The Rachel Maddow Show, Transcript 09/07/11, 11pm-12am ET

POST-DEBATE ANALYSIS: 11pm-12am ET Hosts: Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O`Donnell Guests: Chuck Todd, Eugene Robinson, Herman Cain, Michael Steele, Alex Wagner, Jim Vandehei, Howard Fineman, Steve Schmidt, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC ANCHOR: The stakes were high at tonight`s Republican debate in California, with all eyes, of course, on the new front-runner. Governor Rick Perry joining his rivals to debate tonight for the very first time. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. RICK PERRY (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Governor Romney left the private sector. He did a great job of creating jobs in the private sector all around the world. But the fact is, when he moved that experience to government, he had one of the lowest job creation rates in the country. We created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than he created in four years in Massachusetts. MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Texas is a great state. Texas has zero income tax. Texas has a right to work state, a Republican legislature, a Republican Supreme Court. Texas has a lot of oil and gas in the ground. Those are wonderful things. But Governor Perry doesn`t believe that he created those things. If he tried to say that, why, it would be like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: The policy moment of the night also belonged to Governor Perry, and to a Mitt Romney confrontation with Governor Perry, this time on the fact that Americans generally like Social Security. The man who would be President Perry doubled down on his insistence that Social Security is nothing less than a criminal con job. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you are paying into a program that`s going to be there. Anybody that`s for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids. And it`s not right. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: But much of tonight`s fire was directed at President Obama, the Democrat that only one of them will be facing head-to-head by this time next year. (END VIDEO CLIP) NEWT GINGRICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All of us are committed as a team. Whoever the nominee is, we are all for defeating Barack Obama. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: With continuing coverage of tonight`s Republican candidate`s debate, I`m Rachel Maddow here at MSNBC`s home studios in New York City. Chris Matthews is in Simi Valley, California, the site of tonight`s debate. Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O`Donnell and Gene Robinson here with me on set in New York. But we`re joined now from the spin room by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, joining us from the Reagan Library. Mr. Cain, we feel privileged to have your time tonight, sir. Thank you for joining us. HERMAN CAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you. Happy to do it. MADDOW: We`re going to have our first question for you tonight from the Reverend Al Sharpton. Al? AL SHARPTON, MSNBC ANCHOR: Mr. Cain, first of all, I think you did very well tonight in laying out some of the substance of what you had to say. But what struck me is both Governor Perry and you seemed to have a strong emphasis, whether it was on Social Security or other issues, on states being empowered, states rights. And the reason that it struck me is wouldn`t you say -- you`re from Georgia -- that women`s rights and voter rights and civil rights was largely built by those that wanted to have a strong national government protect them against states having too much power, that would in fact keep us in a position where some one like you or I couldn`t even run for president? CAIN: Reverend Sharpton, those aren`t the kind of rights that I want to touch. I am a product of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and -- SHARPTON: `65. CAIN: The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I don`t want to touch those rights. I`m not talking about those kinds of rights. Secondly, Governor Perry talked about Social Security. I offered a solution, the Chilean solution. If you had noticed tonight, on most of my questions, I tried to put a solution on the table. And the solution that I put on the table, relative to Social Security, was quite simply the Chilean model, where we create a personal retirement account option for younger workers. I didn`t say privatization, because that`s how it was demagogued before. But things such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I don`t support touching those. I`m talking about states rights as it relates to dealing with some of the issues as it relates to the people within the state and some of these dysfunctional programs being run out of Washington, D.C.. EUGENE ROBINSON, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Mr. Cain, this is Gene Robinson in New York. I covered South America for the "Washington Post." I covered Chile. The Chilean model is privatization of the pension system. What`s the -- CAIN: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. ROBINSON: What`s the difference between privatization and privatization? CAIN: Wait, sir. With all due respect, it is not. It is personalization. Workers in Chile, they have an account that they retire with, with their name on it. That`s not privatization. The word privatization is used to try and kill the idea before it takes off. With all due respect, sir, it`s personal retirement accounts. And that`s what I`m proposing. LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: Herman Cain, this is Lawrence O`Donnell. Now you`re just drawing a semantic distinction. You don`t want to use the word privatization for what we all call privatization. You want to call it personalization. Just because the government sends this document out to you with your name on it, I get that. But it is privatization. Gene`s right about that. Let me move on to a larger focus of the evening. And that is the frame of Ronald Reagan. You were debating in Ronald Reagan`s house, as it were. And you all ignored that Ronald Reagan as president raised taxes 11 times, that Ronald Reagan as governor created the single largest state income tax in history in 