anybody can get on fox news sunday just say chuckle head. the sort of conservatives, what is boehner actually doing. a couple of things. number one, republicans lost this election. they lost it fairly significantly. they lost house seats and senate seats and mitt romney rarely discussed the fiscal cliff and we look back on this conversation and we think gosh it would have been nice if we had a plan that had been laid out other than what mitt romney was saying we will deal with this if a piece meal fashion. we come to the table with that as the reality. nonetheless, why is anybody leaving town? why did the president leave town for vacation and the republicans and democrat is. if this is as serious as people say and i think it is serious. it would seem even if the tea party is terrible people and they he don t want to agree with anything. they are are there and you have to deal with them. everyone should say in town.
have the little christmas eve dinner. stay in town and figure this out. and the tea party they believe in certain principles and they are fighting for the principles. they think it is a spending problem and not a taxing problem. i tend to agree with them. republicans are probably going to get a worse deal on the table as a result of what happened. nevertheless, the president has to deal with the cards that are on the table and it includes tea party folk. you can demonize them and vilify them but in the end you have to deal with these folks anda i think that bill is right that the president doesn t care all that much about reduce the debt. it is all about expanding the role of government and if you can look on paper like you are reducing the debt, fine. if that was really a priority i think we would have had different things happen. chris: interesting question if the senate passes the obama plan to kick the can down the road and protect 98% of americans from having taxes raised, boehn
the military which democrats have been calling for for years and gets to blame republicans for it. when the president recently it was in the wall street journal yesterday talked about using the state of union and the inaugural address to blame republicans that doesn t sound like somebody who is working with republicans to find a solution. it is time for the protesters lead.esident to chris: he basically said this is all i think we can get done in the next nine days. extend the bush tax cuts for everybody below $250,000. and extend unemployment benefits. as the number three republican in the senate can you gar ran that republicans won t filibuster that plan? i can t even guarantee that the democrats will vote for it. you have many democrats on the record who don t like this either in the senate. the 250 number is too low according to a number of the democrats. it doesn t deal with some of the issues out there. unemployment not sure that they even get a majority in the senate even
bring this up to a vote in the the house and again they rejected the million dollars. and now it is a $250,000 threshold. does he bring it up to the house where democrats would have to provide the votes to put him over the top and do this the same week that his he is going to have to face selection of speaker? election as speaker? the first thing to say that the big plan that the president and speaker boehner were close on would pass the house but speaker boehner won t bring it up. and, of course, if he put this plan, the senate plan, the temporary patch as i call it. chris: i m not sure it would have passed the house. i think it would have. the votes are there. a significant number of republicans. chris: more in revenue increases than it did in spending cuts. there was a little more negotiating to be done but they were close. chris: why did boehner dropped out? he felt that he wanted to have added leverage. picking up on what laura is saying he understood the electio
be nominated or confirmed. etan was a republican senator but on foreign policy issues in the last several years and he has been way to the left of president obama in terms of iran sanctions. the iran sanctions votes which got 92 and 97 votes in the senate and he voted against. there is a letter signed by 99 senators, every other senator that he refused to sign. on israel, he talked about the jewish lobby in 2006. for a republican president to nominate someone talk about the jewish lobby having too much influence would that person be thought appropriate to be secretary of defense? i don t think so. i think senator hagel won t be nominated by president obama. he likes president obama and they went on this trip together and he liked the idea of having a republican and all that but republicans aren t for him and a lot of democrats are privately telling the white house what are you doing to us? we don t want to vote for this guy. if you are liberal democrat what do you want chuck hagel