welcome to "the last word" holiday party where we will choose our person of the year and a whole lot more. >> whoa, whoa, whoa, let's step back for a minute. >> can we drop a little bit of the bolognbologna. >> pick any other republican in the country. >> i think it's about envy. >> he is the worst republican in the country. >> i think it's about class warfare. >> you chose to start the debate with it. don't try to blame somebody else. >> i'm the tortoise. i just take one step at a time. >> if you don't run, chris christie, romney will be the nominee. ♪ >> if men are from mars and women are from venous. >> republicans are waging the war on women. >> is mitt romney from jupiter. >> i believe the supreme court should overturn roev. wade, yes. >> i love you, women. >> back in my days they used bayer aspirin for contraception. >> the gals put it between your knees and it wasn't that costly. >> history will made at the supreme court. >> the individual mandate is constitutional. >> this is the decision. >> a fascinating week. >> i know the debate over this law has been witnessed. >> democrats thought they were going to lose and republicans thought they were going to win. >> i think roberts found the answer. >> when we look back we will be better off. >> governor romney's caught on tape moment. >> the shocking tape from romney. >> it's not elegantly stated. let me put it that way. i'm speaking off the cuff. >> in his words, nearly half of the country will never take personal responsibility for their lives. >> it's not elegantly stated. let me put it that way. i'm speak off the cuff. >> if i were a rich man, diby, diby, dibby dumb, dumb. >> people want to know who is going to win. who is going to score the punches. >> both presidential candidates battening down the hatches. >> i'm sorry, jim. i to be the subsidy to pbs. i like pbs. i love big bird. bought us binders full of women. >> governor, we also have fewer horses and bayon i don't know i don't know nets. >> big bird. >> binders. >> i just called president obama to congratulate him. >> i congratulated him and paul ryan on a hard fought campaign. >> i prey that the president will successf fuful in guiding nation. >> we are an american family and we rise or fall together. the task of perfecting our union moves forward. tonight we are celebrating the year in the news, the winnersnd the losers, the person of the year and we will handout the donald trump award to the person who has embarrassed him or herself the most this year. all right. let's start with the most valuable player of the 2012 presidential campaign. alex wagner, the most valuable player of the 2012 campaign. >> in my book, it's david pluf. i think this is a line in the sand for american campaign politics. i think, you know, you said beginnings of what with dean and certainly obama .10. >> crystal, most valuable player of the 2012 campaign. >> i have to say we don't know exactly his identity or her yooidity, but the -- probably the waiter who placed the camera at the mitt romney fund-raiser and captured the 47% comments which i think encapsulated for a lot of people their concerns about mitt romney and the fact that he really wasn't there for all of america that he didn't understand the problems that average americans were facing. >> let's listen to that little moment of video history, the 47%. >> there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. all right. 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has the responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. so my job is not to worry about those people. they should take responsibility and care for their lives. >> a very valuable contribution to the campaign. >> i'm going go with bill clinton. >> for one speech at a convention? >> it was more than one speech. it was 20 years in the making the story of that speech was for the first 15 years they treated bill clinton like he was the worst thing that ever happened in american politics, villain in chief and even after he left the white house he was afraid of the clinton restoration and 2008 when obama had the clintons when the republicans decided, wait a minute, no, bill clin clin to is this bygone symbol in america of cooperation and good government and moderation and sang his praises for four years. set him up as the good democrat against obama's bad democrat. what happened, the good democrat stole the show, vouches for the bad democrat and disarmed an awful lot of. ares are saying about president obama. >> chris hayes, the mvp of the campaign? >> the mvp of the obama campaign was rick per prip it was rick perry's entrance to the race that pushed mitt romney to take the tackically wise but strategically stupid step of going full out elegant. >> tackically wise for that moment. >> for that moment. it totally destroyed rick perry. he dispatched rick perry with that rhetoric with the $100,000 subdiddy to the illegals, the dream act which unallowed undocumented students to go to the university and pay in-state tuition. romney destroyed rick perry on that issue. but it was in the rhetoric he deployed there i think he sealed his fate in the general election with latinos who he got blown out in and provided a huge margin in a lot of swing states. >> great point. my choice is, of course, the anonymous videographer who captured the 47% tape which is why we happen to have that tape now. >> i was going to say you guys worked that out. >> why it happened to be ready. now, the best move of 2012. what was the best move of 2012? >> this is really hard because some part of me as a political junkie thinks the best move is the most incendiary crazy there, for that mitt romney moving across the stage and grabbing rick perry on the shoulder. this physical debate style which also revealed him for crazy and not driven by the same things most humans are driven by but the competitive workforce bot. i think at the end of the day we keep going back to the 47% video. i was waiting to hold it. >> you can use it as much as you want. it will be back. >> it is everything. the release of that and the timing of that changed the contours of the face forever. >> we don't really know who was responsible for that timing. crystal, the boaest move. >> the best move, mine actually goes to chris' point about immigration. i think it was the president when he gave a press conference announcing that he would halt deportations on young undocumented