1967. You selected pieces of Ronald Reagan thematically as a group that you like. But you ignore specifically how he governed, which was often in a bipartisan way, in agreements with Democrats, including agreements to raise taxes. Would you advocate governing in that way, the way Ronald Reagan did? CAIN: Sir, with all due respect, I want to talk about how we get this sorry economy moving. It starts with recognizing the business sector. I am not here to defend everything that Ronald Reagan did right, and everything that Ronald Reagan may not have done right. I want to get 14 million people back to work, which is why I have put a bold solution on the table, OK? 999 Plan is what I have put on the table. This is what we need to focus on. This is what the American people are looking for, solutions, not going back and trying to draw parallels with what was done right or done wrong in the past. Because we have decades of that that we can go back and dig up stuff on Republican presidents and Democrat presidents. The American people are ready for solutions. And that`s what I have been putting on the table on all of these issues. ED SCHULTZ, MSNBC ANCHOR: Mr. Cain, Ed Schultz here tonight. You -- you said that you would replace the tax code with what you call the 999 Plan. You would reduce corporate profits down to nine percent, personal income down to nine percent, and a national retail sales. If you do the numbers on this, doesn`t this favor the rich? And doesn`t it hit lower income people really hard? What`s your math on this 999 Program? CAIN: It does not favor the rich. It favors everybody. People who work, everybody`s paying the total of 15.3 percent payroll tax, correct? Now, that 15.3 percent, even if they aren`t paying any income tax, now goes to nine percent -- 15.3, nine. Secondly, this levels the playing field. It does not help the rich more than it helps the poor. It levels -- it basically collects the same amount of revenue. By replacing the payroll tax, it eliminates capital gains tax. Give me a moment. It replaces the capital gains tax, and it also replaces the death tax. This is what this economy needs in order to get going. The poor are not disadvantaged. They are empowered because of this. Now, there`s one other aspect of this that I didn`t get a chance to talk about, which is to help the poor, to help these impoverished, economically depressed cities like a Detroit. You can take that 999 Plan and use it to create empowerment zones. When you look at the people who are jobless, especially among black Americans, they live in areas that need some additional help. Without the government picking winners and losers, that plan could be -- could be -- we haven`t defined all the parameters yet -- an 888 Plan. It`s simple and it`s easy to understand. SCHULTZ: Well, that would be a government program that you just created for the city of Detroit, but it would also reduce the wealthiest American`s tax obligation from 33 percent down to nine percent. I think you got that pretty well covered. But that`s just my opinion. CAIN: Well, that`s your opinion. But if you look -- but if you look at what it`s going to do to help everybody, you might come to a different opinion. MADDOW: Mr. Herman Cain, we`re grateful for your time tonight, sir. Thank you for joining us. We look forward to seeing you here again on MSNBC soon. CAIN: Thank you. MADDOW: I will just -- the point that I would make about their argument there about regressive taxation is that poor people proportionally spend more of their wealth on buying stuff. And so if the great tax in America is a national sales tax, it disproportionately affects poor people, because more of their wealth is spent buying stuff, as compared with rich people, who spend a very small proportion of their wealth on buying stuff. That`s the whole argument about why a national sales tax has a disproportionate impact on rich and poor people. O`DONNELL: He`s also, though, pointing out something very important about the working poor in particular. They pay more taxation in payroll taxes, in Social Security taxes than they do in income tax. In fact, 75 percent of our taxpayers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. So when the Republicans are out there talking about people who don`t pay income taxes, he`s right, they`re paying, right off the bat, 15 percent. The employer -- SHARPTON: He`s absolutely right about the 15.3 percent in payroll tax. But Ed is right that if you go to a 999 -- O`DONNELL: -- doesn`t even -- (CROSS TALK) SHARPTON: He innovated into 888. I don`t know where we were going, 999, 888. In the debate, he said God gets 10 percent. I mean, we`ll figure it out. ROBINSON: For the record, Chile, privatization. MADDOW: It`s a very personal form of privatization. Let`s go back to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, and "HARDBALL`s" Chris Matthews. Chris? CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC ANCHOR: Thank you, Rachel, very much. Let`s get away from all of this policy discussion for a minute. I think we`ve done enough of this tonight. Policy drives me crazy. Just kidding. Let`s go to who won tonight, in a sense that it looks to me like we have a couple months to go before the first test in Iowa. Tonight, who did best in winning Iowa? Who did best in winning South Carolina, doing decently well in New Hampshire, and moving on to where the Republican heartland is, the south. I know I`m dictating the answer. But with Bachmann fading, Romney doing OK tonight as the leader of the establishment, and clearly Rick Perry I believe still the leader of the Tea Party people, who`s going to win this looking right now at it, win the whole thing going forward? HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I don`t know that. But looking at this tonight, Rick Perry had to show that he could be on the stage with these other people, that he could hold his own, that he could act presidential. I think he started out that way. I think he lost in exchange to Mitt Romney on who did what. But I think overall, at the beginning especially, he looked like a credible candidate. The Tea Party people like that. They want somebody of their ilk who they think can win. Looking at it through the eyes of the Tea Party people, they saw on the issues and in stage presence, even if