honest or trustworthy or likeable or admirable. i could go on and on. i think i will. >> morning, y'all. good to be with you. >> how excited are they about willard mitt romney? >> so far they're not. >> we know that romney has his own problems. >> mitt. >> chiefly likability. >> they're just not that into you. >> romney's favorable rating is 35%. his unfavorable rating is 47%. >> for all intents and purposes, everyone sees mitt romney as the nominee. >> for all intents and purposes. >> are you ready to endorse him? >> why hasn't rick santorum endorsed mitt romney yet? >> i'm not making official endorsements. >> i can't find anybody that's excited about romney. >> could it be he's out of touch? >> are you too rich to relate? >> corporations are people, my friend. >> he's a 1% if there ever was one. >> right now people would vote for romney if they think he's competent. >> mitt is sewing up the rock 'n' roll vote.

>> mitt romney becomes president in november, i will either be dead or in jail. >> he's got kid rock, ted nugent, all he needs is insane clown posse. >> i believe it's time. >> shamus. >> just loved being up there on the roof of that car. >> the dog got sick? >> he had the runs. >> the one story that does not seem to go away -- >> start packing. that's what i'd like to say. >> well, if you don't run, chris christie, romney will be the nominee and we'll lose. good news and some great news for the obama re-election campaign and a round of new poll numbers. a new "washington post"/abc news

poll has 56% of voters say they have a favorable view of president obama while only 35% have a favorable view of mitt romney. a new cnn poll asked voters to measure president obama and mitt romney on 15 different characteristics and qualities and how many of those did mitt romney have an advantage? zero. zero out of 15. on questions related to character and likability, mitt romney is trailing hopelessly behind president obama. the president has a 29-point lead on likability. 56-27. the president has a 21-point lead on stands for his beliefs, 50- 50-29. the president has a 20-point lead on inspires confidence.

50-30. the president has a 19-point lead on person you admire. 44-25. and on honest and trustworthy, the president has an 11-point lead, 44-33. it seems that lies like this are being seen for exactly what they are. >> well, i think -- i think there is in this country a war on religion. i think there is a desire to establish a religion in america known as secularism. and i know that based upon reports, the obama administration gave this a lot of thought. a lot of discussion. >> that's the kind of outright lie, effortless lie, that's getting romney a very low score on honesty and trustworthiness. and it's the kind of lie that romney's trying to tell specifically in order to win in

the category of shares your values. but president obama has a 12-point lead over mitt romney on shares your values. 49-37. the president also has a 12-point lead on agrees with you on the issues, 49-37. and the president has a huge lead with the three most important classes of voters for actually winning the electoral college. the president has a 15-point lead on "in touch with moderates," 48-33. the president has an 18-point lead on "in touch with the middle class." 51-33. and the president has a stunning 28-point lead over mitt romney on "in touch with women's issues. 55-27%.

here is mitt romney's basic case for why he should be elected to replace president obama. >> we're all working together because of our passion for this country and our concern that it's being led by a president who may be a nice guy but just is over his head. having lived my life in the private sector, having worked in business, small business and then bigger business, having seen jobs come and go, having competed with businesses around the world, i understand which things will encourage job growth and ignite growth in our economy. i want to get our economy going again. and i know how to do it. >> the poll shows, as we've seen, that voters really agree with romney that obama is a nice guy. but they do not think the president is in over his head or that they need a former investment banker to fix this economy. even with the economic recovery, as weak as it has been and as weak as it remains in the president's fourth year in office, the president still has

a two-point advantage over mitt romney on "can get the economy moving." 44-42%. the president has a five-point lead over mitt romney on the issues as encapsulated by the poll item "has a clear plan for solving america's problems." 38%-33%. and voters think the president is a better manager than romney who claims to be a manager. the president has an eight-point lead over romney on "manage the government effectively." 46-38%. and as for being in over his head, as romney likes to paint the president, president obama has a 16-point lead on handling the responsibilities of being commander in chief. 52-36%. and the president has a 16-point lead on being a strong and decisive leader. 50-34%.

