during and post-game analysis. and if it's tuesday, it's another must-win day for mitt romney. >> ohio a must-win state tonight. >> must-win state. >> and the win he said he had to have -- >> he's got to win a southern state. >> florida a must-win state. >> florida is a must-win state. >> those two states are must-wins for his campaign. >> it's a must win for him. >> mitt romney needs to win here. >> yes, it moves to illinois. let's turn to our dr analysis of in trade. intrade has mitt romney with a 90% chance of winning the nomination. no one else is even close. rick santorum is at 2% and newt

gingrich, .5%. >> i want to take a few minutes to kind of embarrass the state of illinois. first of all, let me show you how confusing it is to vote for president in the republican presidential primary. here is a sample ballot here. cook county, i believe -- clark county is what we chose here today. this is everything that's on the ballot. we know that ballots are confusing. well, let me make it a little bit clearer. this is just how you vote for president. you have up top here, the ballot preference. just in, by the way, no delegates associated with that, but that is what we're going to be reporting on a lot tonight. below it, then, are direct elections of the delegates. let me take you even closer here, and this is where it gets confusing. look at all of the instructions that go. i've zoomed in as much as i can here. it says, for delegate, 15th

congressional delegate. please note next to the names are the candidates they support, and then it says, vote for not more than four. now, that's not the english language to me. vote for not more than four. how about just saying no more than four or something like that. anyway, as you can see, all romney's delegates are first, then ron paul, then gingrich, and down here santorum who is second place, but he's going to be last on all of these congressional district ballots. where he fired ballots, in four congressional districts, he did not. let's say romney wins 4 of 48. who knows. on the delegate map, because his delegates are there first and how it goes and maybe some people will only remember to vote for three, maybe not four, all this and that, he's probably going to win 55 to 60% of the delegates no matter what happens because also there's not even a choice for santorum delegates

for those congressional districts. so of the 54, i expect romney to get month less than 35 and maybe as many as 40 of the 54 delegates tonight. >> now, chuck, first that looks like an eye exam. either that or an intelligence test. >> i tried. but vote for not more than four. that's, of course, everyday english. >> it's kind of crazy and you did as good a job as any human could, i think, to try to make that clear. stepping back from some of the crazy details of it, what does romney need to do tonight? what would qualify as a decisive win for him that would make a difference in changing the momentum of this thing and wrapping it up for him? >> i don't think there's much he can do tonight. maybe it he got over 50% and santorum really performed badly or something like that, that could help. i think the next chance he has to, quote, put the race away, other than pulling an upset in louisiana saturday, which i highly doubt. we saw how demographics in the south just work against rahm

rahm -- romney -- would be april 3rd. he needs a good victory. a lot of polls show he has a fairly wide lead. i don't buy some of those polls. i expect it to be somewhere between 5 and 8 points. i think if romney got 50%, he could be acting like the inevitable nominee again. but to get to a part of this race where you have republicans loudly saying to santorum, enough already, you can't win, would be if romney wins wisconsin, and even if he wins it by one vote. >> but the magic number is still 1,144, and romney has like 400 something. >> let's say he won every delegate from here on out, he

wouldn't hit the magic number until may 29. that's demographically impossible for romney. if he wins just 60% of all the delegates, he doesn't do it until after the june 5 primaries, and if somehow he and santorum keep trading back and forth, so santorum loses tonight but it's fairly competitive, he wins saturday in louisiana, wins wisconsin but romney wins maryland on april 3rd and we have that back and forth with the remaining states, then i have romney about 50 delegates short by the time of the utah primary on june 26. now, that doesn't mean there aren't ways for him to find those 50 delegates. maybe it's state conventions where a lot of these delegates will get decided eventually, some of the delegate counts out there actually include those delegates -- they shouldn't -- or maybe he gets it via rnc members or maybe he gets it via ron paul because paul decides he's not going to qualify at the

