and everything we could count showed an obama edge. but the republicans sort of did something tough to themselves. they really shocked and awed their own base, because they weren t ready for this. well, i think it s very interesting, because i go back to that interview, i think it was ron suskind did with a member of the bush team who told him, hey, you guys live in the reality-based community but we don t have to, and was bragging about the way that they were able to create their own reality and this was such a good thing for them politically. but it turned out not to be such a good thing for them politically. they ve got fox news, they ve got rush, they ve got people that just reflect back what they want to believe. they don t believe polls. they think that with legitimate rape, a woman s reproductive system can shut the whole thing down. science denial, reproductive denial. they ve got their own parallel reality and it really i ll go to nick on one point and back to robert. ni
right. i guess, you know, there are lots of questions about this wof obviously. and one of them is, in the middle, when supposedly, or a disgruntled or concerned fbi agent went to some house republican members, eric cantor, and got him involved. so there are it seems like there may have been, on the part of some people, some political considerations, which would really be awful. i think it s going to be a while before we get to the bottom of why was this important, how was it pursued? were the proper channels followed? and where are we now? let s look at that. congressman kantor, of course, did make a statement about this. he says he was contacted by an fbi employee, concerned that sensitive classified information may have been compromised. and thus he made certain that director mueller was aware of those serious allegations and the potential risk to our national security. is anything wrong with that, robert traynham? that s how the system is supposed to work. i want to go back t
it s who the hell is grover norquist anyway? we can say that because we re quoting a former president. who is grover norquist and is he as powerful as he thinks about it? he is someone powerful. but at the end of the day, the american people smoke. we had this national conversation over the last 18 months about raising taxes. we re not raising taxes. that was a legitimate policy conversation in the public square. clearly, president obama won. sort of. and the reason why sort of. clearly, sort of. and here s why. obviously, the republicans still control the house. so there is a little bit of give and take here. so the question becomes is whether or not the president can support some type of entitlement reform, legitimate entitlement reform, and obviously, can speaker boehner raise revenues? maybe that s not raising taxes, per se, but perhaps raising revenue. let s go to president bush for a second, this is important. president bush 41. remember what he did in 1988? he said, rea
general petraeus had coming into this. where he knew as this whole thing was going to unfold, two things he was very concerned about, one was his family and the impact on them, and also wh what then would be the impact on the agency and the impact on the country. i think he did, and general petraeus i think is a hero for so many young troopers. i think he did the right and honorable thing. but the key question come still comes down to, if an investigation was done and there were no criminal activities attached to this, at what point does this continue to rise up the chain of command? i think that s what s continuing to fall down. and i think these are legitimate questions that need to be asked as well. when you talk about the chain of command. david, now i want to bring you in. and we ll be talking about something you re reporting on, veterans day issues later in the show. but i want to put up the federal requirements under the law for reporting these kind of investigations. basicall
have to wonder, if you re in the fbi and investigating this, you can kind of imagine how hard it would be to wonder, are we investigating this guy fairly, and if so, what s our role? and the key question that catches me in that timeline is the classified information on broadwell s computer. once you see that, it kind of changes everything, especially given what you know about her relationship with the guy. and i think that s really important point. because people do understand the impression and the image that general petraeus has. and i m in full agreement that this actually should have been brought up the chain of command quick perp something in the timeline does not make sense. however, general petraeus nor paula broadwell no longer fall under the uniform code of military justice, which would have been an automatic investigation into improprieties and actually violating the law. at what point did people think that a law was broken? once that line was crossed, then