joining me now are ezra kline, a "washington post" columnist and msnbc contributor and analyst steve schmidt, former senior adviser to john mccain's 2008 strategist. steve, these numbers are really stunning to me. if you're in the romney campaign and poll numbers like this come in, you have a crisis meeting, don't you? >> well, you have to be very concerned about them. i think first, it answers for all time the question about whether this primary process made him a stronger nominee or a weaker nominee. clearly made him a weaker nominee. and when you look inside those numbers, if they're static, if they don't move, if you can't rebound from them, it means you'll have a very tough time winning the general election against the president. the reality, though, and there is a sliver of good news in all of this for governor romney, is that his ballot strength is outperforming all these character attributes. and if you look at the real

clear politics average of all the polls put together, he's trailing the president when they're all averaged together by about three points. i think the floor for both candidates is about 47%. it's a closely divided country. but you have to be very concerned when you look internally in those numbers. and it shows that governor romney has a lot of work to do in the months ahead to rebuild his image after this devastating republican primary process. >> ezra kline, it is unclear what that work should involve in terms of what they can actually achieve in the romney campaign. likability is a very hard thing to change with campaign strategies. but when you look at "agrees with you on issues," the issues are the stuff of the campaign. those are the things they can write speeches about. president obama is at 49. mitt romney is at 37. what do you see in the republican menu of issues that could possibly help mitt romney close that gap? >> i think this is romney's real on problem, i look at the

average. obama's up two to three percentage appointments in the past week. it isn't that much. it's a swing of 1.5 to 2% of the electorate. so i don't think romney's getting that far behind. the problem is, what romney has is this argument for competence is an argument that i know what the economy needs. the issue for him is that he's not been able, either because of internal party politics or a look of creativity or political courage to come out with an agenda that seems in any way relevant or in proportion to the severity of the economic condition right now. he comes forward and says, look, i've got a very big tax cut. i've got some very, very big cuts to spending. i have some regular -- deregulation i want to do. i'd like to repeal obamacare. i'd like to repeal most of dodd/frank, most of sarbanes-oxley. people talk about him choosing rob portman or maybe mitch

daniels, both george w. bush budget directors as vice president. he needs to come out with something new. it seems like a fresh start for the economy. and as of yet, he has a very conventional take on the issues which has not been sufficiently popular, at least as of now, to vault him in front of president obama. >> mitt romney picked up some important endorsements today. house speaker john boehner, senate minority leader mitch mcconnell. let's listen to those. >> i will be proud to support mitt romney and do everything i can to help him win. >> yeah, i support governor romney for president of the united states, and he is going to be the nominee. and as you notice, the party is in the process of unifying behind him. and i think it's going to be an incredibly close, hard-fought race. >> steve, mitch mcconnell forgot to say that mitt romney's going to win. >> well, look.

i think if you're the romney campaign, you're just thrilled to death to be outside of this primary window now. and when you have the speaker, you have the minority leader, what they essentially did today is ended the race inside the republican party. mitt romney's going to be the nominee. he has to go through ministerially now the rest of this process, but we're in the general election now. and of course, as you pointed out earlier, mitt romney's going to have a lot of work to do. and to ezra's point, mitt romney's going to have to define what american conservativism is in the second decade of the 21st century. he's going to have to have an optimistic forward plan for economic growth that middle-class voters, ticket-splitter voters are able to look at it and say that that plan is going to do right by me. it's going to do right by my family, that i can see how this makes life better for me, for my family, how we create prosperity in america. the campaign hasn't done that yet, but there's a lot of time to do it. and they're going to have to do it to get those numbers up.

>> i think we all agree that the election's going to be close in the end and that all you have to do is have the word "republican" or "democrat" beside your name and you'll get 48% of the vote no matter what kind of internal difficulties your candidacy has. ezra, there's another piece in the cnn poll that says, regardless of who you support, who do you think will actually win in november? and 61% say president obama will win. 35% say mitt romney will win. and that poll question always tends to have a self-fulfilling prophecy in it. >> absolutely. you know, i should say, i'm somewhat skeptical of the cnn poll. it had obama ahead by nine points, larger than other polls. it could be a leading indicator. we could see other polls come to back it up. but i think for now it might be a bit optimistic for him. i've seen other polls show that obama is a perception advantage. people think it's money that

