….Joe Scarborough: All right, so Tommy, uh, man, you didn’t pick a good time to run as a Democrat, did you?

Mika Brzezinski: Yeah, except [crosstalk]…

Joe Scarborough: Oh six.

Mika Brzezinski: …he’s got good cred.

Joe Scarborough: Got, you got great street cred, but it’s tough out there for Democrats, isn’t it?

Tommy Sowers (D): Well, I tell you I think it’s the best year possible for a guy straight out of the military without a lot of political experience to be running for Congress. Throughout the Eighth Congressional District everything I hear is the demand for new blood. And it’s very party neutral. I, I was at a, uh, patriot rally about thirty-six hours ago and a guy came up to me and said, you’re that guy running for Congress. I said, yes I am. He said, now, you’re not the incumbent are you? Said, no I’m not. Well that’s good, you’ve got my vote.

Mika Brzezinski: That was the first question? [crosstalk] Oh boy.

Joe Scarborough: Well, we’re talking about, we’ve been talking about Afghanistan all morning. Should America get out of Afghanistan?

Tommy Sowers (D): Yes, we should. I mean, part of my campaign is ending the war in Afghanistan, and it’s because what they, what they teach in the military are the principles of war. And you just discussed it. The objective is one of the first principles they teach you.

Joe Scarborough: That’s what they teach at West Point [crosstalk]. Right away.

Tommy Sowers (D): Well, yeah. They teach that to you. And when you look at our objectives there right now, it is to train up the Afghan military and police so that one day we can high five them and leave. The problem of course is a question that Congress has been derelict in not asking. It’s who will pay for that military once we leave? The Afghans can’t, America won’t forever, and our allies won’t. So training up four to six hundred thousand Afghan tribesmen that will one day be looking for a paycheck is not in our nation’s long-term strategic interest.

[….]

Joe Scarborough: Tommy, is it time for a draft?

Tommy Sowers (D): Well, I, I disagree, Mike, at least in my district. In my district, when I, there’s seventy thousand veterans in my district, and when I am doing a town hall and I ask how many of you are veterans or related to somebody that’s currently serving, almost the entire room raises the hand. So, you know, this is why Afghanistan at least from, from my district, it matters in twenty-ten. It matters on a fiscal per, uh, perspective. When we are, we’re spending four hundred dollars a gallon for every gallon of gas we put into a humvee in, in Kabul, people are worried about that. When we’re building infrastructure halfway around the world when we should be building it right here at home, people want that to end. So it’s, it’s a very personal I agree with you…but from my district they they want us investing back at home….