probably. listen, it s a great reminder that for a house member, again, most of these guys are white. most of them represent predominantly white districts. so they re not really thinking about even when making political calculations they re not thinking about the hispanic or minority vote. they re thinking how do i win re-election. it s a reminder of how impervious they are to persuasion of party leaders. they don t care what george bush has to say on this issue. they don t care what marco rubio has to say on this issue or paul ryan has to say on this issue. they care what their constituents have to say on this issue. you have to understand that every time a vote comes before the house, everyone always assumes, wait, they re going to move with the politics, it s background checks for guns, it s immigration reform, it s gay marriage, look where the country is going. that might be where the country is going. not where they re going and not where their constituents are. as nicole ment
may not happen and it may not happen in a big way. now this drama could play itself out over six months and we ll see, but right now it s hard to envision how a bill with some path to citizenship gets through the house of representatives. chuck, do any of the people who you know in politic s and that s everyone in washington, d.c., are they at all concerned about the increasingly low turnouts in election after election after election, largely i think rooted in the fact that people out in the country are on to how incompetent this particular congress is now and has been for several years and how they cannot do the job for the country because they keep alluding, both parties, to their base, rather than to the country? mike, you re picking at a pet peeve of mine. i think the most underreported story of 2012 was that turnout was down and turnout was down across the board. there s been people that have been writing hey, the turnout was done among white voters.
of tennessee mr. harold ford jr. good morning, sir. good morning. joe and mika have the morning off. start right there. eliot spitzer on this program, nicole you were here, took some tough questions from joe and mika and from mark halperin. how did you think he did? look, it felt like a very genuine moment and i think we all know that doesn t happen very often in politics. he i think responded to mika s request to give an answer that wasn t scripted, that wasn t rehearsed and when he answered the question about what had changed he talked about pain and all the pain he endured and he got emotional. i think it was a moment for a pundit to recognize and sit quietly and watch the journalists do the job. i had the benefit of sitting and watching everybody and i thought everybody did a good job. i thought mika and joe and mark halperin did an excellent job with a very uncomfortable line of questioning and i thought that eliot spitzer, for his
immigration bill tomorrow and think in 2014 hispanics will be lining up saying i m gop too. this was the peril of ascribing any political motive to do this. this is what george w. bush warned about. this is what bush warned about in may when he talked about the motives for this cannot, must not, be political. because the that empowers all of the pundits and shrill voices in our party, that empowers the politics to overtake the policy. what rubio s office has done is to really improve upon our failed effort in 2006 where george w. bush did not bring along all the conservative voices, but george w. bush s motive was always purely policy to fix a problem that as a texas governor he knew was badly needed of reform. now we ve shifted to doing this for purely political motives and so when the politics looks shaky we lose our will. it s a disaster. what happens to the republican party when more and more people, not just republicans, come to the
politicians who love people and whose, as you say, michael, not only personalized but it was so personal to joe biden, he talked about his own family. right. i yearn for that kind of politics. people in politics, that s what in its best that s what politics at its retail level is all about. you know, nearly every weekend, he goes back home to wilmington, delaware. he doesn t stay in washington. if you ask joe biden for the top three best restaurants in washington he would have no clue. probably name two burger kings and a mcdonald s. he s not of washington. he s of wilmington, scranton, pennsylvania, of the country, knowing who was in home depot and goes shopping on saturdays and stuff like that. yeah. and george w. bush for flaws which people talk about all the time his greatest asset was he was always in touch with a painful moment the country had, he always went home to texas and he was always surrounded by his