"Mitt Romney, at his core, is not a hardcore conservative," Mark McKinnon said Wednesday on The Last Word, laying out one of many of Romney's problems. 

What makes his words different? McKinnon was a top adviser to George W. Bush who also helped out on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

In a brutally honest editorial in The Daily Beast about Romney's latest 47% troubles, McKinnon wrote that candidate is "running out of time, and voters like me are running out of patience."

McKinnon described Romney comments made in the video—which was surreptitiously recorded and posted online Monday by the liberal magazine Mother Jones—as unpresidential. "Presidents don't talk about those people," he said. "Presidents talk about being inclusive."

"He's been a mystery for a lot of us," McKinnon continued, and the latest remarks aren't helping.  

O'Donnell asked if this now means that he is an undecided voter.

"The Libertarian's starting to look pretty good to me right now," McKinnon said, referring to Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

If you're a conservative who has earned the ire of Donald Trump, you might be doing something right.

Virgil Goode, presidential candidate for the conservative Constitution Party, unlocked this achievement by getting his name on the ballot in Virginia. Goode served six terms as a Republican House member from that state, and his local popularity has some Republicans running scared.

As The Donald tweeted on September 7:

The Republicans must get Virgil Goode out of the race in Virginia. He will take votes away from @MittRomney.

In an exclusive interview with Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday's The Last Word, Goode issued his reaction: he's "not too scared."

President Obama and Mitt Romney are less than one percentage point apart in Virginia according to the latest Real Clear Politics poll average. If Goode gets "between 3 to 4 percent in his old congressional district alone, he could get more than 1 percent of the vote statewide," said O'Donnell, basing those numbers on a recent Washington Post report. "That's enough to make the difference in this election."

For his part, Goode says, "We will get some votes from Romney voters, but we will get a lot of votes from Obama voters ... [there's] a lot of straight arrow, yellow dog Democrats who would never vote Republican, but will vote for me." 

Virginia is a key state in this year's presidential election, with 13 electoral votes. The third party candidate is trying to make waves around the country, though, with rallies in Ohio and Nevada.

"It's time for grassroots citizens to have a president that's focused on them rather than the super PACs," Goode said to O'Donnell. He is not taking any PAC money for his campaign.

Goode also chastised team Romney "for listening to Donald Trump instead of the people on the street."

"[I will] bring in a lot of conservative voters that weren't going to go vote," he said.