S. All right, quickly, the developing news from south africa, happening live right now. The lead detective in the Oscar Pistorius murder case is now facing his own allegations of attempted murder for allegedly opening fire on a van a few years back. Top prosecutors are calling for that detective hilton botha to be dropped from the pistorius case. They call the timing totally weird, saying that the detective should be replaced. Now threatening to undermine that case against Oscar Pistorius. At the top of the show, we asked you, why are you awake . Its a good question. J. T. With your answers. Peter alexander, teamed up s. No snow yet, but when it comes, im ready. Bring it. Dont worry, i think it will be brought. As bill karins says, get that shovel ready. I hate to admit, peters great. He has those conservative good looks that cant work. However, he needs to move around and saunter, et cetera. Well get on that. Appreciate the guidance. Always been proud of my sauntering capabilities. More of that coming. Thanks to you, j. T. Morning joe beginning right now. Here now is what the vatican is doing. You tell me if this is right or wrong, okay . Take a look. Pope benedict is stepping down, and the Roman Catholic church needs a new spiritual leader. Could it be you . Announcing mountain dews pope n win contest. Check specially marked mountain dew bottles. Hey, mom, i won plus other great prizes like a pool table and movie tickets. Visit mountaindew. Com for complete rules. Good morning, its thursday, february 21st. Welcome to morning joe. Its a big day. It is a big day. A live look at times square. Inside the studio here, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. Yes . Are you completely buttoned . Okay. Whatever. Have you buttoned everything up . I think so. It didnt look like it for a second there. Msnbc political analyst and visiting professor at nyu and former democratic congressman, harold ford jr. We love harold. And hes all buttoned up. Its the day. I know, im getting there. Im getting there. Its the buildup. We also have with Us Democratic political strategist oh James Carville. Look at this what is this . More than that. Strategist. Hes the coauthor of the book its the middle class, stupid and youre so right about that. Thank you. Good to have you on board this morning. This is going to be fun. Im a little nervous. Yeah. Youll somehow get through it. Somehow or another. You will somehow get through it. Im a little concerned, though. I brings this vile, vile sticker. Whats that lsu thing youve got there . Hes trying to insult you already . Its really ugly. Ill teach there, too. What the heck. A lot going on today. Look at the front page of usa today. Well start there. New polling is showing that president obama has a strong lead over Congressional Republicans on a host of big issues playing out right now in washington. Thats according to the you in noons from usa today and pew research center. 45 of those polled say they support the president s approach to cutting the federal deficit. 38 support republicans, even a majority of Republican Voters endorse tax hikes as well as spending cuts. On gun reform, the president s approach polls six points higher than that of the gop. The poll also finds less than onethird of americans would blame the president if the sequester cuts kick in. Nearly half of all americans would blame republicans. And on immigration, half of those polled say the president is taking the right approach. 33 endorse how republicans are tackling the issue. So james, if im still congressman in northwest florida and somebody hands me this and says, youre in trouble. Im in trouble. I may get 79 instead of 80 of the vote, but thats whats running the republican brand into the ground. The fact that theyve got guys that are just looking at their district and saying im going to win anyway. I can just i can just ignore whats happening to the party. Thats a huge challenge for them. Its a terrible challenge. And two things. One, its part gerrymandering. Part of its natural clustering. I think it was a Florida Third where you had a guy like cliff sterns who had been in there a long time, had a 98 voting record. A guy runs against him and says you mow what . Youre not conservative enough. Right. By the way, when you talk about clustering, its one thing i noticed in florida. You know when they passed the civil rights acts that made sure there were minority districts, that actually was great for a couple of minority candidates, better for republicans because you gerrymander through, like florida, for instance. Sure. So you have all of these republicans, and it is gerrymandering. That was smart, but look, why dont you have a district. You have an africanamerican district in memphis tennessee is the only state that was not covered. But your point is, it was the Voting Rights act. Well crash your own district, fine. All the other ones sort of branch out. But whats happened of late, the democrats have just normally clustered so much in the cities that its just become a natural thing. But no, its terrible. When you get to the president ial election, where you are . Exactly. And thats a problem. How does the president of the United States take advantage of this . How does he i think he is. I think he is. I agree with mika. You give a speech and you talk about background checks for gun cguns which people want. What about the sequester . The sequester has an advantage. This is cruel to republicans but its true. Not many people know what it is, but it sounds stupid and cruel. Therefore its a republican thing. It just sounds stupid. Stupid and cruel. Explain to people, theres just over one week to go until the march 1st youre going to be tough, too, arent you deadline when the automatic spending cuts take a big bite out of federal programs and the pentagon. 