our economy would be stronger. of course, congress refused to pass this jobs plan in full. >> among other things, the plan would have created or saved 400,000 education jobs. it would have done the same for thousands of police and firefighter jobs, and it would have jumpstarted new infrastructure projects across the country. when it was introduced, john mccain's former economist said it would create 1.9 million new jobs and reduce the unemployment rate by 1%, and the american people loved it. 75% supported investing in teacher and police and firefighter jobs. 72% liked investing in the infrastructure. and 72% thought we should help pay for it by raising taxes on millionaires. and yet republicans have voted against it over and over again.

>> there's no excuse for not passing these ideas. we know they can work. if congress decides, despite all that, they aren't going to do anything about this simply because it's an election year, then they should splap to the american people why. >> the question now is with republicans having to face the voters, will they still dare to block jobs for people who are in this country really struggling? joining me now is congressman sandra levin, democrat from michigan, and jack bernstein, msnbc contributor and the former chief economist for vice president joe biden. congressman, let me start with you. the president talked today about his jobs plan. there's also a highway build that house republicans are blocking. it would create or save 3 million jobs. it passed the senate with bipartisan support.

is there any legitimate explanation for republicans in the house just blocking these? >> none. there's only one explanation. it goes back to what mitch mcconnell said 20 months ago, that the single most important thing they want to achieve is the president is not reelected, and they are carrying that out. what president obama said today is exactly right, except when he said congress, it's the republicans in congress who don't want anything to happen, and they're blocking the highway bill. they're blocking the other provisions mentioned by the president today. i sent a letter last friday to the chairman of the ways and means committee. i'm the ranking member, and i listed six bills that would help create jobs. they've been sitting on them, and the answer to my letter has been silence. november 6th is what the republicans have in mind. we need to throw down the gauntlet and get this economy

moving even better. >> now, we'll admit romney today really attacked the president and said, congressman, we really don't need to worry about, in effect, policemen and firefighters. let me show you what he said. >> he wants another stimulus. he wants to hire more government workers. he says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. it's time for us to cut back on government and help the american people. >> we don't need to hire more firefighters and policemen and teachers. we don't need stimulus. what is he talking about, congressman? >> i think you need to ask governor romney. the public sector has been losing jobs. here in michigan, firefighters have been laid off. policemen have been laid off. we don't need them? i think governor romney is really talking much too politically, and he needs to go back and talk to the people. have him come back here in michigan, and we'll let him know

whether we need more policemen and more firefighters. >> i hear that. jared, let me ask you. stimulus? how do you recover without some stimulus, without some government investment? i was reading paul krugman this morning. he talked about a big spending president. very interesting. he says, if you look at their records, three years into their terms, you'll see that under one president, real per capita government spending at that point was about -- was 14.4% higher than four years previously under the other. less than half as much, just 6.4%. reagan, not obama, was the big spender. now, these are the people at the party that raised up ronald reagan as the great role model and as the father of conservatism. reagan spent money, and he wasn't even dealing with near

the economic problems that president obama faced. >> ronald reagan would last about 30 seconds in today's republican party despite their rhetoric. he also raised taxes 11 times. look, you asked a question about stimulus at a time like this. here's the way to think of it. look at all the economies throughout the globe who are unfortunately engaged in this pretty terrible natural experiment, when you see what happens when you impose austerity, that is fiscal contraction, on economies that are still demand constrained. that's a fancy way of saying they're not creating enough jobs on their own. this needs to be temporary, but it needs to happen now. it actually should have happened a year ago, as the president said when he proposed his jobs act, because the private sector is not yet back up, recovered, fully recovered from the depths of the great recession, and that's why these kinds of temporary measures are needed. and the counter example, you look at how the fiscal contraction, the republican

style plans are working across the globe, they're taking economies, and they're just wrenching the growth out of them. unemployment is 11% in the eurozone. is that what we want here? i don't think so. >> so you have used austerity, which has not worked, and, in essence, trying to use the same kind of economic philosophy here? >> that's correct. >> congressman, let me -- >> jared, let me just mention, reverend sharpton. there was a hearing yesterday, the day before, and a very, very neutral observer was challenged by the republicans about the stimulus package, and he indicated almost every economist said it worked. not perfectly, but it helped to create jobs. that's the truth. what the republicans have to be told is the truth and get off their duff. >> mr. clinton said the same thing yesterday, and i don't

