we're talking about him. his problem is that everything is about him. everything is the tran sen dense of barack obama. what about the 16 million people who are unemployed? the 1.3 million more who is become unemployed since he got -- >> that's why he put the american jobs act. >> he's not talking about jobs. >> that's all he does all day every day. talking about jobs. >> he talks about jobs but at his essence -- and this is his achilles heel, at his essence he is pursuing policies and putting forward ideas that question

fundamentally the idea of american dynamis michigan. what is his idea of fairness in his idea of fairness is the same idea that you get out of europe. your idea of fairness is here's your healthcare, here's your job, here's your home. the government will take care of you. that is a big debate. >> swagger is a loaded word. >> it's not about swagger. >> we will talk about it more after the break. when reverend al sharp ton joins us. >> that will calm things down. >> yeah. really the conversation will rachet down to a very cool low celsius degree. after yesterday's shooting in virginia tech it's time to talk about our gun control laws after this break on "now." just one phillips' colon health probiotic cap a day

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mod at that fiery break we were getting into a heated discussion about whether obama has his groove back, his swagger back or some iteration thereof. joining me now is reverend al sharpton. thanks for joining us, rev. >> thank you. >> i'd love to get your thoughts on this, too. we're talking about obama's message is i think more democratic quote unquote and more partisan than it has been lately i think to the delight and the happiness of much of those in his base. lady linda rothschild i think has a dividering point of view in terms of obama's message and where he's leading the country. but i think a great lens to look at his sort of swagger is the payroll tax debate where you now have republicans in congress saying they have a plan, they will go toe to toe on this

payroll tax cut extension if they -- if the president takes on the keystone oil pipeline, which is something the president has already said will not pass his desk. he does not want the payroll tax cut to be cluttered with unrelated legislation. and what we have and what we have frequently these days is almost a high stakes game of chicken between the white house and congressional republicans. and i wonder sort of what you make of it and -- >> see, i think that president for a long period of time tried to work some bipartisan climate out in washington. and i think at some point, i have no idea when, when they made up their mind in the white house that there was no reaching out on the other side, that republicans were determined to just make everything partisan and head into the re-election, he said, okay, let's have the election. i think that's what happened. and he's gone into the mode of getting ready for the election. there's no reason to play games because these guys are not trying to solve a problem.

so why should i pretend? and it's almost like when i was in high school, you can't keep asking the same girl to the prom if she's not going to go with you. you either get a new date or you go by yourself. they wouldn't go. and there's a difference between playing hard to get and you're never going. they're never going. so we're going to the prom without them. >> i think the turning point was very specifically the debt ceiling debacle. i think the reason was if you go back and look at that first press kmpbz the president gave after republican victories in 2010, mark amender got up and said aren't you just going stro this problem with the debt creeling? >> the president said and i thought genuinely, i think now they own a piece of this they're going to be constructive and we're going to find a way out of it. six, seven, eight months he was completely disprovenen. >> let's talk about the payroll tax debate. nancy pelosi had a press conference and called the

keystone pipeline a poison pill. two cars are driving down the highway and one has to blink first. >> i would have gone to the prom with you, al. i promise. >> you guys went to the same high school. that's just my sense. just a guess. >> we're very close. we're ten miles from each other. ten miles. >> that's true. >> i've known this man since before you were born. >> 1995. >> 1995. exactly. but i think that the payroll tax cut and the pipeline is very interesting. first of all we have to remember, 54 democrats signed onto the pipeline before the environmental movement got going. and it is about 700,000 barrels of oil into the united states a year, which is half of our inported oil. so there is an argument for the pipeline. most of the best argument, though, is tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars to states. now, that doesn't mean that the environmental issues don't have to be taken care of.