actual convention because he hasn't won five contests. whatever way, that's one way, and of all the scenarios i've painted, the earliest he its 1144 is april. the earlieriest we're talking i late june. >> take a look at this and then i want to get your reaction. >> under this administration, the price of gasoline has doubled. >> the next time you hear some politician trotting about some three-point plan for lower gas, you let him know we know better. >> now, chuck, is this -- it looks like gingrich is going to hang around for a while. it also looks like he's getting some marketing coaching from

herman cain because now he's got his 2.50 plan. what will it take for gingrich to decide it's not in his interest, or will he keep pushing this because there's no reason for him to pull out? >> for some reason, let's say wisconsin, and you have santorum come up short and he realizes and he cuts a deal with romney, realizes he can't get there. then it would look embarrassing if newt was still staying in if santorum decided to rally around romney. you would assume that as far as newt is concerned, if he starts doing worse and worse. you know, he finished behind buddy romer in the puerto rico primary, he wouldn't want to embarrass himself because that could hurt him on the speak sirg can you te -- circuit, things like that. as long as gingrich thinks his brand and his marketing abilities to give speeches and sell books is being helped and not hurt by this campaign, he stays in.

at the end of the day, i think he's a pretty smart businessman. look how much money he's made since he left political office. i think he knows at that point is when he would pull the plug. all this gas price stuff, i have flashbacks to four years ago, you had hillary and mccain doing this, the gas speck in may right before the indiana primary at the time. gas spiked, it was up to 4-something, and they were talking about a sales tax holiday, the gas tax holiday, things like that. then all of a sudden two months later, gas fell and the public forgot. it's sugar high politics. >> all right, chuck todd. we're going to be watching this obviously all through the night, so thanks as always, not just for your political analysis, but for your kind of optomology. be safe out there. coming up here on the dr show, it's all the talk in washington today, but we're exposing the

four frauds in congressman ryan's gop budget. plus, you heard of employers checking facebook pages. now they want you to hand over your password, too. the panel sounds off and we're telling you who talks back. the fbi's covert war against terrorist spies or anyone deemed a threat, including political opponents. all that ahead on this super tuesday. not in this economy. we also have zero free time, and my dad moving in. so we went to fidelity. we looked at our family's goals and some ways to help us get there. they helped me fix my economy, the one in my house. now they're managing my investments for me. and with fidelity, getting back on track was easier than i thought. call or come in today to take control of your personal economy. get one-on-one help from america's retirement leader. mushroom smothered beef burgers. hearty chicken and noodle casserole.

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what happened to staff sergeant robert bales?

those who thought they knew him are suddenly questioning everything. >> they will look at the entire command and control process, how he was assigned, why he was assigned. it will look at the command relationships associated with his involvement in that combat outpost. i assure you the investigation will be thorough and we do operate from a presumption of innocence. >> the sergeant's wife calling the incident a heartbreaking tragedy, adding she doesn't have any answers, either. according to bales' attorney, john henry browne, neither does his client who claims to be suffering from amnesia. john sits down with nbc tonight. >> if you don't understand what you've done last night and people are telling you you did awful things and you have no memory of it, that kind of gives you an idea of what i'm talking about. >> you're not saying it was

amnesia, you're saying there's another option? >> yeah. well, i believe we're going to find out there was certainly a concussive head injury. >> further evidence that four tours of duty may have eventually caused another of america's heroes to snap. the mega panel is here. karen finney, susan delpursio. karen, let me start with you. the idea that sergeant bales may not recollect this. >> it sounds like we need to learn more about the factors that may have contributed to this behavior. you mentioned the repeated deployments. supposedly on the third deployment, he suffered a brain injury. i think what this ultimately brings out for us, and i wrote about this today on the hill, there is a lot we can learn

about what happened here that can teach us about what we need to know in terms of what is the ongoing impact of these multiple deployments? can you imagine, just think about what it would be like to be in the middle of a war zone fighting for your life on a daily basis, but worrying about your mortgage back home, trying to maintain a relationship with your wife and children. at a point, that becomes untenable, and i think we are so unaware of the ongoing cost -- and by that i mean the human cost of what we're asking one percent of our population to endure when we send them to these wars. >> the wife of sergeant bales put out a statement that i want to read and get your reaction to. she said the pain inevitably inflicted in war should never be an excuse to inflict yet more pain. the cycle must be broken. we must find peace. obviously, she's saying whatever stress and hardship he was under not an excuse, obviously, if, in fact, he performed these awful