think he's some kind of wild eyed liberal. >> not last time i checked. congressman, let me say something to you that i heard a wise man say what republicans may be doing with this job, and i want your opinion on what this wise man said. >> a deliberate effort now increasingly undisguised to close the door on action to engender job creation and economic growth before the election. it is indecent delicious. we owe it to the american people. >> we're not going to debate the guy's line, but what he said was very heavy. care to elaborate on that, congressman. >> well, you did at the beginning. we need job creation. the republicans are being

irresponsible. i said yesterday pernicious, and i meant it. and the president was right today to throw down the gauntlet, and the american people now need to respond, and all of us need to go out to the american people. i think the president needs to be kind of like harry truman and go out and talk about why it is pernicious for the republicans to refuse to act on jobs bills because it might hurt them on november 6th. we need to help the american people who need jobs. the government doesn't create them. we can help stimulate private sector growth, and we need to do that with proposals that the president has been presenting, reverend sharpton. it's really that clear. and a few days ago the majority leader in the house said all they're going to do between now and november 6th is to signal. no, we need action. we need action.

>> i couldn't agree with you more, congressman sander levin and jack bernstein, thanks to you both for joining me tonight. >> thank you for having me. coming up, mitt romney is playing fast and loose with the facts, but is claiming he is going to be the candidate of truth. >> i will not be that president of doubt and deception. i will lead us to a better place. >> well, tonight we're going to debut our willard meter to rate his deceptions. plus an offensive ad featuring an assault rifle because a big debate to replace gabby giffords. but the outrage goes much deeper. we'll talk to some experts who think the republicans are the problem in washington and have the facts to back them up. all multivitamins give me the basics.

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of doubt and deception. i will lead us to a better place. >> how about that? willard mitt romney says he won't be a president of deception. that's an odd statement from a man who plays loose with the facts day in and day out, a man who has made twisting the truth the benchmark of his campaign. so i've decided to break out the willard meter. we're going to judge romney's statements on a scale of 0 to 4 willards. zero means he's telling the truth. four means, well, he's really, really not telling the truth. and we're ready to try it. let's start with governor romney's speech today. >> if i'm the president of the united states, we're going to stop this out of control spending, this prairie fire of debt. >> that's a two willard. sure, you might help the debt fire, but it would be hard when you're pouring gasoline on it. your tax cuts would add over $2.5 trillion to the deficit.

let's try another. >> 3 1/2 years in as president with america in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, he hasn't put forward a plan to get us working again. >> well done. 4 out of 4 willards. really, the president doesn't have a job plan? tell that to the 31 million americans who watched him pitch the american jobs act to congress. but let's be honest. romney's been pushing the willard meter to the limit since his very first ad. >> we need to provide relief for homeowners. it's going to take a new direction. if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose, lose, lose. >> willard, that one broke my machine. that ad took the president completely out of context, and what's worse, your campaign still has it posted on youtube.

here's a reminder of what obama actually said. >> senator mccain's campaign actually said -- and i quote -- if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose. >> joining me now is steve carnacki, political columnist for salon.com and msnbc political analyst. he's writing about mitt's empty jobs boast today. and anna marie koch, for the guardian. steve, seems different this time around, don't you think? >> it really does. what romney is trying to do is basically give voters rationalizations. the assumption of the romney campaign is, look, if the anxiety of the average voter is high enough because of where the economy is, they're going to look for reasons to vote against him. what the romney campaign has

decided is we don't need to deal in facts to give them rationalizations. if they're operating from an emotional place, let's give them arguments that feed the emotion, even if they're not necessarily rational. saying that obama doesn't have a plan on jobs, that can come from no other place but a strategy that's designed to feed on emotion like that. >> so anna marie, facts don't matter. let me show you this. romney had two events this morning that were within an hour of each other. i want you to watch. look how he takes on -- held his take on congress change depending on who he was speaking before. watch this. >> you also hope that congress would look from time to time at how an act is being implemented and how it's being use d as congress gives a blank check, if you will, in terms of their authority. he's looking around for someone to blame. he's trying to blame congress. he had his way with congress, and what he did didn't produce the results we were looking for. >> looks like different setting,

different take on congress. anna marie? >> it's true, but that's not a surprise coming from romney. he tailors his remarks to audiences pretty much all the time. about the only time he's caught at it -- or i should say it's more obvious when he's tailoring his remarks to various constituencies he doesn't understand, like when he's going to farm places or to detroit. but he also does it with policy, and that's true. i think that steve has a really good point. i think the romney campaign feels they can do this because they are depending on the fear and anxiety of the american people. if that fear and anxiety is amped up enough, they're just going to go off of being told what they want to hear. >> romney reduced unemployment to just 4.7%. he balanced every budget without raising taxes. he did it by bringing parties together to cut through gridlock.