matters for other things. that can shift very, very quickly. i mean, obama only needs a couple bad polls. he needs one big slip-up, and then the conventional wisdom begins to change. but unless that happens for romney, it's going to be an uphill climb. >> steve, quickly before we go, what do you make of that 61-35% saying president obama's going to win? >> well, look. i think that's actually an important number. it's always a number that i looked at closely when i was running campaigns. and it's a number that has the effect of really putting a drag on the campaign. it's very demoralizing because it puts the campaign under pressure when your fund-raising base, when the donors, when the supporters are all surrounded in the culture by the notion that their candidate, that your candidate, isn't going to be able to win the election. they're going to want that number to come up. certainly for the campaign, they'll need to put together a number of good weeks in a row. >> ezra kline of "the washington post," thank you very much for joining us tonight. steve, please stay with us.

we'll do some electoral college math in the next block. coming up, does president obama have a lock on the electoral college, and can marco rubio pull latino voters away from president obama? and in "the rewrite," it's war. why does fox news deny there's a political war on women but insists there's a war on christmas? and later, why were republicans outraged over this? >> his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. >> and why aren't republicans outraged over this? >> obama, he's a piece of [ bleep ]. >> that's coming up. woo! played "pin the tail on the donkey" with dana all night. wow. lost my mio energy, hired this guy to keep me awake.

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president obama has many

more paths to an electoral college victory than mitt romney does. and the latino vote just might lock in an obama electoral college victory. that's coming up. and in "the rewrite," fox news insists there is no war on women, but there is a war on conservative women and, of course, a war on christmas. and later, which prominent endorser of which presidential candidate is now being investigated by the secret service for possible assassination threats? is it this guy? or is it this guy? great shot.

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as reported here last night, thanks to nbc news embed in the romney campaign, we now know what the secret mitt romney says at his $50,000-per-person fund-raisers that the public mitt romney would never say. at that fund-raiser where garrett was able to overhear him, romney demonstrated some competence in campaign math. he told his audience that president obama's huge lead among hispanic voters, quote, spells doom for us. end quote. that's when romney told his audience that he's going to have to come up with some kind of, quote, republican dream act. and then he added, "we have to get hispanic voters to vote for our party." and romney has two big problems with latino voters. his first big problem is barack obama, and his second big problem is mitt romney. >> the question is, if i were elected and congress were to pass the dream act, would i veto it?

and the answer is yes. the answer is self-deportation is people decide they could do better by going home because they can't find work here because they don't have legal documentation to allow them to work here. i think you see a model here in arizona. >> tonight, romney strategists are staring at what may be a latino lock on the electoral college. a democratic source outlined this scenario to politico. "assuming that obama wins all the states that have been won by every democrat for the last 20 years, luing both gore and kerry, and romney wins all the states that mccain won in 2008, that leaves 10 states. with those ten states, there are 1,024 possible combinations. out of those 1,024 scenarios, obama wins 939 of them, and romney wins 85 of them. all 85 scenarios require mitt romney to win florida." a new robopoll of florida

registered voters shows president obama leading mitt romney in florida by five points, 50-45%. and among florida hispanic registered voters, the president's lead is much, much wider. president obama leads mitt romney 52-37%. and if you think that mitt romney can close that gap by choosing marco rubio as his running mate, with the magic of marco rubio on the ticket, absolutely nothing changes in florida. obama/biden leads romney/rubio among hispanic voters 52-37%. joining me now, voto latino executive director and msnbc contributor maria teresa kumar, and msnbc political analyst, steve schmidt, is back. steve, i start with you when i outline these grim looking numbers for republican strategists because i just imagine republican strategists like you in the romney campaign

office tonight looking at those numbers saying how do we do this? look at what we've done to the latino vote with our positions. how can we possibly get them back? >> if you look at the republican party as a whole, there are big sections of it that if we had a deliberate strategy to antagonize every latino voter in this country, it's not possible that we could have done a better job. if you look at the fact that george bush got 40% of the latino vote, it fell off to 32% for john mccain, and you look at a further dropoff for mitt romney, this is the fastest growing demographic in the country. republicans are going to have to compete in the hispanic community. republicans are going to have to be present in that community. they're going to have to campaign there. they're going to have to not just pay lip service to it. they're going to have to advertise there. and there's going to have to be a long-term concerted effort, and the romney campaign's going to have to invest tremendous