immigrants and it really sort of closed off a path for mitt romney and trapped him over there on the right in self deportation, rick perry land. and he was not able to make any pivot back to the center to try to appeal to latino voters to try to strike a more reasonable position on immigration because the president basically cut him off at the pass. i think that was a very smart strategic move. >> steve? >> i'll look at the step down to the senate level here. i think the smartst and the best move of the year was clear mccaskill's position in missouri to say i think i want to run against todd aiken. i think he's the one republican in the state to get this year. the rest is history. not only did it affect her race and help her win a race she had no business winning but there was obviously a ripple effect to help democrats nationally. >> chris, the best move of the year. >> i think the best move of the year is joe biden, essentially never do which is answering the question honestly and without premeditation and in his "meet the press" interview with david gregory. was this a trial balloon, was this preplanned, trying to gain it up? no, no, no. joe biden was asked a question, he answered with a kind of moral legitimacy and a truthfulness that actually had these remarkable effects which is that it pushed the president to come clean about his own personal evolution. i think that also made a huge difference in the campaign. >> joe biden. >> my best move of the campaign we actually have a little visual assist on this. "washington post" says, obama and his allies spent less on advertising than romney and his allies but got far more in the number of ads broadcast and visit in key markets and in targeting critical demographic groups such as the working class and young working voters in swing states. i thought what they did with tv advertising, specificity of t it knowing exactly what they were going is something we had never seen before. the worst move of the 2012 campaign. >> two things on this. one is probably choosing paul ryan to be the vice presidential nominee. just because, a, it never gave him the left that anyone thought it would. he neutered ryan as a political force in the campaign and for paul ryan it brought to the floor the horrible draconian things he was pushing. the ryan budget, 2340 way to run away with it. >> crystal? >> alex and i are on the same wavelength here. i think picking paul ryan was the worst move not only for all those reasons and mitt romney went on to lose wisconsin badly but also there were questions particularly after paul ryan's debate performance against joe biden of whether he was really ready to step on the stage and to be the number two and i think for a lot of people who were thinking about maybe going with romney not only were they uncomfortable with how far to the right he was, how extreme his positions on social security and medicare, but they also just felt like he wasn't quite ready for prime time. i think it was a very bad strategic move for them. >> steve, the worst move? >> let me come at it from a slightly different angle. >> you ulz do. you don't have to preface it. >> it's the booze talking. i don't know. from the standpoint of voters who, you know, i think to make an informed choice what do you have, you have the debates. what do we have with the debates this year, jim lar for the moderator for the 16th time and he moderated the first debate which was the designated domestic policy debate in the domestic policy, broad, huge topic, you can have climate change, gay marriage, abortion, all of that was ignored and we talked about simpson bowls and the deficit reduction. >> around no explanation of what those things were for the average person. >> inside the beltway debate. you only get really one domestic policy debate now for the entire fall campaign. open this thing up to new voices, to fresh perspective, to broader perspectives. i don't mean to pick on jim layla leyer but enough. >> the obama campaign and the not surprising decision of mitt romney and debate moderators to never raise climate change for the first time since 1988. if you go back to the tape in 1988 where dan quayle was asked about the fact carbon was warming the earth, yeah, that's going to be a problem, we should do something about it. here we are 24 years later and it doesn't even get a mention in any of the debates. >> i have another video assist from my answer here. the worst move, the worst decision of the campaign was to do what you're about to see at the republican convention. >> oh. >> i just wondered, are all these promises and then i wondered about, you know, when the -- what? what do you want me to tell romney? i can't tell him to do that. i can't do that to himself. you're absolutely crazy. up next, the rising star of 2013, and the best and worst political theater of the presidential campaign, and, of course, biggest winner, bigger loser person of the year, and the donald trump award. ♪ sometimes what we suffer from is bigger than we think ... like the flu. with aches, fever and chills- the flu's a really big deal. so why treat it like it's a little cold? there's something that works differently than over-the-counter remedies. prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source. so don't wait. call your doctor right away. tamiflu is prescription medicine for treating the flu in adults and children one year and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing. have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash, or signs of unusual behavior, stop taking tamiflu and call your doctor immediately. children and adolescents in particular may be at an increased risk of seizures, confusion or abnormal behavior. the most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. the flu comes on fast, so ask your doctor about tamiflu. prescription for flu. the rising political star of 2013, chris hayes, who will that be? >> massachusetts senator elizabeth warren, i think. it's not an easy thing to do what she did. i think people -- she was a star on this network and among progressives but to go, particularly as a woman in massachusetts that takes some real doing and i think she is going to be an absolute for us in the u.s. senate. >> steve, the rising star? >> pains me a bit to say because i'm not that -- >> say it. >> this is going to be the year with cory booker. >> not just in new jersey. crystal, the