look, there is no question it s all complicated. american politics always boils down to what s simple. that s why foreign policy doesn t loom that large in american elections. it becomes more domestic. people in the election said, yeah, we look kind of weak. wasn t obama too much of an a poll gist. and trump was certainly trumpeting that message. how does all of these situations that are emerging, how do they not favor to a president who said i m going to be strong and things will happen. he s talking tough and things are happening. well, again, i think you re right. certain people did perceive obama was too weak. when he didn t act on the red line in syria, a lot of people in this country and around the line said that s. but that was an untruth. he ought to have been criticized for what he didn t do on that occasion. again, any time the president tweets or speaks, it s the use
in his private meetings with merkel, he kept making this point. the whole thing is, first, loony in the sense that it s never going to happen, nobody it going to pay back arrears. this is not a country club. it also misses i think something very profound about nato. i think trump almost thinks he s in a bizarre if he makes outlandish claims, he ll get a better deal. nato is also a very powerful deterrent to russia and its aggression, to china, to terrorists everywhere, to it s been fighting for 15 years in afghanistan. he s undermining that function of nato because foreign policy doesn t operate simply at one level. you re operating at several levels and instead, trump almost thinks he s just in a bizarre trying to haggle for the best price and if he just shames these people publicly, it will work. a, it won t work, b, you re undermining the core institution. interesting because that s exactly what russia has wanted to do for decades to undermine nato. if you were to cons
for change and that makes many of these democratic incoupkucum weaker and some of them vulnerable. as chris said, when you look at colorado, i think the republicans saw that as a map stretch trying to bring some new races into play. but if the democrats have to worry about colorado in november, then north carolina, louisiana and arkansas are probably already gone. and chris cillizza, while foreign policy doesn t drive a lot of domestic votes the immigration crisis, the border crisis certainly could and will. yeah. i think what you re seeing is sort of this broad conversation about competence. the nbc/ wall street journal poll i thought was telling. large numbers of people saying they didn t think that obama could do the job, not up to the job for which he was elected. that s dangerous territory. i think the immigration problems of the border i think the va, the irs, all of these things
of me is not, you know, trying to gun for more ranker in washington, but i do feel like foreign policy has taken a back seat to domestic policy, and that s not to say we don t have big-ticket items on the table. when you have no job, you re not worried about another country. you re worried about your own. we write the script for one of these segments and you can t talk about all the countries because the list is too long. the president has a mountain of foreign policy on his desk right now, and his ability look, everybody s ability to focus on this in a kind of measurable way, which is to say to maybe stop the bloodshed in syria, which has taken tens of thousands of lives is not a priority. i thought everything was going to be right for the world when we elected obama. at least that s what i was told. the president s foreign policy doesn t have to go through congress. quite frankly, if it did, we would have foreign policy by sequestration and if you thought the problems mounted
but i also think after you make that point remember, they tried to use this charge on president clinton in 1992, the flip-flopper who didn t stand for anything, and it worked a little bit, but there s going to be more to it than him being a flip-flopper as effective as that is. i think they have to remind the public that this is a party and a candidate who has very extreme positions on social issues, as we just talked about, who has absolutely no position on economic issues, certainly doesn t have a jobs plan to speak of. the taxes we ve talked about, the tax plan doesn t add up. on foreign policy doesn t have a position that is in any way distinguishable in any meaningful sense from the obama position. final question to you, karen, briefly give me a diagnosis of the mental condition afflicting congressman joe walsh. do you know what that is? oh, i think that s just pure dementia. clearly he s going to need to be hospital autoiized thinking theo woo voters is criticizing them