>> running for president isn't like opening a lemonade stand on the corner. >> i reid, really don't think she's going to run. >> a big fat weekend of nothing. >> palin's vacation comes at the expense of over republicans. >> romney, huntsman, pawlenty. >> the summer of speculation. >> rude eye giuliani is hinting he will join. >> republicans' biggest problems may be governors from their own party. >> this wave of governors that came in last fall. >> rick perry deciding to listen again. >> strickland in ohio now losing. >> president obama is especialing his ground game in places like florida. >> rick scott has the lowest approval rating of any governor. >> republicans in washington aren't helping either. >> this is kind of a way of trying to embarrass the president. >> a vote on raising the debt ceiling. >> it's expected to fail. >> it isn't expected to pass. >> doomed to fail today. >> the rest of washington wastes a day obsessing over a crotch shot. >> congressman anthony wiener has hired a lawyer. >> wiener claims somehow hacked into his account. >> a nude photograph was sent from his twitter account. >> a close up photo of a man in his underwear. >> it is easy to hack into a twitter account. >> telling politico, the weaner gags never get old. good evening from washington. today mark's sarah palin's third day of her personal publicity bus tour. through america's federally funded national historic sites. so far she and her family have visited the national archives. turned a memorial day to raise awareness for pows into a photo op of herself on a motorcycle. and learned about the war of 58128 in fort mchenry, maryland, of what appears to be a federal employee tour guide in a hat. this is beyond red and blue if ever i've seen it. today they toured gettysburg and the liberty bell in philadelphia. predictably reporters are chasing palin at every spot of her personal publicity tour as it rolls through the northeast. when the half term governor's trolling of the media can't get anymore transparent, she has decided to have dinner with another presidential faker donald trump. mean whim, the media is literally driving right by a real development in the republican presidential primary taking place in trenton, new jersey. that's where a group of iowa republicans are trying to convince another brash half term republican governor chris cristy to enter the presidential race. gop big money donor delightfully described as an iowa hog and ethanol baron along with a delegation of six other prominent iowa businessmen flew in by private jet to have dinner with cristy at the governor's mansion. this amounts to a little more than a hail mary pass from activists. governor cristy has repeatedly said he is net running for president in 2012. it says a lot about the dissatisfaction republican haves with the gop field as it currently stands. these iowa donors are not interested in full term governor tim pawlenty who announced his campaign in iowa last monday or republican front runner mitt romney who served a full term as governor who has a major accomplishment to show for it. romney's presidential campaign which he will officially announce thursday in new hampshire continues to be dogged by the health care reform law he signed into law in massachusetts. in an interview with the "today" show, he defended the law which was the prototype for the national health care reform law signed by president obama last year. >> i understand that there are a lot of people who would just like me to get up and say it was a terrible idea. a bone headed idea. it's a terrible mistake. and there's only one problem with that, it wouldn't be honest. what we did was to solve a very serious need that existed in our state. >> this issue will continue to dog romney's campaign. even when he offers up standard obama bashing red meat like this. >> overall give me a grade on his presidency. how has he done? >> he's failed. >> an f? >> absolutely. >> the democratic national committee gleefully points us to this. >> three years into the health care reform experiment governor romney gives it high praise. >> what's the report card look like? >> i give it an a. >> the heritage foundation worked with romney on the individual mandate. now the conservatives is a center right idea advocated by richard nixon and nursed in various right-wing think tanks. joining me now is msnbc contributor jonathan cape it's hart. >> thanks for having me, chris. >> what do you make of this mad dash to draft someone else this constantly casting one's eyes about and flying in private jets across the country. >> trying to convince people that they would commit suicide in order to convince people that he does not want to be president. that he doesn't think he is ready to be president. incredible candor. still folks in the republican party are casting about. >> why is that? if you zoom out 1,000 miles and you view this as an alien from space and you were presented this -- mitt romney seems like a perfectly credible perfect candidate. tim pawlenty he was elected. he was a governor. >> twice. >> what's -- why are they so unsatisfied? >> i think, mitt romney's problem is that he was for one thing years ago and it was another thing in 2004, 2008 and now he's trying to be something else. tim pawlenty is someone who people just -- he's just not exciting. he's not electric. he's great on paper. just not electric. sarah palin is the one who keeps teasing everyone that she's going to run. we all know she's not going to run. michelle bachmann is going to run. we all know that she possibly knows that she can't win. she could maybe win the nomination. she could never win the presidency from president obama. they are desperate. think about it, democrats at this time they had their candidates. they were wildly excited about just about every democrat who ran and unfortunately it's not the same with the republicans. >> i think this sort of obsession with cristy is particularly revealing for this reason, he's become not only a hero in conservative circles. but there's also a sense that he's giving people what he wants and his tough bull in a china shop routine wears well and that's what america's for. pollers found his net negative favorablity rating 40%. 