800,000 civilian employees have been told by the Defense Department that they will likely be placed on unpaid leave. With the house and senate still in recess, a number of democrats are calling for congress to reconvene to deal with this mess. Secretary of state john kerry, meanwhi meanwhile, is reminding his former colleagues that actions here at home do have global implications. Take a listen. It is often said that we cannot be strong at home if were not strong in the world. But in these days of a looming budget sequester that everyone actually wants to avoid, or most, we cant be strong in the world unless we are strong at home. My credibility is a diplomat, working to help other countries create order is strongest when america, at last, puts its own fiscal house in order. And that has to be now. Lets reach a responsible agreement that prevents these senseless consults. Lets not lose this opportunity because of politics. You know, mike barnicle, politics is such a cruel, cruel game. Seriously. Theres one guy that gets to the top of the heap. Everybody else is disappointed. And even the president ends up broken most of the time. Its very rare that a guy like john kerry who has dreamed his entire life of being able to say, my career as a diplomat actually gets to live out his dream. He is living out his dream. Remember what ted kennedy said to you after he saw you on the show . Yeah, yeah. You fell into a boatload of butter. You fell into a tub of butter. John kerrys fallen into a tub of butter. He is happy there. Hes in the zone. But he said yesterday that congress was a bigger threat than china when it came to at this point. Off of what james said, its very unfair in a sense that the republicans, they are in a tough position. Front page story, New York Times, gop is resisting obama pressure on tax increase. And again, i absolutely agree with james. You walk around, nobody really can define what sequester means, but they know instinctively, sequester means if youre a millionaire, youre going to be okay. And sequesters going to screw you if youre not a millionaire. Thats what the sense of this is. I guarantee you that the wait at the new york airport and washington airport will be six hours long. Absolutely. We were talking about it yesterday. Jack lew is a really smart guy. He knows hes going to know where people get it. Its not going to be on something that youre not going to feel. Theyre going to make you feel this coming out of the chute. If you want to fly. Because the air Traffic Controllers, theyll lay them off. So james, you are all the tsa people. You just cut tsa. You cut tsa in half. Youre going to be three hours in line. How would you advise republicans right now to get out of this mess . They believe that spending cuts and revenue no revenue, but spending cuts would be a part of this, what would you advise them . Because the country seems to want a balanced approach. How would the thinker and framer of these issues advise . Its hard when youre a Congressional Party. Poor joe, every day theres a republican saying something stupid. Joes going please, man. Youre killing me. Killing me. Hes frustrated. Its going to take a while, but it will happen. If im a republican, i want everybody to run for president. And you want someone to beat somebody that stands up and looks strong. And beating herman cain and Michele Bachmann dont count. That doesnt count. You know, a rubio and a jindal and john thune, whatever. Chris christie. Anybody that comes in and says what should i do . You say my god, man, run. Run, man, run. Weve got to flush this out. Somebodys got to look strong. And somebodys that way we can do this. But if youve got all the Congressional Republicans saying stuff, youre just going to have your fist in your forehead every morning. I mean, my theory ive always had the Time Magazine theory of politics. The great man theory or the great woman theory when it comes to parties. You always have you know, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, the Democratic Party was dead. George h. W. Bush was going to win. Bill clinton wins. And republicans are dead. Two years later, we come in because newt dominates. Then its bill clinton. I mean, it takes everybody talks about how the Republican Partys in horrible shape. And they are in horrible shape, but they need one strong leader. Oh, yeah. A good one. When allen west says theres 78 communists, go hey, idiot, shut up. No, theyre not. When you get a republican president , they can do it. They can do it. And allen west knows that his phones going to ring when he says it. Right. So he wont say it. Exactly. And so not until a leader emerges, youre just going to have your fist in your forehead a lot because theyre just going to outdo each other. And parties go through this. We went through it. Joes come up with, i think, a great frame on this. You were advising president