Matthews: ‘I don’t think Paul Ryan tried to unify America today’

How did msnbc’s political panel reacted to Paul Ryan’s convention speech? The short answer: not well.

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• Chris Matthews: “I don’t think Paul Ryan tried to unify America today, I think he tried to use the divisions in America, economically, to advance the cause of the better-off people who don’t want to be taxed, and the upper middle class who thinks the benefits will come to them, and basically ignored the bottom half of this country.”
• Al Sharpton: “The fact is that Ryan very eloquently misled people. He walked out of the debt commission. He lied about the plant in his hometown. It was closed at the end of ’08 when Bush was president, not under Obama. So if you want to have an eloquent person that does not tell the truth, this was a great performance.” 
• Ed Schultz: “He got after the Medicare, he got after the stimulus package—although he forgot to mention that he requested stimulus funds in his backyard. He also forgot to mention that his mother took a public bus to go to a state school, to get back into this economy when his family ran into adversity.”
• Rachel Maddow: “I think the Democrats are gonna beat Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney with old people on Medicare, because I don’t think they came up with an actual fact-based rejoinder to their biggest weakness with Paul Ryan.”
• Chris Hayes: “It was ironic, this theme of nostalgia. Even though he’s the young face of the conservative movement, the theme of nostalgia plays out, talking about, ‘back when I was waiting tables or I was in college, we had this different kind of America than we have now.’ And the question is, what exactly has changed?”