acts. >> let me -- look. what we know is 50% of our troops go back. this then they go back again. and then they go back again, apparently. i've never been to war. i went to the citadel. i don't know what it's like to be at war per se. but i can tell you it can't be good because it's war. it's never supposed to be good. then to do that to someone three or four times. i'm not defending this guy. i'm never going to defend someone that murders 16 people, but our military needs to pony up. this administration and the former administration need to pony up and take responsibility for sending a small portion of people to do a hell of a job over and over and over again and not let it happen again and again and again. the suicide rate in the armed forces is through the roof. why? there's got to be a reason. >> susan, i saw a lot of activity on twitter yesterday from military folks saying, look, we or people in our family have beenov over there multiple times. not everybody is going berserk

and killing 16 people. this is an isolated case, there's something wrong with that person, and don't try to paint the military in broad brush because of the deranged reaction of one troubled man. >> that's 100% right. just to go back to karen's column, she highlighted something very important. what are we doing once they come home? we keep talking about withdrawing from iraq and afghanistan, but we really need to look at what we're doing for these men and women after they come home from serving our country over ten years in three or four deployments, because right now there is no plan. >> something we'll have to take on in the next three or four days on the d.r. show. i want to move to another topic, not of life and death, but there is word that employers actually look at social media now, it becomes routine when they're interviewing folks for jobs, they're actually asking potential job candidates for their password so they can dig deeper into the stuff that you're trying to actually keep

private. there is a couple states that are trying to pass laws, in maryland and i will illinois, t would make it illegal for public agencies to ask for your password. is there no limit to what we're exposed to, or should we just expect, when we're in an age, especially the rising generation,s sharing every detail on these social network sites, does that mean they have to expect this? >> at first i was appalled by this, but then i thought, well, if the government thinks they can have a probe into my vagina, then they also think -- hey, that's what it says in the bill -- then they can also have my password. the point is, there is a point at which we have to say, wait a second. this is ridiculous. there used to be something in terms of a separation of my work life, my home life, my private life. what we're seeing, i think, with this kind of legislation and certainly social networking blurs those lines, but there

still has to be -- we still live these lives with those lines. of course our employer shouldn't have access to that, just like they shouldn't be able to tell us that we can or can't use birth control. >> jimmy, this is such an issue, especially for younger folks living their life on these network sites. i know my daughter, who is almost 15, they give instructions or warnings to the students, remember, what you put on there lasts forever. this could affect your future jobs. is this something they should expect or where do we draw the right lines on this stuff? >> i'm not sure where the line is. i can see both sides to this, frankly. >> you mean if you're an employer -- >> sure, you don't want to hire some nut bag who is going to run around and post naked pictures on line. >> then hire an investigatoinve. they're trying to take the cheap way out. it's no different than saying, give me the keys to your house

so i can see what's in your attic. >> they can do a credit check on you and that's completely within the law. >> so this is a social network check, it's just the next step. >> like karen said, the social network gets broader and broader and more infiltrated in our personal and public lives, this is what's going to happen. >> is there nowhere you're going to stop, jimmy williams? >> do you want to come to my house and get into my personal life? you can deal with my shotgun. fine with me. >> where is the line we draw on this? >> when you look at our legal system, they're always catching up to technology. so we don't know what the line is ever going to be in a snapshot moment when they haven't addressed it. >> i think there is a difference between a company saying, we need some assurances from you that you're not going to use social networking to defame this company and that we have a certain code of conduct that we expect and saying, and we don't

trust you enough that you're going to be able to abide by that so let us in to see what you're hiding. there is a difference. it's one thing for a company to say, here's a set of standards we expect you to follow, it's another thing to invade into what is still private territory. >> that's a great last word by karen finney on that issue brought to us by sunny washington, which i understand karen decided not to come to new york today because of the weather, and i believe it's one of the most gorgeous days in washington. we've seen the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. it's actually the 100th anniversary, i believe, for the cherry blossom festival. so karen, you're blushing in an almost blossomlike color. >> that's actually the makeup. what you can see, though, in the building outside this area there are storm clouds, i will say. >> uh-huh. yeah. okay. >> i'm sure it was just an abundance of caution that kept you there. anyway, the panel stays.

straight ahead -- a little ribbing just for you, karen. republicans are out touting a budget plan that will slash taxes but still take care of the american debt. our guest after the break. [ male announcer ] this is lois. the day starts with arthritis pain... a load of new listings... and two pills.

