homogenous districts, that s unacceptable. and more open primaries where independents can participate in the primaries so you have more competitive primaries and less ideological, which now is what is happening on capitol hill is they re all feeding to their political base, third party interests and every other group on the outside that fuels those interests of their own financial gain. that s the problem. you have gone right to the area i wanted to ask you. i m going to ask you to search your soul on this one and be as honest as you can. there has been a lot of criticism about the tea party and how it has been threatening those primary processes and then hijacking the republican party. do you think that this is the problem, at least within your party, that the republicans of yore are no longer a shadow of their former selves because the tea party co-opted and threatened and pushed its very, very tough agenda? there is no question that that s a problem within the republican party.
actually that had that basic theme. and that is that, you know, i m going to work every day and then i hear that you people can t get along enough to just keep the government moving. there is not a lot of empathy on streets of chicago and around the country outside the beltway for what is going on and what is not going on in d.c. all right. not surprising in the least. ted rowlands for us in chicago. thank you for that. if you think that congress is its own worst enemy, if you long for the days when republicans and democrats would actually work out their differences, or even when each party could work out its own differences among themselves, my next guest would agree with you. whole heartedly. olympia snowe was a republican senator from maine for 18 years. that is until march of 2012 when she announced that she had had enough, saying, and i m going to quote your words, former senator, here, the greatest deliberative body in history is not living up to its billing. the senate of toda
you back is i hope it is not the new norm. if it is the new norm, anything goes. one party and one house that controls one house of congress can hold up the entire government. i don t think that s the way the framers of the constitution intended the government to run. you re absolutely right. it is not technically illegal, but it is not ethical in my book. it is not the way people ought to address and conduct themselves when they are running the government of the united states. you and olympia snowe should come back. that s all i can say. because every time i get an acting congressman or legislator on the air, i seem to go nowhere with them. thank you so much, mr. secretary. good to see you again. thanks, ashleigh. and the film is terrific too. i will repeat that. make sure you go out and take a look at that inequality for all by the former secretary of labor, robert reich. with the federal government shut down, you may not be surprised that congress has an approval rating of
things that can happen if republicans shut down the government. it could mean a shut down at the fbi, prisons might have to stop operating, courts would, of course, close. it would mean chaos, but that seems to be what they want, i guess, chaos, which i guess they ll then somehow use as leverage. is that right? well, apparently that is their argument. i think the problem is we ve seen this movie before. it happened under gingrich s watch when clinton was president. it certainly didn t rebound to gingrich s favor. it ended up helping clinton. his poll numbers went up, and i imagine that the same thing would happen with obama. and, of course, there would be this attendant impact on the economy and attendant impact on people getting their government benefits and all sorts of things. so, again, i think the republican party talks about refashioning and rebranding and i think one of the ideas is to look at reagan. they always talk about reagan, but if you look at some of the things reagan
fundamentally stupid and dangerous thing. we ve got to break the habit of negotiating through crisis. where is the party s message getting lost? i like a good party. how can republicans move forward? because i m getting kind of lonely in this big house. intolerance in some parts of the party. they still sort of look down on minorities. this is such a recipe for disaster for the republican party. the whole birther movement, why do senior republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party? let s get right to it. nia malika henderson is political reporter for the washington post. steve kornacki is co-host of the cycle and an msnbc contributor ari melber is a correspondent for the nation magazine. nia malika, if i can start with you on wednesday speaker bain ser taking his colleagues to williamsburg, virginia, where they will hold their annual conference and discussion ways of fixing their image i guess.