cameras followed me as we hung up my lights for the last time. here you go. it s the end of an era. another day, another christmas. all righty. you know, i tell you. i have been doing this for 20-some years now. i don t suppose i will miss all the work that goes into it. but i know the kid wills misds it. that makes me feel bad. it is a little sad. i bought enough christmas tree lights to wire manhattan. they make these things so they can be absolutely sure that by the time you get to the next christmas season, they are all broken. every year i have to go to the store. why build anything that lasts? hell, if they did, they couldn t sell it every year.
whole kit and caboodle, the whole convention of which they are denouncing the idea of government helping build anything, the whole convention is taking place in a sports arena for which roughly 2/3 of the financing was put up by the government. theme nights are a useful thing for driving home political messages. but what the message is that gets driven home, sometimes depends as much on the details as it does on the signage. chris hayes, let me bring you in on this. the facts have been getting in the way of the we built it storyline. photo on after photo on of these business owners have revealed that all of these benefits did benefit from something that the government had done specifically for their business. what is the political power of this line from the republicans that survives the hypocrisy and embarrassment that comes up? it s a bizarre politics of resentiment. because it is hard to be a small business owner. it s hard to be a coal miner. it s hard to be a domestic worker.
trouble. we can t survive with just the top. we re not able to do that, now we re not america any more, we buck something else. you look at that farmer or that person that works a regular job, we have to constantly think, we ask our politicians to constantly think about the regular person. when i look at america now, it s that we seem to make those people that do regular things, push them to the background. this meeting in the middle idea, i keep thinking this there ought to be something called the militant middle. how do you get anything done without compromise? you don t build anything, you don t make a movie, without people arguing, having their differences, but somehow saying, we need to get this done, so let s not stand in our corners, and argue about it. let s build something. and that s that s how you really make your mark. that s how you really make your mark. not just staying in your little click, your little world.
that in that cynical way. you re right. for anybody out there that s watching this program or anybody that can hear our voices. don t get it twisted. this is the best country to live in. we ve all travelled. we ve been all over the world. the freedoms we have here. even the freedom to question at any point, i can say, whatever about my president or about my mayor, my governor or whatever it is, and not worry about someone coming and dragging me into the street and doing whatever i have to be able to say, there s some things i agree with you on your side, some things you agree on our side, if we do this, we can get back to getting people jobs, and also, i hate to take up too much time, but also bringing jobs back here. so when we re doing this, we re taking people s ideas. no politics or anything like that, we want to see how you feel and respect each person. thanks to ron howard and jamie foxx for coming on the show.
respectfully disagree with something patricia just said. it s true the romney/ryan ticket has distanced itself from todd akin. they didn t do it immediately, this story started on sunday afternoon. the initial response, the initial official response from the romney campaign was retepid, very hesitant. what it was what it signalled to me was it was sunday night. it wasn t until monday he gave the interview to the national review. it signalled to me, he was waiting for other conservative leaders, other republican leaders to take the first shot to make sure it was safe. that indicates to me something we ve seen a lot in this campaign, how unsure mitt romney is with his relationship with his own party s base. he wants to make sure it s safe before he says anything. that shows you what a sensitive issue this is with that base. it s going to be interesting. patricia murphy, steve kornacki, thank you for your time tonight. and catch steve on the cycle week days at 3:00 p.m. easter