but to say we are all in favor of extending the payroll tax cuts and let's do something else to create jobs is not a crazy position. and for obama to make it -- >> i work on capitol hill. obama is engaging here. the problem for boehner right now is corralling all of his caucus today and pa passing the payroll tax cut. they want to make a broader argument about full-scale tax reform. but that's too big of an argument for a lot of republicans to make on a national scale. obama is in a good bargaining position and boehner is working with him trying to pass it. >> what was so telling to me when you read the sort of tick okay of how the republican house package came together, it was after obama in that press conference said, and by the way, don't try and put keystone in here. and john boehner got his caucus together and said we're going to put keystone in there. we're going to take it to him. then he got the support. so if there is a contention out there that republicans are just trying to obstruct the

president -- >> i think had the president not said that boehner probably could not have got his troops together. and i think if the president had said, fine, i'll go with it, they still wouldn't do it. and they would just use it to help further damage him with his base. because they're playing 2012. they are not thinking about anything other than that. and i think that it's a shame. and i don't think the president put this in there. i think they did. they are the ones not dealing with the issue. >> you think the president is playing 2012? >> very quickly on the keystone pipeline, just to quickly stipulate, the estimate of the job creation of keystone pipeline comes from the industry itself. it was produced by a firm contracted by the industry. and they came up with this figure of around 20,000. independent analysis from cornell university comes up with a much much much lower figure. so the tens of thousands of jobs is getting thrown around but i don't think it's necessarily a trustworthy figure given the

fact it came from industry. >> presumably the idea of pushing it off to 2013 you will agree was not a moment no courage, right? i mean, he should decide. am i going to make the argument that we need this for our country and we're going to take care of the environment? or should i kick it down the road? and why do we let a president -- >> every time we take less oil out of the planet earth is a win so i actually think it's a victory. >> the administration liked that. there are so many things that we have to talk about, including gun control. we have the block the vote events coming up this weekend. we'll talk about that after the break. reverend al's big issue, voter fraud. our issue as voting americans. that will be next on "now." [ male announcer ] take the fixodent 12 hour hold challenge. apply fixodent once, and it holds all day. ♪ take the fixodent 12 hour hold challenge. guaranteed, or your money back.

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>> has there been widespread

voter fraud in florida? >> i don't think we want to wait until voter fraud. >> you're saying that you're doing this because you may think there may be fraud? >> for credibility in the election, we have to have credible results in close elections. >> the reverend al sharpton getting into it with florida congressman dennis baxley over voter fraud. if the electoral process ain't broke, why are there so many voter i.d. and restriction laws out to fix it? >> well, in my judgment and the judgment of many people in the civil rights community that are gathering in 25 cities tonight with jobs and justice rallies and tomorrow we're marching in new york, we feel that it is to suppress the vote. the only results from these laws will be to suppress voters that are young, that are older, that are minorities. and the man that you just played was on my show who's a state legislator in florida. couldn't explain why we're doing.

this in his state in the last three years there's only been 31 cases of voter fraud. so it's not a problem that we have to solve. it's a solution they're trying to find a problem. >> that kind of voter fraud that we're talk about is almost never the kind of voter fraud that would be prevented by having voter i.d.'s. the brennan sent for justice has been some great work on this. they have a statistic in ohio in the elections in 2000 and 2004, there were four instances of ineligible persons voting or trying to vote out of 9 million votes cast. i am not one with numbers but that is .00004%. >> i think they should make the argument just based on numbers. i think you agree, every american agrees, we don't want to suppress voting in any situation. but you do want to try to eliminate fraud and have the election process improved, right? >> yeah. but is it an improvement if any numbers of studies would say that various elements of society, significant positions, would be in a position where

they couldn't vote because elderly people don't have passports or don't drive, or students don't. when you have any number of studies that say you're not talking here about in brooklyn or phillie where a politician beats the system. you're changing a whole system of people being able to vote. and it's an adverse result. >> i don't doubt that it would suppress some voting because some people don't have i.d.s. but without i.d.s how do we try to improve the system? >> improve it where, though? improving it from what? >> aren't you breaking something in the name of improving it? >> the point is there is no problem to which this is a solution. >> you don't think there's any voter fraud problem in this country? >> i don't. >> i disagree. >> but think about how many votes are cast. think about how many votes are cast. think about for a second. >> 4 of 9 million. >> 4 out of 9 million. that's not even a rounding error. think about this. let's say that you want to influence an election through ill-gotten means and you're