resources into the hispanic community to offer a value proposition because the fact of the matter is this. is the republican party cannot be a national party if it doesn't compete in the hispanic community. and you look at those numbers, we have big, big problems. >> maria teresa, the polls look very good for the president, but is -- are the democrats and the president running a real get-out-the-vote game with the latino vote, and are they capable of running something similar in that community? >> arizona, for the very first time, looks like it's in play. they definitely need colorado. you need north carolina. ohio might be in play because of the latino vote. and what's nuts is even virginia because of the latino vote. what romney needs to do is basically start shaking his strange bedfellows off such as chris, which is what he's trying to do now, distance himself who was the architect sb-1070 in

arizona. >> that's one of the people who's endorsed romney. >> endorsed him. and romney said -- >> wanted that endorsement. >> wanted that endorsement, but just two weeks ago, he also mentioned pete wilson was also going to be his co-chair in california. that's a dirty word. not that he needs it. >> a former governor of california who has not such a great reputation. >> well, you could say he was actually the original chris cobach back in '93. he's been the one that also advised meg whitman. up to that point, whitman in california when she was running for senate was leading among latinas. so when you start looking at how the republican party is actually in trouble, mitt romney specifically, not only is there a perceived war on latinos, but also on women. and then you have two groups. do your then diagram, and they happen to be latina women, and you're, like, oh, god, you're in trouble. >> steve schmidt, john mccain had a very strong immigration

position that could have been very appealing to latino voters before his presidential campaign got under way. he kind of left that behind as the campaign progressed, as did president bush before him. but did you notice that latino voters track these issues carefully enough that they are noticing exactly what kind of moves the republican candidates make on these? >> yeah, no doubt. these issues are covered extensively in the spanish language media. spanish language-speaking voters hear about it. they understand it. they follow it closely. and what i would say, as you look at president bush, you look at john mccain, i really think that they were victims in the sense that the hispanic voter in the country was so turned off by what was coming out of the congressional wing of the republican party, that it really fell hard on both president bush ultimately and senator mccain in 2008.

so republican party has a lot of work to do. and if you look at the state of california where the republican party has effectively collapsed, one of the chief contributors to its collapse is its collapse and its ability to compete at any level with hispanic voters in the state. >> and president obama is trying to keep it that way. let's listen to what he said on univision. >> i can promise that i will try to do it in the first year of my second term. i want to try this year. the challenge we've got on immigration reform is very simple. i've got a majority of democrats who are prepared to vote for it. and i've got no republicans who are prepared to vote for it. it's worse than that. we now have a republican nominee who said that the arizona laws are a model for the country. >> maria, he's making it clear. don't just vote for me. you've got to vote for democrats in the house and senate. >> well, he understands that he needs congress on his side.

and that's where obama's thinking very strategically. that a lot of these characters -- he may not actually -- there might be an enthusiasm gap among latinos for the president, but if you actually start painting the picture of what the congressional members look like, they're basically the ones that galvanize the latino vote. that's why sharron angle gave the vote over to harry reid. and that's why russell pierce also recently lost his election. they're the best galvanizers, the folks that attack the latino voter. >> maria and steve, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. coming up in "the rewrite," the war on women. fox news insists there is no such thing, but there is a war on women and that old war on christmas and a war on nukkah and other lot of other fake wars. and one of their favorite crazy people calls the president a criminal and talks about maybe assassinating him. not a single republican demand

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[ female announcer ] try aleve d easy label, right? but that label can lead to prejudice and discrimination, and we don't want to go there. so let's try to see people for who they really are. you can help create a more united states. the more you know. deranged romney endorser ted nugent can expect a call from the secret service after his threatening remarks about president obama. but crazy ted says he isn't scared. he stands by his homicidal

comments, and not a single republican has called on crazy ted to apologize. not even mitt romney who begged for and got ted nugent's endorsement. and later, guest rewriter jon stewart examines the fox news case against the war on women. that's in "the rewrite." le of n, is always headed somewhere. to give it a sense of direction, at&t created a mobile asset solution to protect and track everything. so every piece of equipment knows where it is, how it's doing or where it goes next. ♪ this is the bell on the cat. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ 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.