>> now, when you look at that ad, you have to laugh, steve. it's friday night. but i mean, it's a little loose on the facts. yes, unemployment fell under romney. but it was still higher than the national average when he left office. romney didn't raise taxes per se, but he raised $500 million in new fees. yes, he balanced the budget, but that's required in massachusetts. i mean, it's really, really deceptive, is that the word you use? >> or we could say slippery. the balanced budge set a perfect example because he paints that in his ad as this great coming together, bipartisan effect that he had as massachusetts governor. the reality is in massachusetts the legislature is overwhelmingly democratic in both houses. if you have a republican governor and you have a democratic legislature, for romney to fulfill his constitutional duties as governor, he's going to have to work with the democrats, and they're going to have to pass a balanced budget.

we look at it in the context right now, people hear about a $16 trillion national debt, and people think, wow, balanced budget, great achievement. but every governor in massachusetts does this and every governor in most states do this because most states have balanced budget amendments to their constitutions. >> anna marie, john mccain, if nothing else, was a pretty straight kind of -- straightforward kind of a guy. here you have a very different candidate in willard mitt romney. will the republicans stick with this kind of guy who obviously has a different kind of answer, depending on where he is and plays fast and furious with the facts? >> well, i guess it's going to depend on if he wins or not. the case is -- the fact is that he has a very good chance of winning in the fall, and i think it's actually in part because he's such a slippery character. i think there are a lot of people in the middle who think, you know what, he doesn't say what he means. maybe that means he'll do the pragmatic thing once he's in

office. that kind of is what he did when he was in massachusetts. i like what steve pointed out, he had to do those things he boasts about. that reminds me a little of what clinton was saying about the threshold of qualification. i thought the thing about that clinton quote was he seemed to define down very low what the qualifications to be president are, and indeed romney does meet those very low qualifications. he meets the very low qualifications for having to be a successful governor as well, if by governor you mean fulfill the constitutional duties that were assigned to him. >> you have to deal with not only romney's falsehoods, steve, you have to deal with the fact that the president's campaign is also going to have to compete with dishonest ads from right wing super pacs. nation magazine wrote this. "right wing groups are planning to spend $1 billion on the election. most will go to advertisements. and what will the advertisements

consist of? intellectually dishonest attacks on obama's record." a lot of people are beginning to feel, particularly after wisconsin, what's going to define this year is big money that is pushing out big lies. >> i'll tell you, to be honest, i have a contrarian view on the effect that money is going to have on this race. there's going to be a record massive amount spent on the presidential race. presidential general election races are different than every other race in the country. almost every other race, yes, the money will be a decisive factor. in presidential general elect n electio elections, everybody is talking about it. there's the news media, the entertainment media. there's enough information out there for sort of swing voters, the ads do not play the same sort of decisive role that they will in a congressional race n a payoral race. if obama has the money to run the campaign he wants, even if he gets outspent, there's a real diminishing return on the tens of millions of dollars. >> ana marie, do we really know that?

this is the first time we have an election after the supreme court decision that takes the lid off of money. so conventional wisdom may hold this year, and it may not, given the kind of unlimited access to money, super pacs and outside groups can have without even disclosing, in some cases, where it's coming from. >> that's right. it's funny because i've talked to some political scientists. i talked to political scientists fairly often, and they tend to disagree with us on cable news about how much importance cable news has and how much important those ads have. most people make up their minds pretty close to the election. most people make up their minds pretty soberly thinking about what would be best for the country. but most people say, you know what, we've never seen an election like this before. we've never seen this kind of money before. this amount of money going into this kind of targeted advertising. i'm sorry. no one really knows what's going to happen in terms of this massive amount of money that's being poured in. and i want to point out, it

doesn't go just to ads. i mean, it goes to all sorts of things. and those things can make a difference as well when it comes to organizing, door knocking, spreading rumors, who knows? >> all kinds of things. steve karnacki and ana marie, thanks for coming on the show tonight. both of you have a great weekend. >> you too. >> ahead, republicans on the masters of gridlock. tonight we'll try to figure out how extreme they've become and if there's a way for the president to break through. and days away from the election for gabby giffords' seat, a major controversy is brewing. why is the republican challenger holding a rifle? some big questions about his supporters. that's next. [ female announcer ] introducing a match made in skin heaven.