rising star. >> new congresswoman from hawaii, tulsy gavert. the youngest woman in the house and first hind du in congress. >> alex, the rising star. >> i asked you to go with chris first because i thought it was going to provide me some cover. i was going to say elizabeth. >> sure, you were. >> it's true. >> i'll tell you why. >> you want to give up going first again? >> i would like to go first. >> you will go first next time. i am going to agree with alex wagner, not chris hayes, alex wagner. we're going to be back with more of "the last word with holiday party." stay with us. ♪ ♪ they sent out their minions to do their bidding. washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. the firefighter startered when the cowardly sensed a weakness. a lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. but out of the billowing smoke and dust have tweets and trivia emerged gingrich. >> that, of course, was the best actual political theater of 2012, tony award winner reading of a newt gingrich press release, i believe. let's do the best political theater of 2012, and we are now going to start with alex wagner again because she has demanded that we start with her. >> it's a contractual obligation. >> yeah. >> it was the best because i couldn't believe it was happening in mid august. mitt romney took to the white board to explain what he was doing with medicare. >> i loved that. >> which in and of itself was a hoax. but the notion that this man would have this horribly staged managed moment in an effort to show that he was all about business, completely blew up in his face and cemented i've ri narrative out there. >> i don't know if the mikes can pick it up but drinks are being spilled over there. >> party fouls. >> crystal ball, the best political theater. >> well, i also have a newt gingrich moment. when he turned questions about him asking his former wife for an open marriage. parlayed that into a debate moment of huge applause moment at a debate in the primary and then parlayed that into an actual victory in the south carolina primary. incredible. >> we happen to have that video queued up. let's take a look at newt. >> she says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. would you like to take some time to respond to that? >> no, but i will. [ applause ] i think -- i think the dru destructive, vicious, negative nature of the much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder for decent people to run for this office. i am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that. >> that was obviously my choice, too, for best political theater. that's why we have that ready. steve, best political theater. >> i remember my favorite thing about that episode is in the reporting afterwards, gingrich went up to john king and said, no hard feelings. it really was there. >> very helpful to him. >> it really was theater. my favorite moment in political theater, i guess, was in the final presidential debate when mitt romney thought he had landed the killer blow against barack obama. >> oh, yes. >> on libya. >> oh, yes. >> failure to call it terrorist attack. >> started physically closing in. >> in line when obama knew exactly what was happening, exactly the trap that romney was falling for. he said, governor, proceed. >> please proceed, governor. >> we don't have that cued up. chris? >> i thought the entire democratic convention was really flawlessly done from pure theatricallies, compared to the republican convention that i thought it was a theatrical disaster, we built that, yes, we did, we did. i thought that backfired. i thought bill clinton's speech was political theater at its best insofar as it was genuinely edifying. he was not afraid, he didn't do the cheap and easy thing which was to do something surfacey. he went into the weeds of the details of the policy and explained them and it actually made for great theater. >> worst political theater. >> i can't believe we haven't mentioned this before. herman cain's entire campaign. it was a hoax. he wasn't actually really running. he was an actor on the national stage. he had command of his audience. at the end of the day, it was theater. >> worst? >> this is water before i get a lot of tweets. >> we are the water drinkers. >> water team. worst political theater, i would say after the 47% comments came out and mitt romney decided to do this hurried press conference where he looked frazzled, the hair was a little eskew and he had nothing to say and essentially dug the hole deeper for himself. i think that was the worst political theater of the campaign. other than clint eastward, of course. >> right before the critical michigan primary, the romney campaign is a little bit on the roips. rick santorum polled on the polls. the romney campaign said we're going to pull this around with a major economic speech and they went down to the detroit lions football stadium, about .002% full. the wide shot was one of the most hilarious things i've ever seen. >> the worst political theater i think was the numbers in the president's campaign in the spin room after the first debate in denver. very, very, very gamely attempting -- attempting to put a happy face. >> for me it was a particular moment in the herman cain campaign. it was kind of when -- it was when he had stuff twirling around in his head and we're going to look at that right now. >> so you agree with president obama on libya or not? >> okay. libya. president obama supported the uprising, correct? i do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason. no, that's a different one. i got to go back and see. >> oh. >> i got all of this stuff twirling around in my head. >> oh, we missed him so badly. we're going ba b. back more with if biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. back more with if biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. back more with if biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. ack more with f biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. back more with biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. ck more with i biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. back more with biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. back more wit biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. biggest surprise of the 2012 person of the year, donald trump award, coming up. t biggest surprise of the 2012 he and th