45% have an unfavorable view. this is the guy, the guy who is unfavorable view in his own state who they're going to. what does that say about this sort of gap about the reality in republican circles and what voters want. >> i think what's going on with cristy is people love the fact that he is not afraid to tell the truth. he's not afraid to be candid. he's not afraid to yell at people for yelling at him. it's great. it's refreshing in politics where everyone is so preprogrammed. i work first-degree for mike bloomberg on his first campaign for mayor. this was a man who came into office who had to close a $6 billion budget gap. he went after taxes. he went after smoking. his poll numbers plummeted. even said he was done. he was over. within three years he was re-elected by the second highest margin in new york city history just second to la gaurda. i think people in the republican party are looking at chris cristy and those poll numbers saying that's a snapshot in time. that's now. who knows where he could be this time next year. i still don't think they'll convince him to get in. >> i guess my final question here is about the kind of long-term trends. it seems to me like the panic in some ways as someone who spends a lot of time around democrats and liberals the worry there is about the economy and what's so strange about this sort of panic on the republican side to find a new candidate, the economic numbers are incredibly soft. we have growth numbers out from the first quarter down to 1.6%. it seems like that's going to be the thing that's going to determine ultimately this outcome. >> it could be no matter who the republicans put up, the president could give that person a run for his money simply because the american people are not feeling the economic recovery as we see it now and maybe it's not a recovery a year from now. or you know, the american people are you know, we went for change in 2008. it's time to change again in 2012 whether that's romney or pawlenty or bachmann, who knows. >> we've seen that restlessness in the last election. 2008 was anti-incumbent. you've seen this serial discontent. >> i would actually argue that we have seen the american electorate has been restless since 2000. since the fight between bush and gore. they have been sending congress back and forth between republicans and democrats not so much the white house but with president obama they said we want change. in the special elections in new jersey, the massachusetts senate race, virginia they said, not so much. so the american people are they're a little cranky. >> appreciate it. >> thank you. joining me now is a washington correspondent for "the new yorker" magazine. >> how are you, chris? >> you have a good piece this week tracking how romney's health care legislation came about and how it influenced the white house. we see the white house applying this death hug all the time to romney over the health care bill. i wonder how much relationship do the two pieces of legislation actually bear to each other? >> the main architecture is identical. you have this idea that we should subsidize the poor to buy private insurance, right. there are other ways you can expand health insurance coverage for people. the way that romney did it and the way that obama did it they wanted private insurance. you give subsidies to the folks who can't afford it. if you do that, you've got to fix the individual insurance market. it's very difficult to buy insurance on the individual market. you set up an insurance exchange. it's modelled on a stock market exchange or ebay or car max. a single place where it's easy to buy something. once you do those two things you need to basically get everyone in the same insurance pool so insurance premiums aren't out of control so you're not just getting sick to sign up. we need a mandate to tell everybody that they have to carry health insurance. subsidies, insurance exchange, mandate was first tried and frankly successfully in massachusetts. nowhere else. and the main people who helped romney put that plan together became very influential in the washington debate. in essence that model was exported from boston to washington. ted kennedy, gruber the economist who helped romney with his plan became the principal health care economist for the white house who did the model elling. folks like john kingsdale who ran romney care became an influential person for the white house and for the hill in testifying and explaining how that plan worked in massachusetts and how you could apply it nationally. so the linkage is very direct, chris. >> you've got this scene in the magazine article in which romney is making a huge pomp and circumstances of signing the bill. it was a triumphant moment that was seen as a spring board to national political aspirations. there's a great quote from jim demin saying basically, i think romney would make a great president look at his compromise in health care in massachusetts. what has changed this was the top item on his resume to this universe in which it is the number one thing emperilling his shot at nomination. >> jim demint ranks him as the most republican hero in the senate. look what's happened since 2006-2007 when this was seen as a successful piece of