i think john mccain is definitely holding out. i understand his emotions. it s not about fighting the last fight in vietnam, senator. it s about what we re doing in afghanistan right now. thank you, ron reagan, michael steele. sure. i hear you have a big job later in the week. get ready. coming up, former utah governor jon huntsman is runs for president. is there really room on the left in the republican party? this is serious. a guy positioning himself to the left of mitt romney. is there a real center out there for today s republican party? or is it all drinking tea bags? whatever republicans. you re watching hardball on msnbc.
barrel spending through the tax code, has got to be part of any solution. okay. i hope so. thank you. thank you so much for coming on. congressman chris who is leading this democrats in this negotiation. when we return, let me finish with something jon huntsman said don t.
favor huntsman over romney, but i don t have a choice in that race. i think that h and the republican stakes now, here s a man who doesn t know who he is. he was for gay marriage when he was governor, now against it. he was for abortion when he was governor. now he s against it. he was what are some of the other things? oh, health care. we modeled our bill to a large degree about what he did in massachusetts. now he s trying to run from that. if someone doesn t know who they are, they shouldn t be president of the united states. to me that s the killer question and issue of the 2012 election. is the republican front-runner an empty suit? he doesn t even know who he is. there s the guy who knows him well, an says he doesn t. i think huntsman running is another statement. romney doesn t know who he is. mark mckinney joins us, daily beast contributor. what a beast you are.
person necessarily. tell us the truth. michele bachmann. that s the right answer. why don t you say that? herman cain. you re being trivial. we don t do this here. who would be the toughest to opponent for president? be honest. i ll give you a minute. i think you could make a case for any one of these folks to give the president a tough time. why are you doing this? are you still working for those guys? i don t think there s one person you can point to. i can tell you right now huntsman will be the toughest, because he would go to the center and the center is in play. if you look at huntsman, who knows what he s for. you look at his announcement today okay. you re doing muhammad ali. let s move on here. you re dancing all over the place. what do you say? who s the toughest point for the white house? i think jon huntsman. also your guy. well, yes. which is the kiss of death for him i m sure. let me ask you about this. here s the big question. we set this
something a lot of people like, which is talking back to somebody who seemed to be asking what might have been an invasive question. in fact not a very nice question. here he is. here s a person asking about why he sends his kids to catholic private school. let s listen. you don t send your children to public schools. you send them to private schools. i was wondering why you think it s fair to be cutting school funding to public schools. what s her name? gail. talk to gail. first off, it s none of your business. i don t ask you where you send your kids to school. don t bother me about where i send mine. secondly, i pay $38,000 a year in property taxes for a public school system predominantly that my wife and i don t choose to utilize. because we believe, we ve decided as parents that we believe religious education should be part of our children s everyday education. so we send our children to parochial school. third, i as governor am responsible for every child in this state, n