blowing a winnable opportunity to wrestle back control of the u.s. senate. while it s still unlikely the democrats take back the house, the more they settle for chaos, the more they risk their majority in that chamber as well. the gop is making a masochistic effort to lose power and is flirting with just that possibility. that expert is charlie cook along with john feehery. is there a win direction right now, charlie, that will effect elections coming out of this fight over the debt ceiling and, of course, the shutdown? chris, you know, these kinds of things nobody wins. everybody loses to a center extent. one side always loses more than another. republicans are suffering from an enormous amount of self-inflicted damage. they re hurting their brand. and this is damage that can go for a long time. you know, and i would look at it just so much as the 2014
election. but i would look beyond it as well. 2016. for example, you ve got 20 up in the senate in 2016 and only 10 democrats. and seven of those are in states that barack obama carried. so they re doing some long-term damage that s going to hurt them far beyond 2014. let me stay with you for a minute. i want to follow the thinking of charlie. this thing about cruz. i don t think cruz could ever be president. he doesn t seem to have the personality or the manner of a candidate. he s too hot for a presidential candidate. but i think rand paul is softening up around the edges. i think he s joining the club, if you will, becoming part of the washington world. he s not making enemies. he s making friends. i think he s the nominee next time the way the wind s blowing. i think you were saying something like that in your paper. yes, i wrote a column last week. i said next time rand paul sees ted cruz, he should give him a big kiss. wet kiss, you said.
as much as we d love to see president obama blow up the way we love to see rush limbaugh or hannity or me. or you, he s trying to illustrate that the democrats are the compromise party, the conservatives are the orthodox people. the principled people, quote, unquote. they don t like compromise. let s face it, the whole shutdown started because after the democrats in the senate had approved a budget that was a good, what? $20 billion or more less than what they initially wanted, and republicans wouldn t accept that because they wanted to defund obama care. president obama is finally realizing, i think, as well as other democrats that they ve got to be hard liners too. otherwise republicans will just keep chipping away and chipping away. i watched colbert last night, he said the compromise for the
mulvaney, senator barion, senator schwiekert, senator king of iowa. senator yoho. senator crapo and senator coburn. senator toomey. they ve been led by senator rand paul of tennessee who appeared on meet the press this past sunday. i think it s irresponsible of the president and his men to even talk about default. there s no reason for us to default. this is a game. this is like closing the world war ii memorial. they get on tv, say we re going to default. they re the ones scaring the market place. you shouldn t scare the market place. we should never default. let s say your plan works and you can pay the this group s peddling the fantasy a default won t happen