>>> according to mitt romney , his running mate, paul ryan , is the intellectual leader of the republican party . ryan is also chairman of the house budget committee which make it is all the more bewildering that when he's invited to explain his budget, the one that mitt romney has endorsed, well, mr. ryan appears to lose his voice. however, vice president joe biden isn't afraid to tell a hard truth.
>> obama and biden want to raise tacks by $8 trillion. guess what? yes, we do in one regard. we want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super wealthy.
>> karen finney is an msnbc political analyst and former dnc communications director and hogan giddily is the former communications director for the rick santorum campaign. welcome to both of you. kar karen , to quote jack nicholson in "a few good men" romney and ryan , they just can't handle the truth can they?
>> they can't. the level of intellectual dishonesty , i use the wort intellectual half joking, they took the vice president's comments and truncated them without the most important part, which has been the most important part of what the president has been talking about, what democrats have been talking about, and that is the idea that those at the top should be doing their fair share , and that's something that i guess all of the sudden now romney and ryan , they don't quite say it that way, but they're sort of saying, well, we're not going to mess with their tacks but we're going to, you know, help the middle class and we're going to, you know, fire big bird to get it all done.
>> yeah, that's right. hogan , biden tells the truth, and ryan calls him out for, quote, dropping the veil and using candor. i mean, it's as if truth has become a four-letter word for the romney campaign.
>> well, i wouldn't say that, but, look, i think there was a problem with the romney / ryan pick right off the bat, and that was ryan had a plan that was obviously well-publicized, that was defeated, but since mitt romney was short on specifics in his plan, the media immediately filled in the holes and the gaps in romney 's plan with ryan 's old plan.
>> but hogan , i thought --
>> they couldn't answer the question.
>> hogan , just before you answer fully though, my understanding was that mitt romney had embraced ball ryan 's budget. indeed, i heard him say that. so i think it's slightly inaccurate to suggest that somehow mitt romney has been separate from paul ryan . he's embraced paul ryan 's budget.
>> well, if i'm not mistaken, that, too, was in a primary that in a sense they were asking would you embrace his plan and romney said, yeah, it's a good plan, but as the nominee obviously, you have your own plan. the raub is that plan was a little bit short on specifics, shall we say, and so they filled the gaps smartly so done by the democrats by the way, they filled the gaps with ryan 's plan to try to make romney 's plan appear to be out of touch with the mainstream.
>> hogan , hold on though because that's not altogether true because part of the problem that the romney / ryan / ryan / romney however you want to say it, they were asked a very simple obvious question. okay, governor romney , how would your plan differ? crickets. there was no answer. i mean, it was the most obvious question. having endorsed ryan 's plan in the primary, you then bring him on the ticket. it's not an unfair question to say to governor romney and to congressman ryan , okay, so you're saying you're going to have your own plan. okay. how is it going to differ? give us some specifics.
>> karen , good luck with waiting for an answer to that. but i'd like you to answer this. the vice presidential debate this coming thursday, the bar has been set pretty high for paul ryan . he's the numbers guy and the intellectual leader of the party, so i'm assuming, karen , that he will just destroy joe biden .
>> yeah, good luck with that one, paul ryan . i sure hope he's going to go in there and think he can do that. i love joe biden and this is the guy to take paul ryan down on a number of levels. he's going to have to defend himself and there's going to be plenty of time if he wants to walk through any kind of numbers. i'm sure we can get out a whiteboard and pen and write it down. i'm sure biden will give him all the time he needs to walk through the numbers. there's still a huge liable for the romney / ryan ticket, and that is this issue of medicare and what they would do in these tax breaks , and i really believe that joe biden is going to be able to hold paul ryan 's feet to the fire in a way that we have not yet seen.
>> okay, hogan , so karen says that joe biden is going to in about the second round. what's your assessment of the fourthcoming debate, hogan ?
>> i'm not sure if it will be the second round but joe biden will definitely throw a whole lot more punches than barack obama did. i'm pretty confident that joe biden will be the attack dog in this. i think he's going to try to pin ryan down on a lot of specifics. ryan had a little bit of trouble answering those specifics in various interviews up until this point. i don't think that's shocking to anybody on this network for sure, but he's going to have --
>> oh!
>> he's going to have a chance to look sharp , to look strong, and to answer the vice president and to outline the plan that mitt romney or undergird the plan that mitt romney talked about. the problem is i don't think he's going to be able to levy things and go unchallenged. biden is going to hold his feet to the fire, no question.
>> now, let me show you what happens when paul ryan runs out on a sean hannity interview early. take a listen, both of you.
>> thank you for being with us, governor romney stays with us.
>> thanks. we've got 12,000 people out here excited to see us.
>> 12,000 people, we only have 4 million people that want to see you so we're competing.
>> did the numbers guy really trade 4 million people and 12,000 and inassault sean hannity at the same time.
>> that was a little insulting but sean hannity probably shouldn't have said that. that was slightly arrogant for him to say, too. fox news, no questions, the jumping off point for a lot of campaigns. i remember on the santorum campaign we had to stop an event with 20,000 people there to do a greta interview late at night because we knew the voyeurshu viewership would be more on" that venue. i don't know why he wanted to do that. i'm sure there were people who wanted to pat him on the back. but that's no big deal . he made the choice and he has to live with it.
>> hogan , karen , thank you both and have great weekends.
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