what we, we saw and how mitch mcconnell handled this. i got to give him credit, lawrence. he swooped in at the last minute. and saved his party from itself. and you know, this is not the first time he has done that wit regard to the debt limit. it was mitch mcconnell who in 2011, denied the elaborate mechanism used at that time to raise the debt limit through a disapproval process resolution. he thought up a scheme that allowed all the republicans to vote no. the debt limit went up. it was brilliant. he has done this before. he has didn t right thing here. obviously for the nation it would have been much belter tte this happened earlier. i have to give him credit for doing that. it will not make him popular in his party. ezra klein, mark patterson. thank you for joining us tonight. thank you. thank you. while ted cruz and john mccain were fighting it out in the senate. sean hannity and bill o reilly were fighting it out on fox news. luckily the epic battle is all
i think 2014 is going to be the last election we will fight on this bill. by the time 2016 rolls around. most americans are going to kid it part of the woodwork of the country. we are not going to be fighting. if anything, democrats are campaigning on how good it is. i think the republicans won t know what to respond because the hype won t have any basis because most americans will experience something belter through the exchanges or through the fact that they re costs have come down in various ways. john than, you wrote that, you cannot just assert that it is, that the, that the law is going to work perfectly. you can t just assert that it is a disaster. there is going to be, some parts of it that, obviously don t work as intended. we have seen that. with some elements of the bill. did not end up working as the authors intended. which is understandable, something that big. and complex. seems to me, the republicans have almost lost the ability to do fair criticism of it. because the
they keep hyping all kind of bad news. inventing bad news. and locking out completely pretty major good news that is happening. they can t get a remotely balanced picture within their own minds of how this is working. i think a lot of republicans are self deluded about how the law is going to go. i think this will be a case where they will be surprised. as the president did say on the clip. you had. that in two or three years. people are going to say, you know this is going pretty well. it s actually cheaper than weep than we thought. getting good care. allowing us to do things. the republican party will be dumbfounded. they won t know what to do. i think 2014 is going to be the last election we will fight on this bill. by the time 2016 rolls around. most americans are going to kid it part of the woodwork of the country. we are not going to be fighting. if anything, democrats are campaigning on how good it is. i think the republicans won t know what to respond because the hype won
and, you know we look to make things complicated. but this is actually not that complicated. the job of congress, congress doesn t have a whole lot of core responsibilities. one core responsibility is passing a budget. which they have not done yet. the other core responsibility that they have got is to pay the bills that they have already accru accrued. if congress simply does those two things when they get back. then the economy can continue to recover and folks out there who were working hard were trying to find a job, will have some sense of stability. and we can start thinking about things like college education and some of the big structural changes we have to continue to make sure ensure we are competitive. nobody knows belter than you it is a big part of the job of the president to make that happen. how much of the lack of action in washington do you putton or seor put on yourself in terms of blame? look, ultimately the buck
and trying to deal with that rage. you see it in a lot of town halls. then does the president have a point in what he said to chris. republicans are scared of some of their constituents? absolutely. absolutely they are. they re scared of a challenge from the right. there is, not sure about the rush limbaugh part as much as we absolutely know there are tea party challengers out there on the senate side. and the house side. willing to go after these guys. and the, totality actually of the coburn townhall was about why he wouldn t join ted cruz and others to shut down the government if they won t defund. a bad strategy. not going to work. people were not happy with the answer. we have heard the president talk about what he doesn t like from rush limbaugh, republicans in congress. what s his play? what can he do to get something done in the budget fights in the fall? he has to take it to the american people. i think he looks belter he s be.