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. the debt prices are the most critical in this country and look what's happening. this is why we're acting, this is why we're leading. this is why we're proposing a budget to fix this problem, so we can save this country for ourselves and for our children's future. >> some ominous music there. paul ryan releasing the gop's

budget for 2013 today. he says it's a path to prosperity. my own judgment is that it's a hoax. today's guest has plenty of experience fighting budget on the hill. brian dorgan is here with us. i wanted to put up my four favorite budget frauds from paul ryan's new plan to see how you would react to that. my first fraud in ryan's budget is that he's no fiscal conservative. interest in the national debt is the fastest growing program in ryan's plan, and he doesn't balance the budget until 2040, and then only on phoney assumptions. what kind of fiscal conservative is that? number two, paul ryan flunks math. he says we can double the number of seniors on medicare without raising taxes on anyone. that is not reasonable. anyone who looks at it knows. number three, he's a hypocrite. ryan says obama's health reform

is a payoff to the health industry. that's a laugh. but ryan voted for exactly the same approach for the bush drug plan which gave insurance to private insurers to expand coverage. skpl and lastly, he's not courageous. he plugs programs for the poor. how would you box me on those early frauds? >> you get a pass grade, my man. it's hard to have a debate with someone who thinks two and two equals five, yet that's the basic premise of ryan's budget. as you indicated, it would be 2040 before it is balanced, but only then using some budget chicanery, but it will add $7 trillion to the debt in the next ten years, so he's certainly not a conservative, but the basic

premise, he's trying to protect all those things republicans really want and like, and that is low taxes for the highest income earners, get rid of medicare to the extent they can. there's nothing new here at all. nothing new. it's just not an honest budget. >> let me give susan delpursio a chance to comment. >> the congress doesn't need me to defend it and the 4 against 1 should be interesting this afternoon. senator, as we know, we haven't seen a budget come out of the u.s. senate in over 1,000 days. now, if we're going to criticize ryan's budget, shouldn't the senate at least be putting something up? and even if you say, okay, there is a reason for it, what can actually be done to get both the house and the senate to be talking about fixing our problems? >> well, i was in the senate when we weren't able to get a budget because it was blocked by the republicans. this country needs honest budgeting, it needs aggressive approaches to try to deal with

the federal indebtedness, i understand that. but it doesn't make any sense to put this tired old blueprint out, help the wealthy, strip the safety net, get rid of medicare, add up two and two and get five, believe you can do all the bush tax cuts going forward, then add tax cuts to it, mind you, and somehow create a budget that everybody says is a good budget. i just wish the working press would really take a look at what the ryan plan does. they describe him as a budget guru, but the fact is there is nothing here that's honestly going to move us to a constructive way to address this debt. >> my good friend susan did not point out to you that in fiscal years '99, '03, '05 and '07, the republicans did not pass budgets, either. i just want to make to clear that both parties are guilty of not passing budgets.

from 1979 to 1994 we didn't have a budget control process. the president played very little of a role when it came to budget. the congress did it all. we fought the war of independence, world war i, world war ii, et cetera, et cetera, the great depression, and we did great. don't you think the budget system, i was with you for six straight years doing budgets on the senate floor. vote after vote after vote, and. it's a broken system, there's no question about that. but the ryan budget really would take us back to the policies that got us into this trouble in the first place. what steered us into the ditch was a dramatic decrease in federal government revenue as a result of the 2001 tax cuts which i voted against, and then giving a green light to wall street saying, do whatever you want to do, we won't watch, that nearly collapsed this country's economy. we need some serious people working on this in a serious way.

