party? eric ericsen was sitting in for rush limbaugh. sean hannity said he s unhappy with the way he s leading the party. so limbaugh and hannity are steering the republican party. this is a problem. whether you re conservative or liberal, you think congress has been obstructionist enough under speaker boehner. republicans are saying they want a speaker of the house that s going to be more obstructionist than this one. susan, the question that comes to mind is this why he may have stood behind congressman scalise, who it has now been revealed spoke in 2002 at this white supremacist group? because scalise was his contact, envoy, ally with the tea party. yeah i think that s part of it. i don t think speaker boehner is in trouble. that wing of the party doesn t
we re back with our panel, susan, mark and julia. it s our first show of the year. time to make predictions for 2015. you know back in 1989 the producers of the back to the future ii thought we d all be flying around on hover boards when the year 2015 rolled around. they missed that mark on that one. but mark time to go out on a limb. what s your big prediction for this new year? i m seeing how much the gop is splitting within the ranks and i think the republican primary campaigns are going to devolve into a side show a media circus that represents some sort of survivor-style reality tv show that gets sponsored by and hosted on news max. it s just going to become completely mediated and ridiculous. so you re predicting the gop primaries will turn into a circus. oh yeah.
nice. people will agree on some things. but waiting for the budget to come through, there s going to be a lot of pong happening. susan, your prediction? i m so much more optimistic. i think first of all, we ll see a more confident and assertive president. i think we ll also see more of a relationship with the hill than a lot of people think. the temperature is lower on the hill now that the republicans are running the senate. and they re going to have to show they can govern. if it s dysfunctional, they ll own the dysfunction. i think the bills will have a season that takes them to the postseason. i ve been saying that for 15 years running now, but this is our year. we ll see if this is the year. now that we ve talked about our predictions for the country. let s talk about our resolutions for ourselves. about half of americans make new year s resolutions, every january, everything from shedding a few extra pounds to kicking our habits. susan, what s your resolution
2015, republicans were outlining campaigns to reject the president s signature achievements, while pushing a slew of right-wing policies. first item up in the new senate will be the keystone xl pipeline. we will use the power of the purse to try to push back against this overactive bureaucracy. we certainly will have a vote precedeing to a bill to repeal obamacare. the banking community will be looking at dodd-frank. i ve called it frequently obamacare for banks. you can bet on that yeah. they ve also vowed a response to the president s action on immigration. more hearings on benghazi potential cuts to social security and medicare. and they even want to go after the first lady s efforts to make school lunches healthier. it s an ambitious and vicious vision. pushed by a republican party determined to react to a series of executive actions from an energized president. but president obama has a message for republicans. he s not going to roll over. there are going to
panel found an organization starved for leadership. the agency exists to protect the president and its other very high-level protectees. yet the secret service has sometimes acted in ways that sends mixed signals on a number of fronts. does this indicate that there has to be a complete overhaul of the agency, susan? that s a really tricky question. i mean, first of all, obviously, we see that there are some problems and holes in security, but we need to remember that on any given day, the secret service diffuses so many threats to the president and to others, that we don t even know about, and we ll never know about. they probably don t even tell the president or he d never leave the house, although it seems like he s not necessarily safe there either. but they clearly have some problems and they need to address them. problems? there s a guy that got inside, deep inside the white house. exactly. and that s unacceptable. no question about it. bringing someone in from the outside