Rubio, Ryan, and the battle of the next GOP generation

>> aids is going to lose.

>>> fresh off a humiliating defeat at the ballot box and amid a national debate over just how out of touch their party really is, romney's running mate and the rising star from florida tried, perhaps a little too hard to come across as caring, compassionate conservatives at tuesday's jack kemp foundation dinner in d.c. paul ryan trying to put as much distance as rhetorically as possible between himself and the man he spent the last four months campaigning with, tried to shrug off the 47% baggage and cast himself as a, wait for it, champion of the poor.

>> when 40% of all children born in the lowest income quinn tile never rise above it, what does that say about our country? we must come together and advance new strategies for lifting people out of poverty. how do we get this sense of real security and upper mobility for all americans especially those in need?

>> unless america forget the same paul ryan who authorized the paul ryan budget which, according to the nonpartisan center on budget and policy priorities would have made 62% of spending cuts on programs that serve low income americans and uninsure up to 57 million americans . at the same dinner a more sober, compassionate, marco rubio emerged as a champion for the, let's see if you can guess.

>> middle class , american middle class , great american middle class . vibrant and stable middle class . m middle class job creator. middle class .

>> with 35 mentions in one speech, rubio made his love for the middle class clear. his solution what ails the middle class , tax cuts .

>> they do not create rapid economic growth. you can't open or grow a business if your taxes are too high or uncertain. that's why i personally opposed the president's plan to raise taxes. we should keep rates low on everyone.

>> paul ryan , meanwhile, channel his inner ian rand, the problem for the american poor is a bloated federal government . a bloated federal government that wants to spend too much to help the poor.

>> government's approach has been to expand bureaucracy and spend lots of money on bloated top-down anti-poverty programs. we're trying to measure compassion by how much we spend not by how many people we help.

>> the takeaway, we care. we care about the same things we always cared about -- cutting taxes and slashing the government. in "the daily beast " calling this attempt at rebranding, if you will, gaseous rhetoric. saying until these guys actually embrace some amount of policy change, it's same old, same old.

>> you know i think rubio at least his suits fit better than paul ryan 's suits do. watching them, on the one hand it's cool watching them being -- trying to be progressive. but it's -- these suits are ill-fitting these compassion -- sudden compassion for the poor. it's a little bit like listening to bloomberg speak spanish.

>> nice try but awkward.

>> i'm happy to hear paul ryan talking about the poor and i hope this is a trend in the republican party .

>> i don't know -- if i were paul ryan 's strategist i would say, you know what? poverty, don't go there. all it takes one look what you've done in congress --

>> you know you would think. my colleague writes in the week's edition of "time" about the rebranding effort and there are a lot of gop bigwigs that want paul ryan to be a catholic moses figure. you know, they think that he can --

>> which is impossible.

>> which is impossible.

>> biblically.

>> good at breaking those tablets.

>> i think that paul ryan has the same problem that the republicans did in the election, which is that the math doesn't work, the ideology, economically doesn't work. as you just talked about in the last segment, some of the fastest growing industries in this country are low-paying industries. that actually 8 out of the 10 fastest growing job categories at minimum wage jobs. you have this growing group of people that is under pressure and there's no way of getting around that math and the republicans are not putting a coherent strategy forward yet on that.

>> i think also this notion of takes versus makers are engrained in the dna of the gop. this seems like triage after the video came out and paul ryan wants to have a future in the american politics and being hitched to the guy at the flossie dinner said this is not caring about half of the country knows he needs to do some work.

>> it's romney-like. what the strategy is pretend you didn't say what you said and pretend you didn't do what you did and therefore you can do what you never can aspire to, which is help the poor. beyond all of that talk at the end of the day they're doing the same policies that put the poor people into the poor house to begin with, or helped. the policies that didn't try to take advantage of the goodwill this nation had for people who were poor. guess what? as reported there was a greater tolerance for food stamps , guess why? more people needed them. and now when my brother needs them and when my sister needs them and when my family needs them i don't trust those people as people just on the dole and don't want to work. i know them. i think the american public when it understands the matter of trust, i understand the story and narrative this person is giving me, i can be more generous and compassionate. let's translate that into structural and systemic approaches that allow public policy to adroes them. what paul ryan is doing is filibustering.

>> really quick, we didn't talk about this yet, we are going to now quickly.

>> do it.

>> chris christie making an appearance at the white house .

>> best friend forever.

>> what is that? he's probably the one in the best position for 2016 at this point. i mean --

>> there's a thing about winning primaries he has to get through. the more he shows up at the white house for holiday party or whatever he's doing there, the harder it's going to be.

>> hurricane sandy.

>> obviously new jersey still needs help. and he's not helping his political career doing that. a general election , yes. but he does have to face conservative threats in the primaries, not the best way.

>> a cynical view of this --

>> sorry. it's holiday season but it's true.

>> that's why we have you here. you call it like it is, my friend. that's all for us. thank you. we have to go. but i'll see you back leer tomorrow at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m . pacific joined by ben white , joan walsh , ben smith and msnbc's very own chris heys. until then, follow us on twitter -- wow, having a hard time with the teleprompter. " andrea mitchell reports" next.