direction. yet the tea party wing wants to push the party further right in some cases. what s going on with the republican party? we ve got an expert. the former house republican majority leader and former freedomworks chairman dick armey. i will henceforth call you mr. armey. mr. armey, i m a hill rat, and i always look up to guys that have been elected. i m going to ask you broad questions, we ll narrow it down to freedomworks later on. what s going on with your party? i thought in that first debate romney had the number on the president. he s talking about spending, creating jobs, sticking to economics. he looked like he had a winning line, and then he went to benghazi and rape and rotten apple stuff. what should you party have been this year? why wasn t your party what it should have been this year? obviously there are a lot of foolish mistakes and that 48% of the american people thing that he did.
first i m going to go to freedomworks. i have to talk go ahead. i m happy to have that issue settled wherever it is. i don t consider that to be the driving concern, worry, anxiety, anxiousness of the american people. we re worried about whether or not our children will have a job, a safe home, comfort and warmth, and a future retirement. i think your party s main strength and your ideology main strength is government spending. i think most americans, right, center, except for the far left, think we re spending too much money by the federal government, and the deficit thing is real and the debt thing is real and we re really in trouble. i agree, and it s a great strength. you should play to your strengths. let me ask you about freedomworks. we ve had matt kibbe sitting in that chair across my table here so many nights, and he s a good spokesman for a conservative point of view, a tea party point of view. should we keep having him on or not? well, i mean, obviously it s your s
what do you recommend? when matt stays focused on the issues that are important to the broad base constituencies of this grassroots movement and the voting interests and on family concerns of the nation, he can be a good spokesman for them, but the question is, is he going to take his work and walk the walk along the same avenue as he talks the talk? when he gets misguided, when he gets a sense of misdirection for the activities, the energies, where he s going to put places, he probably ends up wasting a lot of opportunity and missing opportunities. but that s a course for him to work out. i m retired from freedomworks. they will have to work out their business on their own terms. what is the fight within freedomworks? what s the fight? tell us tell the outsider who is not a tea party person, not a freedomworks person, what is all this noise coming out of the tea party movement, especially freedomworks? what is the fight about? first of all, understand the tea party movement
strange, or miss the big points of the nation s biggest name one. name one. every party s platform well, name one. well, what is it, homosexual marriage, all right. abortion on demand. these issues are in your platform. you don t think it s strange for these issues to be in your platform pointing in one direction, but you consider it outrageous that the other party has the same issues pointing in another direction in their platform. well, the democratic party generally supports roe v. wade. it does not support abortion on demand. and i got to tell you, the issue that s going to be decided state by state, the issue of a marriage, and it s not going to be decided by a national point of view which is let s outlaw gay marriage. let me ask you about your situation. first i m going to go to freedomworks. i have to talk go ahead. i m happy to have that issue settled wherever it is. i don t consider that to be the driving concern, worry, anxiety, anxiousness of the american
welcome back to hardball. ever since the republicans lost in november, the parties appeared to be in kind of a civil war, and donors are zipping their wallets because these don t like the party s direction. yet the tea party wing wants to push the party further right in some cases. what s going on with the republican party? we ve got an expert. the former house republican majority leader and former freedomworks chairman dick armey. i will henceforth call you mr. armey. mr. armey, i m a hill rat, and i always look up to guys that have been elected. i m going to ask you broad questions, we ll narrow it down to freedomworks later on. what s going on with your party? i thought in that first debate romney had the number on the president. he s talking about spending, creating jobs, sticking to economics. he looked like he had a winning line, and then he went to benghazi and rape and rotten apple stuff. what should you party have been this year? why wasn t your party what it should have bee