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this time next year. you can't galvanize and promote, if you can't galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for barack obama, we're done. we will be a suburb of indonesia next year. mitt romney, john boehner, eric cantor, mitch mcconnell, they're all criminals. we are patriots. we are braveheart. we need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in november! okay. cue the republican outrage. but first, let's cue mitt romney endorser ted nugent. >> i'll tell you this right now. if barack obama becomes the president in november again, i will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. if you can't galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for mitt romney, we're done. we'll be a suburb of indonesia next year. our president and attorney

general, our vice president, hillary clinton, they're criminals. we are patriots. we are braveheart. we need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in november. >> and so we have tonight's thought experiment. imagine if i or, say, hilary rosen had said that about mitt romney. how loud would the republican outrage tonight be? here's how loud mitt romney's outrage was at his supporters' not-so-veiled suggestion, that he just might end up in jail for trying to kill president obama if the president is re-elected. or he might end up dead, shot presumably by the secret service in his attempt to assassinate president obama. it turns out mitt romney himself couldn't summon any outrage over that at all. when asked about the comments, a campaign spokesperson issued a written statement about romney's deranged endorser.

divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle is comes from. mitt romney believes everyone need to be civil. the day ted nugent endorsed mitt romney, there was much excitement in romney world. one of romney's sons tweeted, "ted nugent endorsed my dad today. ted nugent? how cool is that! the romney family obviously has no idea how cool anything is. mitt romney actually had to work hard to get ted nugent's endorsement. it was important to romney to have a prominent gun nut from the craziest segment of the right wing endorsing him sin comx to clean the skin. just a pea-sized amount presidential candidate mitt romney took the time to have

that long heart & soul conversation with him for his endorsement after ted nugent said this. >> obama, he's a piece of [ bleep ]. >> mitt romney's definition of divisive language is different from yours and mine. mitt romney knew exactly what kind of diseased mind he was begging to endorse him when he went after the prized ted nugent endorsement. mitt romney is now the only presidential candidate who has a prominent endorser who is being investigated by the secret service, the very same secret service that now protects mitt romney's life. "new york" magazine reports this reaction from the secret service tonight after ted nugent's most recent outburst of homicidal language about the president. we are aware of it, and we'll

conduct an propofolup. that's quoting the secret service. surely in the secret service follow-up, they will discover that ted nugent and mitt romney have a lot in common. they don't mean a word they say. ted nugent's homicidal rantings are obviously just figurative. he clearly does not have what it takes to aim a firearm at a human being and pull the trigger. he was offered a big opportunity to do that during the vietnam war, and like his candidate, mitt romney, he managed to completely evade the draft, completely avoid military service, and then, of course, grew up to be a republican warmonger in favor of all wars that don't demand their services on the battlefield. joining me now is david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones, author of the new book "showdown."

and msnbc political analyst. also joining me is goldie taylor of thegrio.com. david corn, look, i am not going to be the outraged one here tonight. i know that ted nugent didn't mean it. i know he was just talking crazy talk. but there is a machine out there to manufacture outrage over these events. and strangely, the republican outrage machine is quiet tonight. >> i'm still trying to wrap my mind around a soulful conversation between mitt romney and ted nugent. i mean, wouldn't you like to be the fly on the wall for that one? i mean, i'm not going to be outraged here, too, because we're talking about ted nugent. but there is a pattern here on the republican side in which again and again people are calling barack obama and democrats and thai-american. that was one of the comments that ted nugent threw out, that the obama administration hates america. you have allen west the other

day saying that liberal depths are communists. you have michele bachmann a few years ago saying obama was anti-american, calling for investigations. and mitt romney, again and again, has said in a slight variant of this, obama doesn't understand america. he doesn't get america. as if he's not truly an american. so there's a little bit of a spectrum here from ted nugent to mitt romney. and unfortunately, it's not that far a distance. >> goldie taylor, we saw the fake outrage on the republican side last week over the historically accurate reference to mitt romney's wife's employment history outside of the home. they went into overdrive of outrage on that. mrs. romney confessed it was all a joke at that fund-raiser the other night, and it was a gift to her, and they loved it. and now you have this guy come out saying these things that involve allusions to