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issue alive and don't let people forget this come voting day." don't worry, irene. we'll definitely be staying on this story. we want to hear what you think too. head over to facebook and search "politics nation" and like us to join the conversation that keeps going long after the show ends. we hope to see you there. in here, heavy rental equipment in the middle of nowhere, 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. ♪

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we're back on "politics nation" with a story that needs attention. less than a year and a half ago, this was the scene in the aftermath of one of the worst shooting sprees in american history, the massacre outside a supermarket in tucson, arizona, where congresswoman gabby giffords was holding a constituents meeting. vigils were held all over the city of tucson and all over the country. it was january 8th, 2011. 19 people were shot, and 6 lost their lives that morning.

it left a nation mourning and in shock. congresswoman giffords was shot in the head at point blank range. she miraculously survived and continues a long road back today. ron barber, congresswoman giffords' district director, was shot in the face and the leg. he spent over a month in the hospital but survived. and now he's running as a democrat to take his former boss' seat in congress. the special election is this tuesday. he'll be facing this man, jesse kelly. kelly ran and lost against giffords in 2010's congressional race. he's a member of the tea party, a former marine, who served in the iraq war. in 2010 he called liberalism an infectious disease and also called congresswoman giffords useless and a hero of nothing. in 2010 he held a campaign gun

event calling supporters to get on target for victory in november. help remove giffords from office and to shoot a fully automatic m16 with kelly at the event. that was before the tragedy, and it had nothing to do with it, but it's still unacceptable. that brings us to the present day. check out this campaign ad e-mailed by a pac supporting kelly put out. "jesse kelly for congress." what do you see? you see kelly holding an assault rifle. he's running again for gabby giffords' seat, against a man shot in the tragedy, and this is how the pac wants to portray him? but there's more reason to be concerned. his links to the americans for legal immigration pac. in 2010 kelly received an endorsement from this group also

known as ali-pac. it claims to be one of america's top immigration enforcement and border security advocacy groups. but they're linked to several white supremacist groups, including the social club. the adl calls it, quote, hard-core racist skinhead group. and the adl links ali-pac to the largest socialist movement, the largest neo-nazi group in the country. in 2010 when john mccain was running against an ali-pac endorsed challenger, his campaign slammed the group calling them an extreme fringe group linked to white supremacist neo-nazis and anti-semites who condone raciveracisracism. last month kelly sat down for a

local interview on arizona tv and was asked about it. watch what happened. >> we have something from one of our viewers again. this is joe who said recently you accepted the endorsement of americans for legal immigration group. senator john mccain and american defamation league have denounced -- >> that's false. i did not accept it. that's false. that was from 2010. would you please read correct answers. >> this is not an answer. this is -- >> that's not recent. >> hang on one second. do you want to come into the shot? >> you can ask it again. >> i'll ask the question, and you can address it how you choose. so joe says recently you had accepted the endorsement of the americans for illegal immigration group. he's saying this was in 2010. senator john mccain and the anti-defamation league have denounced the group for being backed by white supremacists, neo-nazis, and anti-semites. why do you accept the endorsement? >> that was in 2010. this job is about the economy

and lower gas prices. frankly, that's completely out of bounds. >> it was 2010. it's completely out of bounds. on may 18th of this year, ali-pac put out this press release, renewing endorsements for jesse kelly, who is running in arizona's 8th congressional district. is jess kelly rejecting this endorsement, rejecting the group, as john mccain did? here's what he's saying about this new endorsement. >> do you plan on accepting that endorsement this time? >> our campaign is going to stay focused on lower gas prices, using american energy, lower taxes, and creating jobs. >> do you plan on accepting that endorsement? >> our campaign is going to stay focused on lower taxes, lowering gas prices using american energy, and creating jobs. >> is that a yes or a no? >> our campaign is going to stay focused on lowering gas prices, creating jobs, and lowering gas prices using american energy. >> so no comment? >> our campaign is going to stay

focused on lowering gas prices, creating jobs, and lowering taxes. >> thanks, jesse. >> focused on taxes and jobs. seems to be a theme there. he refuses to denounce this group as an endorser. now just four days away from the special election for gabby giffords' seat, here's what his spokesman had to say about that pac and their pac ad with the gun. "we are focused on lowering taxes, growing the economy, and lowering gas prices using american energy." once again, refusing to denounce the ad this pac put out. folks, this is as insensitive as it gets in politics. joining me now is melissa harris, host of msnbc's "melissa harris perry" show. what do you make of kelly not denouncing this ad? >> watching that was comical and