the establishment don`t like some of his views on evolution and son on -- they saw a guy that they think they can sell to the country. MATTHEWS: I`m with you. Just staying on that point, did the Tea Party see a leader tonight? Jim Vandehei? JIM VANDEHEI, "POLITICO": I think they saw a leader that they can live with. I think they feel like he probably cleared the threshold. I`ll tell you what struck me. MATTHEWS: You`re not a Tea Partier? Did the Tea Party see a leader -- MICHAEL STEELE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I believe they did. I believe they did. Absolutely. I think they saw it tonight in the Perry campaign. And I think they also saw some other glimmers with respect to Romney on some other issues. MATTHEWS: They think he might be acceptable? VANDEHEI: We also saw how thin he is on these answers. I`ll tell you, having sat down there four years ago versus today, Mitt Romney is an exponentially better candidate today than he was four years ago. The way he handled that opening sequence, he actually showed -- God forbid -- passion. He actually showed like some real command of the issue, in a way where I think he could connect with the people. And he made -- I thought he made Perry look small. (CROSS TALK) MATTHEWS: Was he an anti-government conservative tonight? VANDEHEI: He wasn`t as conservative as Rick Perry is. But when it comes to jobs -- (CROSS TALK) STEELE: I think he upped the presidential quotient for himself tonight. I think a more people, beyond the base itself, looking to the general, saw something in Perry -- in Romney that they hadn`t seen before. (CROSS TALK) FINEMAN: The lines have now sharply been drawn, OK? Over Social Security, the most fundamental federal program of the last 75 years. Rick Perry wants to abolish it. MATTHEWS: What does that mean? Does that mean he takes away the federal responsibility? FINEMAN: Take away the federal responsibility for it. But Stewart Stevens (ph), who`s the top strategist for Mitt Romney, was down in the spin room, couldn`t contain his glee, saying you cannot win a federal election saying you want to abolish Social Security. And no Republican candidate is going to run on the ticket -- MATTHEWS: Let`s listen to what Perry said, because it was played just a moment ago. Perry said, "you cannot say to the 25-year-old today that this system works, that it`s not a Ponzi Scheme." Because the 25-year-old young woman and young male, who has a family in many cases, is paying into something, dollar for dollar, they don`t believe they will get back, dollar for dollar. Is that an unfair indictment? VANDEHEI: It`s a totally true indictment. I think what he said is absolutely true about Social Security. He handled Social Security, the answer terribly, because it`s going to get all -- it`s going to get the Karl Rove crowd. It`s going to get these outside donors. They`re going to find Mitt Romney a hell of a lot more appealing tomorrow than they did -- FINEMAN: The key thing he didn`t do was say, I`m going to find a way to fix it for the next generation. MATTHEWS: Can he do that tomorrow night? (CROSS TALK) FINEMAN: He`s got to fix it. They didn`t do it tonight, that`s for sure. STEELE: With Herman Cain and the Chilean model sitting out there, then I think, you know -- in other words, there are dynamics on this question with respect to Social Security. Republicans don`t want to abolish it, by the way. MATTHEWS: I don`t think -- STEELE: No one`s going to come out -- MATTHEWS: What I liked about it, as a person, like we all do, who tries to understand American political debate, it was the first hard indictment of the establishment. It was an indictment. He said it was a Ponzi scheme, a crime. I mean, he`s basically saying something that the Tea Partiers, at their most vicious, if you will, believe. FINEMAN: Rick Perry uses very tough, accusatory language. You know, he talks about Ben Bernanke being treated ugly down in Texas. Ben Bernanke might be treasonous. He used the word liar here several times. MATTHEWS: Abject liar. FINEMAN: The president might be an abject liar. That is --for better or worse, is the mood of a lot of the country. Look at the NBC poll; 82 percent of the American people hate the Congress, 54 percent of the American people want to vote out every member of Congress right now. STEELE: He`s not talking to Howard. He`s not talking to you. He`s talking to folks beyond this audience. (CROSS TALK) MADDOW: Everybody, thank you so much. Everybody -- Jim Vandehei, thank you. Thank you, Howard, as always. Thank you, Michael. Now back to Rachel. MADDOW: Thank you, Chris. Thank you, guys. I will just say that as we are talking about this as the great distinction in tonight`s debate, Rick Perry being against -- for lack of a better term, against Social Security, and Mitt Romney standing up for it, Democrats have taken great advantage over the idea that Republicans want to kill Medicare, because Republicans all voted for a Republican budget that would privatize Medicare, voucherize it. That was the Paul Ryan plan. Mitt Romney is very firmly on the record of being in favor of privatizing Social Security. Mitt Romney, speaking in 2007, talking about President Bush, said "the president said let`s have private accounts, take that surplus money that`s being gathered now in Social Security and put that into private accounts." Mitt Romney said, "that works." So if Mitt Romney wants to be the champion of Social Security and the dude wants to privatize it, they`re going to have to make an argument that privatizing Social Security is a way of saving it. George W. Bush tried that really, really, really hard after he was re-elected, to really great effect for Democrats. We`ll have much more from our panel. Plus we`ll be checking in on some of the truthfulness of what we heard from the Republican candidates tonight in our Department of Corrections. That`s coming up right around the corner. You`re watching MSNBC`s coverage of the Republican presidential candidate`s debate. We`ll be right back. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)) REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-WI), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We know that from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But I know it firsthand from speaking to people. Obama-care is clearly leading to job killing regulations, not job creating regulations. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Welcome back to our coverage of tonight`s Republican presidential candidates debate. We want to check the truthfulness of some of what we heard tonight from some of the candidates. For that, we`ll go to our Department of Corrections for the evening, and the "Huffington Post`s" Alex Wagner. Alex, what do you got? ALEX WAGNER, "THE HUFFINGTON POST": Thanks, Rachel. It`s good to be a corrections officer. Let`s start with immigration. Here`s what Texas Governor Rick Perry said tonight about the safety along the U.S./Mexico boarder. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: For the president of the United States to go to El Paso, Texas, and say that the border is safer than it`s ever been, either he has some of the poorest intel of a president in the history of this country or he was an abject liar to the American people. It is not safe on that border. (END VIDEO CLIP) WAGNER: Home of the whopper, that is where Rick Perry is living. Government data obtained by the Associated Press shows it actually isn`t so dangerous after all. The top four big cities in America with the lowest rates of violent crime are all actually in border states. That would be San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin, according to a new FBI report. An in house Customs and Border Protection report shows that border patrol agents face far less danger than street cops in U.S. cities. Jobs was also a major topic for debate earlier tonight. Here`s what Mitt Romney had to say about his jobs record as Massachusetts governor. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROMNEY: At the end of four years, we had our unemployment rate down to 4.7 percent. That`s a record I think the president would like to see. As a matter of fact, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president has created in the entire country. (END VIDEO CLIP) WAGNER: OK, the distinction here is Romney was not referring to net jobs, but total jobs created. While Mitt Romney was governor, from January 2003 to January 2007, 48,500 jobs were created in Massachusetts. According do the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, President Obama`s stimulus program alone increased the number of people employed by between 1.0 to 2.9 million. He also increased the number of full time equivalent jobs from 1.4 to 4.0 -- that`s million. And then tonight, there was Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who made one of those claims about policies from the past based more on (INAUDIBLE) nostalgia than actual fact. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BACHMANN: Our immigration law worked beautifully back in the 1950s, up until the early 1960s, when people had to demonstrate that they had money in their pocket, they had no contagious diseases, they weren`t a felon. they had to agree to learn to speak the English language. They had to learn American history and the Constitution. The one thing they had to promise is that they would not become a burden on the American taxpayer. (END VIDEO CLIP) WAGNER: The rules that Michele Bachmann describes here are actually pretty darn close to exactly what already exists. To become a U.S. citizen, you have to show that you can read, speak and write basic English. You need to have a basic understanding of U.S. history and the form of the U.S. government. You cannot have a criminal record. You have to have filed your income tax return every single year. You must have, quote unquote, "good moral character." And if you apply for a visa or admission into the country, you`re rejected if you have a significant communicable disease. That`s it from the home of the whopper. MADDOW: Thank you, Alex Wagner, in our Department of Corrections, which also sounds delicious. Appreciate it. We`re going to get back to our panel, and to Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, of course, a senior strategist with the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008. Steve, I wanted to bring you in on this, specifically on that first point that Alex just addressed there, Rick Perry calling President Obama either a person who had bad intel or a person who was an abject liar for having traveled to El Paso, Texas, and intimated that El Paso was a relatively safe U.S. city. His choice of language there, abject liar; is that politically important for him tonight? STEVE SCHMIDT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I thought there was a big distinction between his approach, calling the president an abject liar, and Governor Romney`s approach. You got to that point in the debate where Governor Romney says, look, the president`s a nice man, but I don`t think he has a clue what he`s doing on the economy, and he has to move on. I think when you look at the poll numbers, the American people don`t dislike the president personally. I think a lot of Americans are worried about his economic acumen and about his policies. But going out and name calling the president like that I don`t think is a tactic that`s going to have a lot of effectiveness, particularly when you look at it in a general election context. I think some of the criticisms that Karl Rove has offered on this front are exactly dead on. National politics is an unforgiving business. You look at Al Gore saying I invented the Internet or John Kerry saying I voted for it before I voted against it, or John McCain saying the fundamentals of the economy are strong. When you`re explaining controversial statements, you`re losing. That`s what the problem with the Ponzi scheme statement is. There`s no constituency in the Republican party to abolish Social Security. Lawrence O`Donnell pointed this out correctly before. President Bush tried to privatize Social Security in `05. There was no Republican congressional support, because they know the constituents don`t support it. I think it`s going to be very problematic for Governor Perry, as you look at Horry (ph) County on the South Carolina coast, where there`s a lot of retirees, when the campaign moves into Florida. I think that Stewart Stevens is exactly right. You can`t win a national campaign when you are on the record calling for the dismantling of Social