Romney ‘jokes’ on climate change; speechless on governor’s record, Afghanistan

>>> mitt romney needed to deliver the the speech of his life thursday, yet what's most remarkable about his vision for the next four years may be what romney did not say. no remarks about medicare, social security or immigration. nothing about iraq, afghanistan or syria. even his comments targeting female voters were mostly just a list of women with whom he shared office. part of his message to women was that he's worked with him. even some conservatives are lambasting romney for in the words of paul ryan , duck the top issues.

>> not a word about afghanistan. we're fighting a war. 6 to 8,000 troops this. 240 some casualties this year in 2010 2012 and the word isn't mentioned and no tribute to the troops fighting there?

>> joining us now from washington is democratic congressman ed marquee of massachusetts. i noticed something else about which romney did not talk in great detail. his time as governor of your state. why do you think that was?

>> well, governor romney would like to put his record as governor of massachusetts into a hermetically sealed deposit box in switzerland. we were only 47th out of 50 states in job creation during his four years as governor, but he also wants to make sure that no one pays attention to the fact that romney care is the basis for obama care, that he did believe in climate change , rather than making it a bunch line the way he did last night. he did believe in other words in the things that it seems to me were really at the heart of who mitt romney was, but that person is now nonrecognizable because that's the price you must pay to be the republican nominee for president.

>> okay, you've somewhat anticipated what i was going to ask you because you know that the the way a speech ends is often it most powerful force and this is the way romney chose to end his speech.

>> president obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans. and to heal the planet.

>> what was your reaction, sir, when you heard mitt romney using climate change for a cheap laugh like that?

>> well, again, it's just the opposite of what he was saying to the people of massachusetts just six years ago. he believed in it and he was actually allocating state money for clean energy . but today, you know, climate change is just a punch line to them and clean energy is a punching bag to the republicans and you might as well be talking to an empty chair as trying to get romney now to admit that he believed in all those things just six years ago because and here's the problem, just one week ago in houston, there was an oil barren summit that romney went to where he raised $6 million and promised to kill wind energy subsidies and keep the oil subsidies on the books.

>> and also, sir, he did talk about energy and repeated his claim that we're going to achieve energy independence within seven years of him should he be elected president. i can't find anybody who believes that is actually possible.

>> well, here's the good news on the day that barack obama was sworn in as president on january 20th , 2009 , the united states was 57% dependent upon imported oil. today, we're down to 45% dependence. more over, we're at an 18-year high in oil production in the united states with records for wind, for solar and for fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive. what romney has now announced is that he doesn't like increasing the efficiency of the vehicles which we drive in america and he's going to take those rules off the the books and paul ryan over the last four years has voted over and over and over again to take those fuel economy standards off the books. that's 3 million barrels a day that we have to import from the persian gulf . so, the romney plan, you know, here's the thing about romney and the republicans this week. they have an ability to harness vol amounts of information and that they can dramatically increase defense spending , cut taxes for the wealthy and balance the budget at the same time and not hurt grandma and her medicare. that's just patently false. not only grandma, but they hurt clean energy , pell grants . we know the icebergs are cracking off of the antarctic. the arctic is now at its warmest state in history and all of it now must be denied because no republican can get elected president of the united states without denying the science of medicine, of climate and that's unfortunately a tragic state for what was once a great party.

>> congress ed markey , thank you so much for joining us, sir.