the ryan plan simply is not serious. it's tired and it's old. >> karen finney, do you want to pile on in some creative new way? >> here's my question. a couple things i found startling, there are not a lot of details in this budget despite the numerous pages. but, you know, it certainly looks like it relies on cost shifting to seniors, which is a problem, cost shifting to, you know, poor people without actually improving delivery of care, so all it does is say do more with less. i wrote my column this week on our troops, and one of the things they point out in some of the research i did, that it's going to be the next 30 years that all our cost of care already hit our economy, and we already know our armed forces rely on these safety programs. i don't see that any of that is accounted for in this budget. how are we really going to address these problems? >> i agree with you that none of

that is accounted for. we've all watched these primaries and the candidates are going to the farthest edge of the right side of the earth to thread this needle and get through the accommodation process. this budget plan is just part of that same movement. a lot of us have laughed at it. we're not going to have this help from the congress, and this is a step in the wrong direction. >> i've called him a fraud, i said he's robbing from the poor to cut the deficit and giving more tax credits to the rich, i do want to give ryan credit for one thing. knowing what kind of red meat medicare reform is for the democrats politically, the idea that ryan, in the face of that, knowing he would be in advertisements pushing granny off a cliff, he has moved

forward with that and has even gotten ron wideman to sign on to a modified version of that plan. does ryan deserve some credit for at least putting that on the table? >> not as far as i'm concerned. it's not a surprise that he and others would like to get rid of medicare. had they been around when it was created, there's no d but medicare is a very parent of this country, and i don't think he or shinls should -- i'm willing to give an inch, but you're standing tall. >> we need to do something to fix it, but this is not the fix. >> bribe dorgan, i understand you've got a novel in the days ahe ahead. your first blowout and blowout

is. it's on energy, and i hope you'll like it, matt. >> thanks, as always, to our fabulous mega panel. that is susan, ginny, and susan finney. see you soon. up next is an early spring in more ways than you think. i'm walt gale,

i worked at the colorado springs mail processing plant for 22 years. we processed on a given day about a million pieces of mail. checks, newspapers, bills. a lot of people get their medications only through the mail. small businesses depend on this processing plant. they want to shut down 3000 post offices, cut 100,000 jobs. they're gonna be putting people out of work everywhere. the american people depend on the postal service. they're gonna be putting people out of work everywhere. wheeeeeeeeeeeee! whee! whee! wheeeeeeeee! ah heads up. wheeeeeeeeeeee! everything you love about geico, now mobile.

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you may have thought mother nature skipped a season. just the past week, more than 1,000 records have been shattered. chicago usually 45 degrees this time of year was in the 80les or the weekend. cedar rapids was at 77 today. to top it off, it doesn't just feel like an early spring. this is the earliest arrival since 1996 thanks to astronomy. spring is officially supposed to be may 21st, but it's shifted the equinox to earlier in the century. if you love good weather, it's good news. 2012 gets seven more days of spring and summer than winter or fall. so get out there and enjoy the weather, just do it after the show. after this, investigating the fbi. how the agency's hidden history of detentions, break-ins and burglaries have shaped our nation's policies for generations and what it means

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the with the signed the increased order granting increased surveillance of communists and radicals without warrant. >> is that legal? >> sometimes you need to bend the rules a little in order to keep your country safe, right? >> that was leonardo dicaprio on

the bio pick of edgar hoover. that is the reason we've long struggled with two conflicting missions, getting the bad boys like john dillinger, pretty buy b -- pretty boy floyd and recently osama bin laden. it's something tim weiner who says it's something we need to be more aware of. tim weiner is here and he wrote "a history of the fbi." it won him a pulitzer prize and a national book award. thank you, tim. it's nice to have you here. you started in the book that 100 years ago when the fbi got up and running, it really is about domestic intelligence as much as it is about policing. say something about that.

