Alec Baldwin on GOP: ‘These guys are getting scared’

>> that's mitt romney getting a big city welcome at his press conference today with rudy giuliani at a new york city firehouse. romney and giuliani delivered piazza whys to the firefighters of engine 24 ladder 5 who lost 11. their own on 9/11. mitt romney is doing everything he can to erase his campaign statement from 2007 about osama bin laden .

>> i do not concur in the words of barack obama in a plan to enter an alley of ours and their country in a manner complete with bombing and so forth.

>> here is romney 2.0 on osama bin laden .

>> of course i would have ordered taking out osama bin laden . add i been president of the united states , i would have made the same decision the president made which is to remove him.

>> joining me now is alex wagner host of msnbc's now with alex wagner and three time golden globe winner oscar nominated star of nbc's " 30 rock " and registered voter alec baldwin . alec, in 2007 , the man runs for president. he hears president -- then senator barack obama say, if necessary, i will violate pakistan's sovereignty in order to get osama bin laden . romney says oh, can't do that, can't do that. today he stands there at a new york city fire station , says i would have done exactly the same thing.

>> things for these guys aren't going that well. you know, the economy may stumble. it probably won't stumble that badly between now and the election. for those people who look at the handy benchmarks like the dow. the dow is still staying pretty well above 13,000. which that crowd of romneys really goes for. it is the anniversary of this president getting osama bin laden . and i think that the republicans, i think romney , these guys are really getting scared. they thought to themselves, that after a tough primary, and they spent a lot of money on a bloody primary. i was one of the people that said quickly that all obama needs to do for the first month of the general election is just slow clips of gingrich 's remarks about romney . just keep showing clips of gingrich talking about romney in order to really get people off that.

>> and then santorum's.

>> yeah. all of them. gingrich on romney alone was like -- but my point is, it is just these guys are getting scared. they know it is not looking good for them and i think they are sensing now that they are really going to focus on the congressional races and obama -- it is starting to look like he has it in the bag.

>> alex wagner , there is something kind of wonderful about the mitt romney flip-flops. when you see him doing the new version of what ever it was. i'm now against individual mandate or yes of course i would have done what i used to say what i wouldn't have done. he does it with a -- i don't know, a kind of --

>> a shamelessness.

>> a soullessness that i haven't seen in someone standing up in front after microphone like that. and we've seen a lot of, almost completely soulless politicians before.

>> yesterday mitt romney on the campaign trail said, verbatim, president obama takes -- is taking from the poor. president obama doesn't care about the poor. i care about the poor. you talk about a flip-flop. this is the man embracing the paul ryan budget which basically balances our deficit on the backs of the poor. vis-a-vis the romney /giuliani event today, i think that republicans sort of figured that the president would do something today given the fact it is the one-year anniversary of the bin laden killing. the president in a sort of masterful political stroke, say what you will about it, goes to afghanistan and makes a context of this whole day about our war over there, the soldiers, the blood and treasure that have been sacrificed and positions himself as commander-in-chief. mitt romney is trotting around lower manhattan .

>> handing out pizzas.

>> pizzas, with rudy giuliani . there in lies the difference between the two.

>> and honoring people who are in the, you know, in this famous fire department and this famous city who lost all these members. there is nothing wrong with w that. i don't want anyone to say that we are diminishing and honoring the fire fighters in new york. but for me the most important thing is that obama shows up, stealthily goes into afghanistan here on this anniversary and talks about peace. he is talking about peace. and i'll tell you one thing, if you play all these republican debates , and they had more debates than there are games in the nba season, these guys had debate after debate, you never heard them once, never heard the word peace mentioned. what i'm proudest of, whether the guy was republican or democrat, he happens to be a democrat now, we are back to talking about the language of peace which i think is important for the united states and for the world.

>> alex , we don't have a record of president obama failed predictions and promises about what will happen in that region. he doesn't have one of these mission accomplished moments behind him where you see, oh, no, no, that kass was completely wrong.

