to the economic crisis and, of course, in the iraq war, the greatest mistake in american history that i believe was the single conscious decision, then the only answer is to go further right. they couldn t stick with bush. they are constitutionally unable to move to a more centrist position so they had then the only place they could go is to the right. that s why you have people like gingrich and romney and a lot of others far to the right of where they were before. again, the model they have of a bush administration became indefensible and they had to find a new model, and given their ideology, the only one they could find was to the right. you re invited back on this program any time you would like, especially when you re accused of a felony by newt gingrich. well, to be fair, he didn t say it might have been a serious misdemeanor. any time, any place. thank you, congressman barney frank of massachusetts who i do believe has the iq that newt in his delusion thinks he might ha
the work being done. they want to see obama out there fighting for their side. they want to feel like he is an ally and not too aloof. okay. let me go by joan. i think joan is on the progressive side and always has been. you heard bernie sanders earlier. tough new trade laws. very tough on trade making it very hard for countries to trade with us who don t want to basically pay our salaries and protect the environment like we do. face it. it would be very tough to get those dmournts the third world to agree to the way we do things here. tougher trade laws. harder to trade. bigger government in terms of tax the rich. go up and raise taxes for the rich and protect the big entitlement programs. that is the progressive point of view and what it is. a more conservative point of view, bill clinton got re-elected in 96 by saying, i m going to sign the welfare reform bill. i m going to end welfare as a right and support nafta. i m going to support balancing the budget. i m going to cut gover
spending as well as raise taxes. he took a centrist position. i thought clarence was going to go on tonight and that s what i thought you said you were going to do and back the bill clinton approach not the populist approach. what is your position? i need to know. where are you clarence? are you with bill clinton? clarence, when they write the headline after the election let s go back to your business. when they write the election report after the 2012 election and they said the president won by going to the center or the president won by going to the left and pushing a very populist agenda what will be the winning headline? that s all i m asking. let s go to our business reporting on this. let s use the usual english language. will he be perceived as succe successfully the left or successfully the center? chris, you know as well as i do the same event happens. you get five different headlines and different angles. the fact is there is a lot of confusion over whether obama has chan
arizona senator john mccain says the man that beat him out to become president is now a centrist. this one day after a private meeting between mccain and president obama. mccain saying the president is moving toward the political right and is much easier to work with. really? chris, so john mccain saying president obama is a centrist. and it seems like all unicorns and rainbows on capitol hill. john mccain was actually cautious in what he said. he said their relationship has always been cordial. it s not exactly a ring endorsement. megyn: then he said i think it s clear the president pivoted to a much more centrist position. i think that remains to be scene. john mccain is a moderate
re-election and all about positioning barack obama back to the guy that he was in november of 2008. not the president he had to be, they would argue if this is more successful why didn t david axelrod and robert gibbs push them to a centrist position, if that is where he is now, sooner. because he couldn t pass health care or the stimulus and needed to appeal to the left and, also financial services reform and a host of issues that he had to have the democratic party together, unified, in order to get them through. martha: a number of these issues, david axelrod goes back to chicago to work on the re-election campaign and as you point out david plouffe will be at the white house concerned about that goal as well and things will come back and health care is not going anywhere and the economy needs to be on track to get the president reelected