legislation by conservatives, romney's health care bill is a pop list uprising some of libertarian surge in the republican party. i think you could pinpoint the date almost in the wake of the financial crisis when the house of representatives voted against the first bush bank bail out bill. i think ever since that moment you had a cascading series of events that have pushed the republican party in a more libertarian anti-government direction. that happens anyway when you have a democratic president. it happened with clinton. it happened with carter. it happened with johnson. it happened with kennedy. it's a fundamental fact of american politics. when you have a democratic party conservatives go way to the right. but in addition to that you had a liberal agenda that was pretty aggressive. you had a bailout -- you had tarp that obama inherited. you had a pretty aggressive health care plan, cap and trade. all things on the right's eyes were -- >> the dreaded overreach. his article about romney care is in this issue of "the new yorker." you have to pick it up on the newsstands. it is not available online. thanks a lot. >> thanks, chris. coming up, the voting grower's remorris over the election of republican governors. could it give president obama's re-election bid a big boost. and the disingenuous debate over the debt ceiling reaches a sad and confusing new low tonight. why the republicans aloud an up or down vote in the house with no strings attached. lion networs will roam the earth. that's seven devices per person. this will change how we work in ways we've never before imagined. what do you need to secure your people, their devices, and your business? 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remarkably in seven out of eight races including michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, iowa and georgia, the democrat would win if the race were held today. joining me now is jennifer graham home former governor of michigan and currently practitioner of law and public policy at the university of california berkeley. >> thanks for having me on. >> you're currently writing a book called "the governor's story", the lessons from michigan's experience. the current governor rick snyder has job approval ratings quite low 33%. i wonder what you think the wrong lessons are that he took away? >> i'm not going to talk about him. i can tell you that i think what happened in november is the republicans were elected, took what they thought a lesson to america which is all about cutting. what the people i think voted for was change. those are not necessarily the same thing. people wanted to see a governor focus on jobs and what you're seeing in many of these states is governors that are focused on cutting funding for planned parenthood or drug testing, things that are not going to salvage the economy. frankly, chris, as a governor of a state what has been in an economic crisis for many, many years because of the meltdown in the auto industry, you know, governors are realizing in the same way that people are realizing that a governor does not have a magic wand. and cannot do the things perhaps that they campaigned on like fixing the economy. >> well, that brings me to the second point, which is that 49 i believe of 50 states have state constitutions that bind them to balance their budgets every year and that's obviously extremely difficult during the most acute recession since the great depression. and so what we're seeing is sort of fiscal contraction in the states. we're seeing layoffs of state workers and stuff. do you think the federal government has sort of dropped the ball? i mean, has it been insufficient support from the federal government? is that part of the problem here? >> i think clearly the federal government must play a bigger role in economic growth in our country like the governments of other countries are doing. i think that the old theory of laissez faire, hands off, a government shouldn't be involved in job growth or in the economy is completely unakronistic in a global economy. when we're competing with countries that are intervening to be able to save jobs. that's why i think the federal support is to create ways that the u.s. can be more competitive. that is what is necessary. you need an active, strategic, smart government, but hands off is not going to do it anymore. specially given that this is a structural change in our nation's economy. >> that's a long-term answer. i want to sort of focus for a second about the short-term. you're right. clearly there's a whole variety of things that need to be done in terms of long-term policy about how we create full employment and robust and equatablely distribute growth in. the short-term with the cratering of demand that we're seeing particularly in the state of michigan hit as hard as any state many the union, what should we be doing? what do we say to people on the unemployment lines? >> i can tell you in 2010 michigan's job growth was greater than any state in the country. even after we had been through this meltdown because we had a partnership with the federal government for job creation in the automotive sector as well as in the clean energy sector. one of the reasons why we saw such growth was because we had strategic public-private partnerships to make that happen. what you're seeing when you think when rick scott turned that money back that these other governors didn't step up and say, hey, i'll take that if it's going to create jobs in my state, that's the kind of partnership that we need both with the federal government and a partnership between the public sector and private sector if we're going to create jobs in this nation. the mother of all potential marks, chris, is this clean energy ec