Security and then exacerbating it with statements like he did tonight. It`s very problematic for him. And I think it`s something that Democrats have a lot of glee over obviously. MADDOW: Steve, you identify I think that key moment when Mitt Romney chose to really tonally differentiate himself from Governor Perry. As you pointed out, he said, listen, President Obama seems like a nice guy, but he doesn`t have a clue about the economy. At that same time, Governor Romney sort of took what I took to be a patronizing hand around the shoulder approach toward Governor Perry, by saying, aw, look, the guy sort of screwed up on that HPV vaccine thing. I think if he could take a mulligan on that, he would, right. Sort of looking at him as if he was almost sort of a wayward kid or maybe an irresponsible person, who an adult like Mitt Romney could forgive. Is that -- I wonder, I may be sensitive to that because Mitt Romney was my governor in Massachusetts. I felt that way about him personally when he was governor. I`m wondering if that came across more broadly and if you think that was politically significant. SCHMIDT: I watched Jim Vandehei earlier hit the nail on the head. And I watched Mitt Romney debate I would say 20 times in 2008, and how exponentially better he is. He didn`t back up on the health care attacks. And I thought no one laid a glove on him on that. You saw him, when he was asked whether he was a member of the Tea Party -- he didn`t try to hedge and equivocate and pander to that question. He answered it directly. And I think you`ve seen a lot of growth with him in a candidate. I thought that Rick Perry had a good first 45 minutes in this debate. But he was almost like a boxer who ran out of steam in the middle to late rounds. And I thought he was very unsteady in the back half of the debate. I don`t think that he did anything that knocks him out of the race or dislodges him for his front-runner status. But I thought he entered tonight as a soft front-runner, and I think he leaves the debate tonight as a soft front-runner. He certainly didn`t harden his position with his performance tonight. O`DONNELL: Steve, it`s Lawrence O`Donnell. If you`re in the Obama campaign tonight, who do you want to face out of those two in the general election? It looked to me like Mitt Romney is much more dangerous to the Obama campaign in a general election, if he can get there, than Perry could be? SCHMIDT: Yeah, I mean, judging on this performance tonight, I think there`s no question about that, that they would be hanging up Rick Perry signs over in the West Wing, rooting for him in the Republican primary. Mitt Romney`s a far more dangerous candidate, judging from this debate, judging from this debate performance alone. There`s no question about that in my mind. SCHULTZ: Steve, I want to ask you. I think Rick Perry is going to be able to recover from this Ponzi scheme comment, I do. Because he talked straight to young people tonight. He basically said, you know what, if we keep going the status quo, you`re going to get screwed; you`re never going to get that money. And as simple as it is, that`s what the Tea Party understands. They make government the boogie man and they run on that. And so are we being a little too critical on Mr. Perry? I mean, I think he`s throwing red meat at the crowd. He threw red meat at the crowd when he talked about executions and justice in Texas. He talked about red meat when he said taxes, regulation and freedom. I mean, this guy came to the plate tonight, and he did exactly what everybody thought he was going to do. SCHMIDT: Look, he`s an authentic conservative. That`s why he`s leapt out to the front of the pack in this campaign. But I do think that electability is going to be a key determinative issue for Republican primary vote as we move through the process. If there`s an effective campaign waged against him from outside groups, which maybe there will be, or from the Romney campaign, that, you know, go after this Social Security issue and render him in the eyes of Republican primary voters, vulnerable to attacks from the Democrats, from Barack Obama in a way that would cause Republicans to lose what Republicans generally believe to be an imminently winnable election -- I think it`s going to be enter into the decision making. I do think it is a -- I think he`s made a series of highly problematic comments on this. That would obviously be a big part of any general election. But I think they`re going to be a big part in a Republican primary. ROBINSON: Steve, this is Gene Robinson. Was there anybody else in the debate -- any other performance that you saw that could rise perhaps to the level of Perry and Romney? Or is that the dynamic we`re going to be looking at? Is it a two-man race at this point. SCHMIDT: I thought that Jon Huntsman had a very strong performance tonight. I thought he had a weak performance in the previous debate. I`m not sure that there`s enough oxygen in the race for him to make a move. I do think his campaign is focused squarely in the state of New Hampshire. I think that when you look at a Romney/Perry contest in New Hampshire, when the campaign starts in earnest, I think that there is room for movement once the race becomes dynamic. We`ll see if Jon Huntsman has any potential to move there. The polls right now are not promising, but I think he had a good debate performance. But I really thought one of the big news out of the debate tonight was the elimination really of Michele Bachmann from the top tier. There`s not enough room for both her and Rick Perry in the race. And I think Rick Perry is the person who`s now occupied that space. I expect you`ll start to see her fade away. MADDOW: Steve Schmidt, a man who knows of what he speaks, thank you so much for joining us tonight, Steve. It`s been great to have you here. SCHMIDT: Thank you, Rachel. MADDOW: We will have more from our panel. Plus, a look ahead to what President Obama will say when he makes his big jobs speech before a joint session of Congress tomorrow night. You`re watching MSNBC`s coverage of the Republican presidential candidates debate at the Reagan Library. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you are paying into a program that`s going to be there. Anybody that`s for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids. And it`s not right. ROMNEY: Our nominee has to be someone who isn`t committed to abolishing Social Security, but is committed to saving Social Security. PERRY: You cannot keep the status quo in place and not call it anything other than a Ponzi scheme. It is. That is what it is. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Tonight`s Republican presidential candidates debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Let`s bring in Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson and Tulane professor Melissa Harris-Perry. Thank you both so much for joining us. I want to give you the opportunity, both of you, to just tell me what you think was the most important outcome of tonight`s debate or the most important issue discussed. Melissa, I`d love to start with you? MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY, TULANE UNIVERSITY: I mean, certainly there were all of these moments. I guess for me the most important moment actually just happened, which was Alex Wagner fact checking so much of what was said. I was live Tweeting it and watching it and feeling a great deal of angst, in part because Jon Huntsman kept sounding very reasonable and making good points backed up by facts and data. And yet there was -- obviously we`re not talking about Huntsman and whatever it was he was saying, because clearly his positions, which -- at some point I think I Tweeted, he looks like he`d actually be a reasonable primary challenger for the president. I mean, he -- the way that he was talking, the sort of expressiveness with which he was trying to take on really complicated questions, certainly from the right, to the right of where I, for the most part, stand politically, but with a lot of thoughtfulness. That, for the most part, has fallen out of our conversation in the sort of postmortem on the debate. MADDOW: Professor Michael Eric Dyson, what do you think was the most important either issue discussed or political outcome tonight? MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Well, I think obviously the Ponzi scheme some would say faux pas, others would say badge of honor. It is true that Perry appealed to his base. But, you know, you`ve got to get beyond that base if you`re going to win an election. Of course, he`s got to win the Republican primary first. And I think that here he looks a little bit less presidential tonight than did Mitt Romney. If Michele Bachmann lost her Tea Party enthusiasts to Perry, then I think Huntsman, in a sense, as Professor Harris-Perry indicated, though reasonable, though articulate, lost that to Mitt Romney. And earlier, Rachel, when you talked about the kind of condescension, and the hell fellow, well met, and sticking his arm around Perry, that may seem as an act -- a gesture of condescension, but it turns out to be the performance of a presidential persona. And I think in that way, along with the reasoned judgements he made, and the way he didn`t cede too much ground to Perry -- Perry had to come in and knock him out of the box. He didn`t do so. He wasn`t overwhelming. He was whelming. As a result of that, the reality is that Mitt Romney gained ground. I think the Ponzi scheme stuff will come to bite him again, to boomerang back on him. And I think the fact that Michele Bachmann, as you all have indicated, descended from a higher register to a faded out arena, where she no longer has the hole card when it comes to the Tea Party, suggest that there`s a two-man race going on between Romney and Perry. MADDOW: One of the dynamics I thought was most interesting, sort of - - forgive me, but sort of between the tiers of candidates tonight, was the way that Ron Paul went after Rick Perry, over and over and over again, particularly on that issue in the end of the HPV vaccine for young women, for teens and preteen girls in Texas. Melissa, what do you think is the overall outcome of that? HARRIS-PERRY: I`m distressed by that particular line of questioning on Perry. I`m distressed by it, because I think there is an important line of questioning there. I think it`s about why would, in fact, a supposedly small government governor make this choice? I don`t think that it`s the sort of I hate cancer discourse that Perry gives us. I don`t think that it`s suddenly, in this one moment, he looks at scientific evidence; he adjudicates the question of public health and he comes out with a decision that is to impose a government order on parents. It just -- it`s so out of step with everything else he said. So I think the answer, though, isn`t to sort of push him back into the corner of small government and parental rights, unless, of course, you`re a parent who wants to terminate a pregnancy. But not pushing him into that corner, but instead really asking about the kind of financial interests in relationship with Merck and other large corporations. Ron Paul is capable of that kind of line questioning, but he didn`t go there. And instead he really pushes Perry to become more extreme. And that I think is distressing. You know, that and the kind of constant refrain that Social Security is irreparably broken in its funding stream, which was repeated both by Perry and by Romney. Because Social Security is not irreparably broken. It`s so -- it`s actually one of the most easily fixed issues in sort of the American political system, that every time I hear that repeated and repeated with the refrain, we all agree that, of course, it`s irreparably damaged -- I think, for me, that`s the only thing that allows a Rick Perry, for example, to get a foothold with young people who don`t know that it could be actually quite easily fixed by simply withholding payroll tax from a higher percentage of income from earning Americans. It could be fixed tomorrow. MADDOW: Melissa Harris-Perry and Michael Eric Dyson, thank you so much for sharing your insight with us tonight. Very happy to have you both with us. Thanks. DYSON: Thank you. MADDOW: Coming up, the other big political story of the week. And frankly, what is the great context for the debate, the prebuttal that all the candidates were trying to give tonight to President Obama`s big jobs speech tomorrow night before a joint session of Congress. This is MSNBC`s coverage of the Republican presidential candidates debate. Stay with us. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JON HUNTSMAN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I`d love to get everybody to sign a pledge to take no pledges. I have pledge to my wife, and I pledge allegiance to my country. But beyond that, no pledges. I think it diminishes the political discussion. I think it jeopardizes your ability to lead once you get there. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Let`s go back to Simi Valley, California, the site of tonight`s Reagan Presidential Library Republican Candidates Debate. Joining us now from Simi Valley is Chuck Todd, the political director for NBC News. Chuck, does the -- does the campaign for this nomination change because of tonight`s debate? Is it on a different trajectory now than it was before a few hours ago? CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Absolutely. I think we know -- insiders knew this was turning into a two-person race between Romney and Perry. What both candidates confirmed tonight is they`re ready to have that two person race. I think the most stunning development is this, Rachel -- and I challenge you or anybody listening tonight. If I had come to you four months ago and said, you know what, when this Republican primary gets down to two candidates, the single most contentious issue is going to be the future of Social Security, and I think people would have said what, really, that would be it? I think it`s stunning right now that that`s what we`re looking at. I talked to both Romney folks and Perry folks in the spin room tonight. That is what the Romney campaign is 100 percent focused on. They believe if they win this nomination, they do so because they hang the phrase Ponzi scheme around the neck of Rick Perry. They believe Republican primary voters -- and Rachel, we dig way into all these numbers, but Republican primary voters are, by average, older than Democratic primary voters. They like Social Security, whether it`s -- as one Romney strategist put it to me, they like Social Security in West Texas. But they also like it in Florida. And oh, by the way, Florida is an early primary state. MADDOW: Chuck, two strategic questions for you on that. Does the Rick Perry side of things think that they have got a winning issue with the Ponzi scheme thing? Or are they just back on their heels about this? And does the Romney campaign acknowledge that they have a little bit of a problem with their candidate being on record in favor of privatizing Social Security? TODD: Well, I think what you have is the Perry folks kind of like the idea that Romney, in trying to fight him on Ponzi scheme, made an electability argument. Because what the Perry campaign will tell you, the base of the Republican party isn`t interested electability. They`re interested in passion. They`re interested in principles. They`re interested in specifics on issues. So they believe while Romney may look like to those in the media of getting the better of him for a general election, and that Romney may have made the analytical argument -- like you have no idea what you may be doing to the Republican party in a general election -- that that isn`t what the Republican primary electorate wants to hear. That would be one thing. I think we learned something about Rick Perry. Rick Perry is not going to run away from his words. That`s something that they believe separates him from a Mitt Romney, who they can say, you know what, when the tough gets going on various things, he tries to find a way out of it. He tries to backtrack a little bit. Sometimes it`s a complete flip-flop. Sometimes it`s like health care, where he tries to have two answers, right. Well, the mandate`s good in Massachusetts, but it`s bad everywhere else. MADDOW: In terms of the overall context here, obviously the biggest event in politics is not tonight`s debate, but tomorrow night`s address to a joint session of Congress, the president due to give his big speech on jobs. What are you expecting in terms of that address? And how are the candidates and the campaigns viewing that as either a sounding board or a chance to go after the president in a new way? TODD: Well, I think the candidates feel as if they think they know everything that`s coming out. We all think we know everything that the president is proposing, that he isn`t -- this isn`t going to be, quote unquote, the big plan that some of the president`s supporters, particularly those members of Congress who believe you have to do more than just a 300 billion dollar plan. You heard Deval Patrick this morning saying, I still think it`s going to be a bigger plan that he rolls out. I think we`ll see. The Republicans know what their primary electorate wants to hear, which is no more spending, don`t do that. So they think that no matter what the president puts out, they`ll have an easy time opposing it. The question is, what is the tone? What I`m curious about is less on some of these specifics. What is the tone the president takes with Congress tomorrow night? Is tomorrow the beginning of the presidential campaign? Or is tomorrow the start of what -- I`ve had other people argue to me that the president does have about two more months of true governing ability left in him in dealing with Congress, that there`s a way he can fight Congress and say, we have to govern, guys; we have two months to do this before the political campaign really takes off? Or does he make the calculation, you know what, they`re not going to work with me. Let`s start the contrast now? SCHULTZ: Do you think -- Chuck this is Ed. Do you think that President Obama is going to ever get to that point where he says, no, they`re not going to work with me? It`s time now to go to re-election? It just seems that he has that insurmountable feeling that he just has to cut a deal on something. TODD: I mean, Ed, I think the evidence is clear. Yeah, we have not seen -- he always tries to find something -- another person described to me tomorrow night as this way: he`s got to propose some things that he can get passed. The trade agreements are probably the easiest lift. The payroll tax cuts, extending that should be a fairly easy lift at that point. But they know that they have to propose some things that is both part of the president`s core belief -- and by the way, I`ve had some Obama -- some