>> spies and subversives have been the fbi's target 100 years ago. it's been the main mission. this creates a conflict, a tug-of-war. we all want to be safe and we all want to be free. the fbi has to wake up every day and counteract that balance. >> it's about domestic stuff that aren't so comfortable. >> these are secret service intelligence missions against people who want to blow up the united states or oppose the president of the united states. >> j. edgar hoover plays i huge role in your book. i want to put up a quote you have in the beginning of your book of how to think about him. his loyalists saw him as a visionary genius, his opponents saw him as a sewer in the words of president kennedy's national security as adviser. today millions of americans know him only as a caricature, a

tyrant in a tutu, a cross-dressing crank. >> president roosevelt, great liberal, gave him the power to wire tap, to bug, to break into people's houses to steal their documents. gave it to him. when the supreme court said no more wire tapping, hoover said torques hell with the supreme court, keep doing this because we're going to be at war. every president who thinks he's at war, and almost all are thinking that way, will kick the constitution into the gutter. and hoover was the method with which to do this to protect the president and his national security policies. >> and one of the things you do note is it was basically, is it true, every president in some way with hoover or authorized hoover or pushed hoover to cross the line. >> everyone except harry tru ma. >> say something about that. >> they didn't get along, and the cold war was in full swing. hoover basically broke with the

president in a speech to congress and said, there is communism, it is a mortally threat to the united states and i'm here to protect you. congress liked that. >> and -- >> they gave him all the money he wanted, all the power he wanted until the day he died. >> and so what really happened over time is he amassed, because he was the keeper of the secrets, finder of the secrets, amassed enormous power over people who were supposedly his superiors. you talk about robert kennedy when he was nominally hoover's boss as his brother's attorney general, there are stuff in the book with great scenes about them ordering the fbi to do things, and the fbi saying, we don't do that. sorry. >> bobby kennedy, as attorney general, was hoover's boss. bobby kennedy signed the order authorizing him to bug martin luther king. why bug martin luther king? because hoover convinced kennedy that the man was a communist threat. >> you make a case for some

empathy to hoover's concerns even though he obviously went way beyond what i think most of us would think was reasonable in trying to zealously defend america's security interest. what is the em pathetic case fo someone who is often painted as a full caricature? >> he wasn't a rogue elephant. second of all, there were real threats and there have been real threats ever since before world war i. there are people who want to blow up individuals and belie buildings and to alter or abolish the united states. >> there is a quote you have in terms of their relationship. nixon tells him he doesn't want to just bug and wire tap and break into the houses of targets, nixon wants hoover to break into the houses of targets without sufficient warrants, but he turns nixon down.

so what does he do, he gets into watergate. why did he say no? >> because he didn't want to get caught. it would have stained his reputation and burnt everything he built over the last century. the supreme court was intensely aware that the fbi was working outside the rule of law. hoover dies, six weeks later, the watergate break-in. who investigates? the fbi. they take down nixon. >> what should we know about how the fbi interacted with some of these other presidents? lbj had sort of a long relationship with him? >> loved hoover. they were neighbors for 16 years, they were buddies. but hoover not only went after the civil rights movement, he went after the kkk because he told him to do it. and he broke them like a twig. >> we've done lbj, we've done --

>> we should talk about what's going on right now. we have a director running the fbi that took office september 4, 2001, bob muller. he served longer than anybody except hoover, and he'll be serving another two years. the president has asked him to stay on and congress has said yes. this is a guy who gets the struggle between security and liberty, and he pushed back when president bush went way beyond the limits of the law in the constitution with, for example, his electronic surveillance program, spying on americans. it was muller who said, i will quit unless you bring this program within the amulet of the law. he would have resigned, and the attorney general would have resigned. he would not have won. >> ronald reagan and ed meese, what was their relationship with hoover like? >> hoover was gone by then. he left with the nixon administration. >> so the fbi -- >> the fbi suffered under some

weak and underqualified directors, and that's why muller is so extraordinary. he has come in. he served under bush, he's serving under obama. this is our lives, this is the constitution. and they're getting it right. i would say for the first time in the last three years, after 1 1 103 years, they're getting pretty close to getting this balance right, and that is no mean feat. >> say more about getting the balance right. people on both sides are going to push their side of the balance when critical issues come up. you've studied this now more than any human being in terms of quantifying this in this terrific narrative. what's the right way to think about balance and security and how the fbi has to manage that on our behalf. >> the constitution commands that we have to have civil liberties and we have to have national security, and we have to have both at the same time. muller understands that the rule of law is important. he's not going to be the guy who, when he retires, they hang