painful in that clearly local candidates are trained to stay on message. so the idea, when someone asks you a question, particularly a media person asks you a question you don't want to answer, you deflect, get back on message. >> sometimes you use different words. >> mitt romney is actually very good at it, but watching this particular all i can say are these words because i have no capacity to account for this deeply troubling relationship between this candidate and this pac, i think for me his unwillingness to in any way address that problematic relationship should raise red flags for every voter in that district. >> there seems to be a problem around the state, though, because there's a campaign ad running today for arizona state senator ron gould, who's also running for congress, and it shows him blasting president obama's health care reform with a pump action shotgun. watch. >> government run health care,

we don't want it, we don't need it, we can't afford it. this is what i'd do to that law. pull. [ gunshot ] i'm ron gould, and i approve this message because washington needs a straight shooter. pull. >> i mean, this is -- this is a state where we saw one of the worst shooting sprees we've ever seen, and yet a year later, little over a year later, we have all these political ads and little groups that are running around that are openly using violent kinds of ads, violent connections to hate groups. i mean, what's going on? >> let me say this. i live in louisiana. we are the sportsmen's paradise. we love our guns in that state. there is no question that across partisanship, across any logical divides, people have attachments to their guns and often see guns

as simply a part of culture and not an actual indication as an attempt at violence. that second ad, as troubling as it might be, especially for those living on the east coast and aren't part of gun culture and might find that very shocking. i find it very distinct from that first set of concerns, where you have someone actually running in gabby giffords' seat, and given that he himself is a military veteran, is someone who understands what it means to be on the front lines for your country, i mean, whatever else gabby giffords' former employee, who's now running in that seat, is, he's a courageous american. he's someone who, despite the violence against himself and against miss giffords -- >> and watched people die. >> that's right. i am willing to stand up for my country, stand up for the things i believe in, at a minimum n that race, you have to acknowledge, especially if you are a veteran who has been in war, you acknowledge that this is a front line effort and that, even if you have deep partisan

disagreements, that you can agree that everybody in this scenario can be a hero. >> >> but don't you also expect that someone who has fought in the war, someone who's a veteran, and i would guess would say he's a patriot, would deal with the sensitivity that this is a special election. >> exactly. >> because the fact the incumbent congresswoman had to step aside because she was shot. he's running against someone that was shot. so even if you were dealing on a normal circumstance, you clearly want to denounce extremist groups, hate groups, skinhead groups who may be supporting you, and be very sensitive to any innuendo around violence. >> absolutely. >> i mean, this is a special election for special reasons. >> that's right. you don't allow the gun in that picture, and you are very clear that you do not support supremacy. his inability to do that, his unwillingness to do that, i think is an indication of much more than wanting to win the

election and it's much more than just incensetisensitiveinsensit unwillingness to recognize how violence impacts us as a country, and that makes him unfit. >> and that kind of violence is the only reason they're having an election. the election is tuesday. ms. harris-perry, thank you for your time tonight. don't forget, catch melissa harris-perry weekends from 10:00 to noon right here on msnbc. coming up, new evidence on how extreme the republicans have become and new ideas about how president obama can break through. and then willard's looking for a new buddy for the campaign trail, but he's not finding many takers. stay with us.

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like a ramen noodle- every-night budget. she thought allstate car insurance was out of her reach. until she heard about the value plan. see how much you could save with allstate. are you in good hands? earlier in this show, one of my guests said president reagan wouldn't last 30 seconds in this gop. it's undeniable, the republican

party is becoming more extreme by the day and is hurting the country. president obama made that point back in april. >> the positions i'm taking now on the budget and a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago, would have been considered squarely centrist positions. what's changed is the center of the republican party. >> a new pew survey shows that republicans have become far more extreme in their views than democrats have over the last 25 years. for example, republican support for the safety net has dropped 22%, but among democrats, it stayed basically the same. and while republican support for environmental laws have dropped 39%, support among democrats hasn't changed.

