ted cruz coming in second and third respectively. joining me john harwood, chief washington correspondent for cnbc. good to see you. are you surprised by carson winning? how does it fit into the overall 2016 picture in your mind? not terribly surprised. the significance is not significantly large. it shows that ben cars son one of the carson is one of the candidate who s has juice with the conservative republican base especially religious conservatives, and the more candidates that are there and are able to stick around, it s fragmenting the field and making it difficult to map out who s going to become a top ten candidate. i don t think it s going to be feeiorina or carson. but they ll have impact. if you don t think it s going to be ben carson based on the interview that you conducted recently which was great, by the way, played big chunks on the
to a lot of folks that he is the most reasonable man in washington, d.c. what do you think? how do you think this thing plays out? i ve actually long thought that boehner is very reasonable, and if given the opportunity wants to come to the table and resolve the issue. and now the election does give him the opportunity. it gives him something when he goes to his caucus saying listen, you are absolutely right, and you have your chance to speak. but you re not going to drive the party s identity. you re not going to drive the message. and i as the leader of the party in the house now can be able to go to the white house and make a deal. there is going to be a deal struck. you re absolutely right. and this will be a story for a while. then they come together and get it out of here. we ll start talking about something else because we as republicans need to talk about something else. the fiscal cliff is not making the republicans any more popular. and right now what do we need? we need to
government agenda either. that was rejected by the american public. it worked in the red states. it was rejected in the only roundly. in the only real referendum that we have. it got at best 47%. it s not good enough. you re shy of a majority. 47% was not good enough. you have to change your message. by the way, this idea of a strong national defense, that s ronald reagan. it was great in the 80s. people are ready to cut defense now. we work on problems at home. your whole message is in trouble. that s the problem. it wasn t good enough in this election. but 47% is a pretty good base to build on. not good enough. we take other social issues. john, really quickly here, i want to bring you back in here before we have to get out of here. is it simply the message? is it simply the republican party message or is the problem deeper than that? i think it s a little bit of both, frankly. some of the messaging has gotten lost in the social issues. the party does focus on th
let s take the conversation to the brain trust. joining me now on set we should note here, political analyst and author bloomberg view columnist jonathan alter from d.c. john staten. john, good to see you. and here in the studio, u.s. news and world report opinion columnist boyce epstein. good afternoon to all of you. let s get right to it. john, let s start with you. you re the elder statesman. thanks a lot! no, it s good, in a good way. the fiscal cliff. what are we looking at? and how do you think it s going to play out? well, first of all, it s not like we fall off a cliff on january 2nd. you know, it s a nice metaphor that is not exactly the way things work. if people are paying at a higher tax bracket, that s not even reflected in their paychecks, which reflect the payroll tax. it wouldn t be until april 15th or people paying quarterly might pay sooner. but this is going to be
broadwell were in fact indicative of an extramarital affair. broadwell the biographer who had writer a book. joining me john harwood, chief washington correspondent for cnbc. good to see you. hey, craig. what do we know at this point about the fbi investigation? well, not all that much. but what we do know is that the investigation began into e-mails that paula broadwell was sending to another woman. so it started away from petraeus, and then led to petraeus because of the nature of his exchanges with paula broadwell. don t know whether that fbi investigation is going to produce a prosecution or anything further. but that s how it appears to have started. it doesn t appear that this has anything to do with other extraneous issues that people have talked about, benghazi or any big geopolitical thing. it seems to be extremely personal. what has been the reaction from the white house? and what are you hearing from