folks close to sort of -- I`d say the second circle of Team Obama say, you know what, he needs to do a better job outlining what his core beliefs are, what he`s willing to fight for at the end of the day, that he needs to have something in his speech that he has a fight with, that maybe he loses legislatively, but is able to take it to the campaign trail. But he -- they`ve got to acquire a win or two. And it seems to me they`ve outlined what they think they`re going to, quote, win on, or at least work with Congress on, the three trade agreement and you have the power -- the payroll tax cut. MADDOW: I will say this, it seems like a landmark moment right now, because you talk to the White House a lot. And you`re able to always report in a really reliable way, Chuck, what it is that the White House is willing to admit about their internal negotiations. That`s about the only time in this first term of President Obama that I`ve heard that the advice from the White House is the same advice as the liberal base has been screaming at the White House. It`s been a very long time. Chuck Todd, thank you very much for staying up late and joining us. I really appreciate it. TODD: You got it, guys. MADDOW: All right. Our panel is staying with us. This is MSNBC`s coverage of the Republican presidential candidates debate at the Reagan Library. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. RON PAUL (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I support the message of Ronald Reagan. The message was great. But the consequence -- we have to be honest with ourselves, it was not all that great. Huge deficits during the 1980s. And that is what my criticism was for, not for Ronald Reagan`s message. His message is a great message. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Ronald Reagan, in the abstract, thumbs up. Ronald Reagan in reality, Ron Paul having a hard time with that one tonight. Here`s my question for our panel tonight. Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O`Donnell, Eugene Robinson, there is definitely two clear tiers or maybe even three clear tiers of candidates. We have Romney and Perry and then we`ve sort of got everybody else. But the everybody else`s in a big field like this and on a big stage like we had tonight sometimes can play an important role, by highlighting a key issue, by confronting one of the leading candidates in a way they wouldn`t have otherwise been confronted, by shifting the debate in a direction it ought to go, that it wouldn`t otherwise go. Did any of the second and third tier candidates tonight have that clarifying -- ROBINSON: Ron Paul. O`DONNELL: -- disappointed me, though, because I though he had -- he had better ammunition than he used. So -- for example, on Perry, Perry challenged Ron Paul on Ron Paul`s historic support for Reagan, which was actually pretty consistent for Ron Paul. What Ron Paul could have said is when I was supporting Reagan, you were a Democrat. He left out the extra punch that he has. He has used it in other places. He kind of ran out of time. He disappointed me as a factor. MADDOW: Gene? ROBINSON: We -- maybe I`m just being clouded by my affection for Ron Paul as a political character. I mean, he did go after Perry on the HPV vaccine in a tough way. MADDOW: In a traditional conservative way, though, not very much a libertarian way. ROBINSON: He also said it`s bad medicine. He`s a doctor. So also from that standpoint. Second, where else are you going to find a candidate who`s going to go off on a riff about how you build a border fence and they might use it to keep us in. That was one of the moments of the debate -- you know, I`m really missing -- SHARPTON: I think where they did make the mark, as someone who ran who was called an also ran, is they made the attacks personal. If you know that you`re running and you may not win, then you want to bring the debate where it wouldn`t ordinarily go. And when -- in `04, Kucinich and I brought it on the war in Iraq where the other candidates really didn`t want to go, and brought it on racial justice and other issues. No one did that tonight. It was even with Ron Paul. It was personal; Perry, you did this. It was nowhere that they had to address the issues they wouldn`t have normally addressed. That`s what I would have done. O`DONNELL: You`re saying they kind of have to ignore the question and just go with the -- SHARPTON: You have to ignore the question if you`re being ignored and you can make -- MADDOW: Reframe it. SHARPTON: You train the debate, since no one thinks you`re going to win anyway. So what are you debating -- MADDOW: Briefly, last 30 seconds, did any of the candidates who are not Romney or Perry materially affect the course of the debate tonight? SCHULTZ: No, I don`t think so. But I thought the Newtster -- I thought Newt Gingrich clearly, in my opinion, head and shoulders, when it comes to the facts, putting it into perspective, where the Republican party is, what their history is, where they are now, where they want to go -- he`s a sour old shoe and he`s not going to get it done, but I think he might be the smartest one in the bunch. O`DONNELL: He too lies about Ronald Reagan as much as the rest of them. MADDOW: My favorite is going back and finding Newt Gingrich`s quotes around Iran Contra, of him throwing Reagan under the bus. And now he describes himself as an apostle. All right, that`s going to do it for us tonight. Lawrence O`Donnell, Al Sharpton, Eugene Robinson, Ed Schultz, all of our colleagues who joined us tonight, it has been a great night of coverage. I maintain that the greatest loser tonight was Jon Huntsman because he did not move up and he needed to. A lot of different opinions tonight about who the biggest winner was. The Romney campaign certainly feels like they won because of Rick Perry doubling down on Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. In case you missed any of the debate tonight, the Republican presidential debate, in its entirety, is coming up in about ten seconds. But remember, of course, tomorrow night, in a joint address to Congress, President Obama`s big and long awaited jobs speech. Weeks in September aren`t supposed to be this full of political news, but we`re lucky they are. Have a great one. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END