Rachel Maddow Fillets Charlie Baker's Tearjerking Fisherman Story (Video)

In his debate Tuesday against Democrat Martha Coakley, Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker was moved to tears. Baker recalled the travails of a New Bedford fisherman who was so overburdened by Big Government Regulation that he had to crush the dreams of his two sons.

Both boys -- fine, strapping lads -- were star football players at New Bedford High School and had won football scholarships, but the fisherman told them no, they had to stay and help dad eke out a living, and if only there were less government getting in the way, those boys could follow their dreams. It was moving as hell, until local reporters started asking to meet this poor soul and hear his heart-rending story of burdensome government themselves, and it turned out that nobody in New Bedford knew of any brothers who both got football scholarships. OK, maybe Baker met them in 2009, but he knows it happened. He just can't recall the fella's name, but by golly, it still chokes him up. And the guy was definitely real, or at least the guy "certainly existed for me," said Baker.

Also, Baker vividly remembers when he was in Krakow in 1943 while the Nazis were clearing the ghetto, and there was this little girl in a red coat...