assassinating the president, and not a world from romney world. >> you know, lawrence, i don't know. you and dave, did you not like wangtang sweet puntang? this guy is quite upset he's never going to get into the rock and roll hall of fame. the guy from the muppets band, from the electric mayhem orchestra might well get in before he does. i don't think you can take anything that ted nugent says seriously. but what you can take seriously is his ability to inspire those, you know, very strong patriots in the audience to do something crazy. you know, to get a pair of night-vision goggles in an attempt to crawl over the white house fence. and so i don't think you can discount what he says, you know, when you look at the impact that he may have, you know, on people who happen to be listening to him. so i think a secret service investigation, you know, is wholly appropriate in this instance. >> yeah, that's a good point. but david corn, one of the things that interests me is i feel like we now have a sequential set of proofs that

all of the outrage over hilary rosen last week was completely fake. you have the confession of mrs. romney having fun at the fund-raisers saying her reaction was fake. you now have their silence in the face of these crazy comments by ted nugent which are far worse on any outrage scale than anything that was said about mrs. romney. and you have absolute republican silence about ted nugent. it feels to me like they are proving this their outrage machine is completely fake. >> lawrence, i think i might be outraged that you're outraged that they're not outraged. i mean, we know the whole hilary rosen thing was phony and cooked up. and that when it comes to their own people, ted nugent being one of their own people, they don't have the guts to say anything. you know, they'll trump anything up. and let's also remember, i mean, i think goldie's points are good, that ted nugent said this at an nra event. it wasn't just him mouthing off at a stupid rock show.

he said this within the context of a very powerful political body that's going to go all out for mitt romney because they say obama's going to take away your guns. you know, they create a petrie dish for the excessive obama hatred that could lead to something even worse than just defeat at an election. >> now, goldie, they will, of course, the next time bill maher tells a joke about a republican be demanding that the bill maher contribution to the super pac be returned immediately, whatever bill maher says next about any republican. but with ted nugent, these republicans will just -- there's not a word from any of them saying, hey, i think we should just, you know, send back his endorsement and say no, thanks, ted nugent, we don't want you on the team. >> the bigger point is why take your pander bucket and beg for his endorsement in the first place when he was already on the record saying extraordinarily egregious things.

and then to come back with a tepid statement at best for a cull for civility? when someone is threatening to shoot the president of the united states? that is downright farcical. i think that romney is suffering from something else. one of my twitter followers called it liaritis. this guy just can't get it straight. >> yeah, the absurd fake civility of romney. david and goldie, thank you very much for jning me tonight. >> thanks for having us. coming up, jon stewart takes us on a tour of the wars waged by fox news. he shows us that fox believes there is a war on christmas and a war on conservative women, but not a war on women. that's next in the "rewrite." coffee doesn't have vitamins... unless you want it to.

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especially all those crazy fox news wars. that's in "the rewrite." and later, remember the outpouring of sympathy for all those victims of the virginia tech massacre? it turns out a lot of the republican sympathy was fake. and john boehner just proved that. you know, those farmers, those foragers, those fishermen.... for me, it's really about building this extraordinary community. american express is passionate about the same thing.

they're one of those partners that i would really rely on whether it's finding new customers, or, a new location for my next restaurant. when we all come together, my restaurants, my partners, and the community amazing things happen. to me, that's the membership effect. according to the signs, ford is having some sort of big tire event. i just want to confirm a few things with fiona. how would you describe the event? it's big. no,i mean in terms of savings how would you sum it up? big in your own words, with respect to selection, what would you say? big okay, let's talk rebates mike, they're big they're big get $100 rebate, plus the low price tire guarantee during the big tire event. so, in other words, we can agree that ford's tire event is a good size? big big in "the rewrite," the war on women. last night jon stewart considered the fox news argument that there is no war on women.

