intrigue on capitol hill, mckay. i thought it was because the gop loved john kerry, thought he was the best dude for the job. not anything to do with controlling the senate or having more power. as luke says, this seems to be as nakedly political as anything gets. this is absolutely a target on susan rice s back because she is president obama s pick to be secretary of state. the question is now, can the president back down? i mean, if he does not nominate susan rice, is he backing down to the gop? you have a president that wants to show he has a mandate coming out of the election, not just to tackle tax reform but to kind of flex his muscle and show, look, the majority of americans are on my side. house republicans just want to win, they want some kind of win here and they think that even john kerry, not always the republican s favorite democrat, would be considered a victory for them because it would be not president obama s first choice.
willing to spend. i want to leave you with one scenario before i cut off. if john kerry is nominated to be secretary of state, there s a special election in massachusetts, duval patrick, could he nominate himself to be senator from massachusetts? or i ve heard from some democrats the possibility that the only one who could beat scott brown would be joe kennedy iii. what a story that would be. throwing a stick of dynamite. joe kennedy iii in the house for a few weeks and then runs for the senate, that would be quite a story from a political reporter s standpoint. luke, sometimes we talk to you, it s kind of darkened halls, nothing much going on. today you are at the center of the action. fired up and ready to go. hey, coppens for mayor. mckay coppens for mayor. go on twitter if you don t know what that s about. thank you. tennessee senator bob corker spoke after his meeting with ambassador rice. we will bring you that after the break.
nominated. when she s nominated if she is nominated, let s see what her qualifications are. that s legitimate. you know what s amazing, we said this during the break we have not heard the name hillary clinton once as we talk about this. i think they re afraid to take hillary on. slap on the table for 2016, governor rendell. thanks to our panel. mckay coppens who ran to be here, i m sorry we did not have more face time with you. see you tomorrow live from washington, d.c., where i ll be having make nice meetings. we ll be here at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. pacific when joined by josh green, ryan grim and former dnc communications chair karen finney. find more outside in strategies and related snack foods that s a tease on our facebook page at facebook.com/now with alex. andrea mitchell reports is coming up next.
ambassadors begged for additional security. the ambassador to kenya sent repeated messages to the state department. i asked ambassador rice what her role was. she said that she would have to refresh her memory, but that she was not involved directly in turning down the request. joining the panel now is buzz feed s mckay coppens who literally ran across the brooklyn bridge to get here and from capitol hill someone who does i think a fair share of running my friend nbc s luke russert. luke, i want to go to you first on this. i think a lot of folks were holding their breath to see how susan collins would come out after her meetings with susan rice, given the fact that yesterday there was a no love loss between senators graham, mccain and ayotte. vis-a-vis the u.s./u.n. ambassador. were you surprised susan collins went into a new line of attacks
need them. oh, it s hard out there for a presidential candidate who is utterly irrelevant to the massive relief effort president obama is running in the aftermath of this week s historic storm. because the desperate and shameless romney campaign believes it cannot win the election without winning ohio, team romney pushed their poor candidate out onto a stage in ohio yesterday because the storm was still in progress in some states and the death count was climbing in new york and elsewhere. traditional political decency dictated that mitt romney not be caught campaigning yesterday. and so team romney hastily rewrote a campaign event into a non-campaign storm relief effort. thanks to buzzfeed reporter mckay coppens we now know exactly how they did that.