when you say that, that s what i mean. overall, so you view him as sort of he is the leader of the republican party, the face of the party? yes, i heard in the earlier segment talking about michael steele. i m sure he s a factor as chairman of the republican national convention. committee. but i m just looking at my race and not worrying about what the republicans are doing. we have tremendous challenges here in rhode island. high unemployment and a big budget deficit. so that s where i m butting my focus, getting our people back to work, solving the budget deficit. i m not worrying about what the republicans are doing. i want to both of you are running for governor and there s a lot of strain being put on state budgets. mr. cahill, are you prepared to lay off state workers if you become governor, even in this economic environment? absolutely. i think we have to. we have to rein in state spending as chaffee said. we have to make government smaller and it has to work for the p
welcome back to hardball. in honor of independence day, we wanted to look at the political independent. the time could be right. in the may nbc/ wall street journal poll, nearly a third said the two-party system was seriously broken and even said that the country needs a third party. in our most recent poll, nearly half said if they re enthusiastic or comfortable running as an independent candidate. they both join us now. happy independence day. senator chaffee, i m going to start with you. what is it that you sort of left your party even before you officially left your party. it s easy to run as an independent these days, but what are your fears about governing
so we save those cities and towns from having to raise their property taxes or make drastic cuts such as cutting sports in schools. that just happened in one of our communities here in rhode island, all sports were cut. in one of our communities as a result of passing down the state problems to the cities and towns. so i m not opposed to that. senator chaffee is, former republican turned independent, treasurer kay had i, former democrat turned independent. we ll be following your races very closely up there in new england. thank you for joining us. happy fourth of july. up next, from demon sheep to gather your armies, we ve seen a slew of creative and some might say bizarre political ads. we ll count down the best of the bunch when we return. this is hardball only on msnbc.