>> war on women? there's a problem with that one. >> there's not really a war on women. >> the ridiculousness of this war on women. >> they created this phony war on women. >> it is only the bitterest cynicism that portrays that as a war on women. >> this is a made-up, phony war on women. >> respect! i think what fox is trying to say is that elevating this political fight to the level of war diminishes the seriousness with which real conflicts are engaged. war is real. war is hell. it's not some casual metaphor. >> in case you didn't know, there's a war on christmas in america. >> a lot of companies haven't been saying merry christmas. they've been going, happy holidays. >> calling the statehouse christmas free a holiday tree. >> a possible tax on your tree? >> the tulsa holiday parade of lights formerly the christmas parade of lights. >> the homeowners association banning blinking and colored christmas lights. >> there apparently a school, they can't have poinsettias in

their classes because it might offend people who are not christian. >> all right, christmas is a special case. that is an incredibly important holiday. again, i'm sure that nothing else rises to that level of outrage. >> war on hanukkah now, too? >> this is the war on easter. >> war on -- wait for it -- full holidays. >> let's talk war on halloween. >> war on fossil fuels. >> war on the constitution. >> the war on ladies' night. >> war on fishermen. >> can you accept the war on saw? >> it's the war on chocolate milk. >> war on sugary drinks. >> war on food. >> war on spuds? >> war on conservative women. >> the media is waging a war against conservative women. >> of all the wars jon stewart considered last night, the only one for which he could find any shred of evidence is the war on women, with the final piece of horrific evidence coming from fox news itself.

>> arizona's legislature would force women to prove to employers they are using birth control for medical reasons. >> in mississippi today. criminalize abortion as murder. >> arizona now, doctors will not face a lawsuit if they fail to tell parents about any risks the unborn child could face. >> pennsylvania would require sonograms before abortions. >> a transvaginal ultrasound when seeking an abortion in virginia. >> the violence against women act. but now for the first time there's opposition to this. >> in next, a bill that would block planned parenthood from receiving state planning money. >> the bill making single parenting child abuse. >> so if you're one who likes to beat your wife, you could probably move to topeka, kansas, because it's legal there. >> "the daily show" reports. you decide. [ tires squeal, engine revs ] ♪ ♪

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you know, we need a president who will enforce current laws, not create new ones that only serve to lawful

gun owners. president obama has not. i will. we need a president who will stand up for the rights of hunters and sportsmen and those who seek to protect their homes and their families. president obama has not. i will. >> sadly, that was mitt romney lying about president obama last week in his typically pandering speech to the national rifle association. what's so sad about it is that there is no real difference between the president and mitt romney on gun control. the president has done absolutely nothing to restrict access to guns since taking office. washington remains paralyzed on any form of gun or ammunition control in the legislative area that remains under the complete control of the blood-drenched national rifle association. yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the massacre at virginia tech. one of the victims of that shooting led a group of 31 other gun violence victims to capitol hill today. they asked members of congress

to sign a statement of principle against arming dangerous people. the statement simply reads, "i believe that these people should not be able to buy, own or carry a gun anywhere in our nation: convicted felons, convicted domestic abusers, terrorists, and people found to be dangerously mentally ill." joining me now is colin godard who was shot four times during the virginia tech shooting. he now works for the brady campaign to prevent gun violence. colin, how did you do on capitol hill? >> it's been a pretty unbelievable two days. every single senator and congressman we met agreed with us in person to that statement of principle. and when we asked them to put their name to it, not a single one, democrat or republican, could do it. they couldn't do it because of the politics. it was the answer we always got. and speaks to the sad state of affairs here in washington, d.c.

>> and the outpouring of sympathy for you and all the victims of the virginia tech massacre was bipartisan. it was unanimous nationally. but i'm starting to wonder how serious and heartfelt it was in some republican circles. for example, john boehner. how did things go for you trying to get in to see the speaker of the house? >> we've heard speaker boehner repeat, after continuous mass shootings in our country, that talking about mass changes to our laws would be inappropriate at this time. so during the week that begins with the fifth anniversary of virginia tech and ends with the 13th anniversary of columbine, the two probably most infamous shootings in our country's history, john boehner was unable to meet with us this week because he was too busy. so my question remains, when would be an appropriate time, mr. speaker, to talk about this? because 32 americans are killed every day. following your logic, there will never be a time to talk to us, and that's just unacceptable. >> when the virginia tech

massacre happened and you felt that outpouring of sympathy nationally, did you expect we're going to be able to do something about this? >> when i learned what laws we needed to change, how simple. >> bodyguards. let's play hardball.