a medal around his neck and say, congratulatio congratulations, you won the war on terror but you cost our civil liberties. he has said publicly, that's not me and that's not the fbi. and that is really something. >> what's the future of the fbi at this point? >> i iff i knew the future, i wouldn't be talking to you, i would be writing about it. i think we have an fbi director who understands the constitution. we have a president who has actually lectured about the discussion and who understands it, unlike, let's say, his predecessor. if you have two guys who have some understanding of the rule of law on the top. >> tim weiner, the book is "enemies a history of the fbi." this has to be the definitive chronicle on all of this, so congratulations on what has to be the output of tremendous years of work. i commend it to everyone. i started reading this on the plane last night and it looks

terrific. so thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and on the book. >> my pleasure. coming up with hardball, chris matthews with the illinois primary. stay with us as the returns come in. the daily rant is still ahead. americans believe they should be in charge of their own future. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want. where they want. doing what they want. ameriprise. the strength of a leader in retirement planning. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you one-to-one. together for your future. ♪

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a democrat who is sad to see a republican senator go?

we have one here? david goodfriend is in d.c. with his daily rant. take it away. >> if you think i'm a dyed in the wool wisconsin democrat who almost never agrees with today's republican party, you're right. but i'm here today to mourn the loss of a truly great republican leader, senator olympia snow of maine. senator snow announced she will not run for reelection this year, ending one of the most historic and highly achieved careers in the united states senate. her reason? the poison atmosphere in the senate today. she also is being challenged from the far right for the republican nomination. some people in my own democratic party are celebrating senator snow's departure as a chance to pick up a seat in the senate, but i don't see it that way. i think we democrats will rue the day senator snow left the senate. senator snow made history as the only woman in american history

to make both houses of legislature and both houses of congress. she was the first republican woman to serve on the uber powerful senate finance committee and has chaired the senate business committee as well. but what makes her truly special is her ability to forge agreement between people of differing views, republicans and democrats, conservatives, moderat moderates, progressives. she's brokered deals between all of them to get things done, and this has made her incredibly powerful at home. she won her last election with over 70% of the vote and has won more elections in maine than anyone since world war ii. it also makes her popular nationally. forbes magazine rated her one of the most powerful people in the world. so what can we say about the state of our democracy when a person of this caliber leaves public service in frustration? republicans should be ashamed that their party has moved so far to the right that rational moderates like olympia snow no longer feel welcome. democrats should hang their heads in grief that someone from

the other side of the aisle who is open to making a deal no longer will be there to return a handshake. in the spirit of senator snow's statesmanship, i want to offer her a salute, yes, from the hand of a flaming blue democrat. they simply don't make them like you anymore, senator snow. and it isn't just the republican party that's worse off for it, it's democrats. it's the republic. matt? >> that's a great tribute, david. it reminds me the onion magazine, the humor magazine, recently had a piece where they were trying to breed moderate republicans in captivity because the species was in danger of extinction. what has driven the party so far to the right that you've got all these folks like olympia snow who no longer feel at home? >> well, part of it, i think, is the antipathy of president obama, that anything the president supports, the leaders like mitch mcconnell say we have

to be against. that automatic knee jerk reaction pushes moderates who ordinarily would say, well, i can agree with some things and not others, out of the picture altogether. that didvisiveness means pushin things out the window, so people like olympia snow who is interested in getting results doesn't feel at home. but we democrats should say, it's good to have people on the other side you can deal with. yes, we should be brought to the middle as well, we should make compromises. that only works when you have a partner on the other side, someone to meet you halfway. >> it used to be that way. john chafey from rhode island basically laid out the blueprint for what became obama's health care plan. anyway, great point, david. we've got to go, but here's to the rockefeller republican that we need to bring back. that does it for us today. i'm matt mil