the party's lurch to the right has also affected congress, where the gop's extreme views have led to gridlock. in fact, a recent washington post op-ed said, quote, the republicans are the problem. joining me now is the men who wrote that op-ed and who literally wrote the book on this. thomas mann, a senior fellow at the brookings institute, and norman, an american scholar at the american intersurprise institute. their new book is called "it's even worse than it looks." and they say, "the republican party has become a resurgent outlier, ideologically extreme, cornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science." thank you both for being here tonight. >> happy to be with you. >> thomas mann, those are strong words. tell us what you found in your

research. >> they are strong words, and words we're not accustomed to using in our descriptions and writing on congress and the american political system, but the more we experience the last several years and reviewed the scholarly research, the conclusion was inevitable that, while both parties had been subject to this polarization, the republican party has really run off the tracks. and now with the democratic president, they had decided that their objective, their end of getting him out of office justifies any means whatsoever, including threatening the full faith and credit of the united states. >> now, norm ornstein, let me show you this graph of the rise

in filibusters in the senate over the past 45 years. now, in your book, an excerpt of your book on the rise of filibusters in the senate, you say especially since obama's inauguration in 2009, the filibuster is more often a stealth weapon, which minority republicans use not to highlight an important national issue but to delay and obstruct quietly. this persuasive use of the filibuster has never before happened in the history -- no. this pervasive use of the filibuster has never happened before in the history of the senate. >> it's pervasive and persuasive, al. you know, this really is different. and you can be extreme in ideology, but what's happened as well is an extremity in terms of tactics that are used.

the filibuster, the rule hasn't changed since 1975, but the last few years, it's used not to represent a minority feeling intensely about an issue of great national significance, but regularly on nominations and on bills as a pure tool of obstruction. i say that with reference to nominations and bills that ultimately passed unanimously. they're using filibusters to stretch things out, to use up the precious commodity of time, and it's only one of a number of tactics that are different. of course, tom referred to the debt limit. this the first time ever, and now we're go to have the second time where we're about to have the full faith and credit of the united states taken hostage. >> and it stops the process of government. when you look at it, tom, district court judge confirmations. let me pick that one. after three years in office,

george bush had 91% confirmations. barack obama, 73%. confirmations of civilian nominees under democratic controlled senates. george bush, 75%. barack obama, 57%. they're actually stopping appointments, stopping the process of government. >> well, that's right. now, to be fair, in previous years, democrats would use opposition to republican nominees to the courts as a way of way of expressing their difference, but now it's gone so much further than that. we see, for example, a bill being enacted into law over republican opposition. they fail to stop it, but then they use a filibuster to prevent the nominee for the person to direct the agency to carry out

the law. >> i'm going to have to hold you there, thomas. we're going to have you back. i want to thank you guys for pointing out the problem. we're going to talk a lot about how we break through and solve it. thomas mann and norman ornstein, thank you very much for being here. we're sitting on a bunch of shale gas. there's natural gas under my town. it's a game changer. ♪ it means cleaner, cheaper american-made energy. but we've got to be careful how we get it. design the wells to be safe. thousands of jobs. use the most advanced technology to protect our water.

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folks, it was news to me, but it turns out today is an important day of celebration in this country. it's national best friends day, a chance to meet up with old friends or try to make new ones, and we know at least one man who's on the hunt for a new bff. willard "mitt" romney is on the lookout for the perfect person to campaign with this fall, but he's having a tough time. >> i'm not going to do it, and i'm not going to be asked, and it's not going to happen. >> it's not an office i want to hold, expect to hold, have any plans to hold. if i thought that call was

coming, i'd disconnect the phone. >> i'm not going to be vice president. >> the answer is i'm not going to be considering that, and i've taken myself off the list. >> this is just a no? you're not interested? >> that's right. how many ways can i say it? not me. >> doesn't sound like too many folks are interested in the gig. fortunately, they're at least willing to help put other people's names out there. >> paul ryan. i'd probably suggest he put him on the ticket. >> i think a lot of senator rob horton would be a phenomenal choice. >> rodney portman, does that have a ring to it? >> rubio has a better ring to it. >> senator rubio, senator portman in ohio. he's got a lot of great choices. >> among many great candidates for president, marco is probably the best. >> that's very nice of jeb. i hope he'll say yes if future president romney asks him. >> willard, i know it's not easy to find a best friend. sometimes it works out pretty well, and other times, well, it's a bit more complicated. there's an old saying that, if

you need a friend in washington, you should get a dog. unfortunately for willard, the dogs might know better. well, since i found out what today is, i'd better check on my friends. i have some friends in these states. i'd better check on their voter i.d. i've got a friend in florida. i hope they aren't purged. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. those other olympic games. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start with this matter of war and peace the president addressed today. this is a stunning development. listening to the president earlier today, i got the clear impression that we, the united states, are doing everything we can to avert another shooting war in the islamic war. if we get into such a war by bombing iran or helping or