>>> talk to senator mccain in a moment i want to begin with our roundtable, joining me here, alex castellanosnant governor of california and author of the new book "citizenville," gavin newsom, former chair and you ceo of hewlett-packard, carly fiorina and our own, msnbc's' chris matthews. chris you let me start with you. we heard from mcdonough on makele, not going to be a weaker secretary of defense when all of this is done. how does play out and what is the last thing he said? >> he is going to have to prove himself. starting with a lot of criticism. he will start with a lot of the republicans voting against him, maybe a few for him tend. he has to prove himself. he has not been a strong nominee in his performance there are questions about him which are legitimate, i think he may benefit from the fact that i think senator cruz went overboard the past week with the innuendos, things like that guilt by associations, i think the senate will react to that the senate has a lot of pride in the institution, you heard fromsome, you heard from senator graham, almost like we are looking back on advi

joining us, the democratic strategist, paul begala and alex castellanos. s that say to you that the senators have picked marco rubio? [ speaking in spanish ] >> i think it's a great idea that they are putting him up against a new generation of democrat. barack obama moved the ball forward for democrats and now you're seeing the next generation of republicans step up. he's one of our most talented republicans but also represents new ideas. he's what we would call a bottom up republican. grow the economy up from the bottom up, not top down. >> the fact that he's going to do it in spanish as well, that will appeal to some latinos and hispanics out there? >> absolutely. it's a terrific choice. he's an outstanding speaker. i've seen him speak and he is powerful and mesmerizing. but i think he's made two different primaries. first the latino primary, him and ted cruz, the new senator from texas who has stumbled a bit. rubio has been more of the barack obama and hillary clinton model. he's been careful about how he uses that star power and also his opponent is pro

let's talk to the democratic strategist donna brazil and the florida republican strategist alex castellanosch, guys, for coming in. alec, i know you think there's a lot of hypocrisy in the talk of the automatic spending cuts. why do you feel like there's so much hypocrisy? >> wolf, washington is holding a tantrum. it is threaten itting to hold its breath and turn blue and what it wants is money without restrictions or limits. we're being black mailed by our own public servants with our own tax dollars and it's the most outrageous thing i've ever seen. ronald reagan fired the air traffic controllers and we didn't miss a beat. the president should step up and say, look, let's set an example. if we're going to have to cut this budget, let's find the most effective and least painful ways to dit and instead washington is throwing a tantrum and threatening us that if you don't let us keep all the money we have, there isn't a penny we could save, why, the country is going to end. >> go ahead, donna. >> first of all, let's get the facts right. we have known for many, many months that this was going