sitting on $10 million. what exactly would be the plot by which you would engineer this from voter fraud? you would take time and the organization to go out and find people who are not legitimate voters and then you would somehow get them to the polls and get them rigged i.d.s or you have them showing up? if you have money and you want to effect election there are simple ways to do it. >> super pacs. >> and buy tons of ad time. >> and also you're talking about ending early voting. you're stopping sunday voting in florida. >> same day registration. >> what are you mixing there? so people that are in churches can no longer go do that, what fraud was involved with that? >> reverend the system always has time prove and change to adapt to the times. i'm not saying all these legislators are make the right case. but think to turn a blind eye to voter fraud and say it's not happening. >> not a blind eye. there are studies that show the detrimental impact. if we were not being able to document and give you the numbers it would be a blind eye. a blind eye would say let's improve it in the name of

improvement even though there's nothing time zbloouf and let's talk about those numbers. when we look at who doesn't have government issued photo i.d.s, 25% of african-americans, 20% of asian americans, 19% of latinos, 18% of citizens 18 to 24 and less than 15% of citizens with less than $35,000 annual income. to your point the system has to change. sure the system can change and adapt over time. but if you were effectively talking about maybe a paint chip and demolishing a building in the name of the paint chip. >> i disagree. i'm a reporter. in every election cycle there are always questions about the numbers that are coming in about certain states, about whether things are rigged. i just think if state legislators are looking into the problem they shouldn't be reprimanded for it. there should be a healthy debate. >> not saying they shouldn't look into the problem. we're saying when you come out, how does changing voter i.d. laws, changing early voting, changing sunday voting answer any problems? >> they're not preaching for a whole revolution of the system.

i'm just saying that i.d.s can sometimes work. >> if i say to you let's go wash your shirt and you say it's already clean. let's wash it, anyway. what are we doing? >> but this to me is all a part of how the parties are trying to protect themselves against the people in so many ways. like if you look at the effort to get a third party on a ballot, do you know that there are states that basically throw you out? in california americans elect had to get 2 million signatures. you know how much that costs? >> i agree with you with you. that's wrong, too. >> all that is wrong. there are high barriers of entry to anyone who's not part of the system. and that's wrong. >> i agree with you. >> we talk about the voter i.d. laws, we talk about the gerrymandering that goes on in redistri redistricting. a number of things to disenfranchise the american voter from taking part. >> the reverend's point to hammer this hope again, let's separate out voter i.d. from the other policies. i think voter i.d. laws are terrible. i think they're a solution to

something that there's not a problem. but even if you are in favor of voter i.d.s, why are they racheting back same day registration when it happened and there was no evidence it was promulgating any fraud? >> there are so many questions that we are not able to answer on this show today. unfortunately. but tune in next monday. thank you again to jonathan, robert, lynn, chris, and of course the reverend al. don't forget, block the voice vote, a series airing all this week on the rev show. tonight's guest is congressman john lewis. on that same topic, chris hayes is up with an naacp president ben jealous on tomorrow's day of action on voter rights. tomorrow morning 7:00 a.m. eastern. that does it for us at "now." i'll see you back next week at noon eastern. until then you can follow us on twitter @now with alex. andrea mitchell reports is up next mod three weeks to iowa. the republican candidates try to derail newt's surge to the top.

but the strategy comes with big risks. and a window of opportunity for team obama. we'll talk to iowa's republican party chair matt strawn and former doppler party chairman governor ed rendell mod the european debt crisis. what will a new deal mean for the u.s. economy?" andrea mitchell reports" is next on msnbc.

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because not all rinses provide all these benefits. so be ready for your next dental check-up. crest pro-health multi-protection rinse. [ male announcer ] try any crest pro-health rinse. complete satisfaction guaranteed, or we'll buy it back. mod right now on "andrea mitchell reports" the empire strikes back. republicans try to run the gingrich train off the tracks before he gets to iowa. >> mothers and fathers of america, newt and ca calista are the last role models we want our sons and daughters look up to. i can't stand barack obama but he doesn't trade in his wives like used cars. >> newt has a ton of baggage. like he was fined $300,000 for ethics violations or that he took at least $1.6 million from freddie mac. >> but could the