Chris Matthews asks the Hardball Roundtable to tell him something he doesn’t know. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman take the challenge.
Fineman says his Kentucky sources say that despite falling well behind in the Republican race, Rand Paul might not be so inclined to drop out early. Having convinced the Kentucky Republican party to hold a separate primary for his Senate seat next March, it would be even more embarrassing for him to exit before his home state’s presidential primary. Especially since his seat is now more secure after another tea party candidate – Matt Bevin – has won the Governorship in that state.
Next, Mollie Hemingway offered up this tidbit on Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. He received the Irving Kristol award at a gala hosted by the American Enterprise Institute Monday and was pressed by AEI’s vice president to urge the effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – and instead he advocated nonintervention in Syria. He downplayed the threats posed by regional dictators and focused instead on ISIS and Iran, which he characterized as extremists pushing dangerous caliphates and world domination. He suggested that Assad and various other brutal regional leaders are far less nefarious than ISIS and Iran. And he said that there was no need to get involved in Syria when a flurry of bad actors are fighting each other.
Finally, Eugene Robinson says Nancy Pelosi was ready to provide Democratic votes to keep John Boehner as Speaker of the House if she had to. She firmly believes that the party with the majority should keep the speakership, and had it come down to that, she would have delivered.
The Staff