>> no, i think the president has been a prag ma tist and some people pill rate for him because he hasn't given the dreamescapes of where it will go. at the same time, look, we are over there. it is going to be messy. i that i foreign policy it an area in coming months where the president is going to have to do a very, very delicate dance. that said, i think he has proven very adept that and given the fact that he is willing to highlight on this day, which is a day he could have basked in the spotlight of just, assassinating or killing bin laden . he has chosen to go and sort of step into the hornet's nest that is afghanistan , is a testament to the real politic of barack obama .

>> now the romneys began their day on a morning show . which is where you go when you want to humanize someone. it was ann romney 's mission this morning to humanize mitt once again. let's listen to how she did that with charlie rose this morning.

>> for me, i love the opportunity of letting people see a side of mitt that often people have mischaracterized.

>> what side is that?

>> as stiff. he's not. he's funny. i still look at him as the boy that i met in high school . when he was playing all the jokes and really just being crazy . pretty crazy . so there's a wild and crazy man inside of there.

>> wild and crazy . the new romney bumper sticker.

>> i think that, the two of them, are behaving the way everybody in that situation behalves. she is trying to play that role, not a -- i don't think a fun role far woman to go out on the boards across this country and try to drum up support for her husband. and i mean, that doesn't bother me at all. what i think is most important here is that what you see now with romney is, you know, this is a very lame analogy to use a boxing analogy. but when you are heavyweight champion and someone wants to take the title away from you, they have to take the title away from you. they don't win on point. the guy wins with the belt. romney is not finding a way that is scoring points with the preponderance of the american people to win on point.

>> alex , the day that obama campaign launches an anti- romney ad about his swiss bank account , wild and crazy on a morning show probably isn't the adequate response.

>> you kind of wish they would give up. it is like, it is a --

>> how so.

>> like teddy is a wild and crazy bear . like you can literally see her pulling the cord. he is wild and crazy and yet all mitt romney can do is go ha, ha, ha over and over again. the winning strategy for mitt romney , if in fact there is a winning strategy , is for him to say, i'm a nerd. i am not cool. i am an particularly a mr. fix-it. i will fix the economy over and over and over again. every time he tries to compete with the president on likability, not being wooden and proving that he doesn't have a wooden heart , he loses. ann romney trying to prove her husband is a wild and crazy guy, is fruitless.

>> although romney doesn't have the same cv as the first bush, not vice president first two terms, not head of the cia in the 1970s , romney is a real blue blood money guy. he is a rich guy. he is a country club buy. in that way he is george bush . o the old bush scenario where he couldn't tell people what price after half gallon of milk was. romney is at out of touch with the average american as we could possibly find on the meet are today. in terms of being in touch with the average american . we would be bet are off with gingrich than romney in terms of personal wealth and attitude of a lifestyle. but so for me, romney is bush the first again. i think that the people are beginning to see that. he is a the guy -- he is not anywhere near the average american in terms of lifestyle and how they --

>> and stiffer than bush the first. bush the first was actually in world war ii , flying those planes in the pacific, doing kind of things that romney 's never come close to experiencing.

>> i think that the thing -- the problem for romney today again is that, you know, right now americans are -- i think americans are really, really scared. i think americans have gotten smarter. americans know we add really close call the last couple years economically and the roof almost came down on us. and they have said, we want strong capital markets in this country. but we want some regulation of those markets. when i talk to someone like george will on my radio show for npr and will says, defend the shores and deliver the mail. we want no more regulations, no more governing agencies. he is a real libber tarian that way. and i want it say, you know, right now americans know, we need strong capital markets . we don't want to hamstring wall street . but we have to have some regulations. this guy, when romney comes in, he is going to take a match and burn down the sec. he will burn it down to the ground. we will have less regulations than we had in the last ten years. we cannot afford to go back that way. we can't.

>> we will take a break right here. alex wagner , thanks for joining the party tonight. mr. baldwin will stay with us.

>>> coming up, we soon won't have newt gingrich to kick around any more. swoel kick him around just a little bit tonight. during the commercial break alec and i will flip a coin to see which one of us actually does tonight's rewrite. that's next.