clinton, then governor clinton in 91. You talked about the middle class, frankly the values of the party had strayed from or at least the public view separated from the mainstream of the country. Whats the central message . Joes laid this out succinctly over and over again and i think expresses frustration, but how would you advise them, and what would be the not slogan but mantra . William buckley was starting it, he said you cant have the john Burke Society in here. This is not going to work. He slapped them back. When we were trying to emerge to take the 70s and to some extent the 80s out of the Democratic Party, bill clinton set up and said these kinds of lyrics are inappropriate. You cant do that. The republicans need somebody thats a leader to slap somebody back. Right. By doing that, thats an indication that no, buckley said were not that inclusive. Were not inclusive enough. He kicked out the john burkes, and he went to war with a lot of the ann rand types and made the movement stronger. We said it in realtime. People thought i had something against glenn beck. I just had something against glenn beck saying something really stupid and offensive. Remember when glenn beck said the president was racist who hated all white people . That was incredible. We said on the show every day, mitt romney, if you want to run this party, this is a great opportunity. Stand up, speak out, knock him down, make him apologize. And if he doesnt apologize, tell him that he has no part of your party. And it would have helped him. Right. But we dont have and you know, weve been talking about this for a couple days. Mike, weve got weve got people on the right that are in this bubble right now. You know, david frum called it Entertainment Complex syndrome. I think s. E. Cupp has been getting hammered because she dared to criticize talk radio people who are saying things that loses national elections. Youve got to have leaders that will turn out against the crazies in your own party. And if you do, you start winning those middle those swing voters. In addition to coming up with a strong candidate, as james pointed out, theyve got to do at least two other things. One is realize that the talk Radio Audience is not the country. Thats not the country. The other thing is theyve got to drop the resentment factor thats saddled so many of them. They resent everything. They resent immigrants, gay marriage, commonsense talk, the resentment factor is so thick among some republicans. So much of it has to do with style, too. Ronald reagan said the same things in 1966 when he was running for governor of california. That Barry Goldwater said in 1964. But he said it with a smile on his face. And theres always an optimistic end to a story. So much of this is stylistic. It is stylistic. And this is the one that drives me crazy. You hear a lot of republicans, you know, there was a time in america when we stood up when this country was great. About 60 say that wasnt my time in america. In im a woman in the 50s, that wasnt my golden era. If im a hispanic, i wasnt part of that deal. Not getting paid. Here are some opportunities. The nra will pressure senators, most of them democrats, who have 2014 races. The initial strategy, local newspaper ads. According to roll call starting today, fullpage ads will go up in markets across the country including maine where republican senator Susan Collins is the incumbent. They will also target other states with Digital Advertising and fullpage ads in usa today regional editions all part of a campaign estimated at nearly 375,000. Which by the way, you say okay, 375,000, thats pretty impressive. Digital ads until you realize Michael Bloomberg spends 375 million in all of those areas. Whatever they put in, bloombergs going to put in more. The giffords are going to raise more. This is a losing cause. Why dont they say the nra might not be as powerful as it used to be now because of the forces against it . Can they say that . You know, the thing is, youve got Wayne Lapierre. Yeah. Who really was a lot closer to where americans are today. Almost aware. Than he is right now. Because 92 of americans want universal background checks. I think thats coming. All right. Meanwhile, president obama gained an ally in his efforts to pass new Gun Legislation in the wake of the newtown shootings. Congressman joe heck, republican from nevada, backed universal background checks for firearms saying, quote, i think the idea of background checks across the board, im not opposed to them. And i disagree with people who say that this is going to be the first step to gun registration, which leads to gun con physician indication. C con physician they go through a background check. And guess what . Theyre not part of a national registry. Right. Nobodys coming to get their guns. The black helicopters around circling their house. Nobodys taking their livestock. You can do this. You can make sure that felons cant walk into a gun store or go to a gun show and buy weapons. This is one of the points thats been made, james and mike and you over and over again on the show. Its hard to square this with common sense. How is it that you would want someone to buy a firearm and not know if they have beaten their children, if they have robbed from something in their neighborhood, if theyve attempted murder, or if they suffer from a mental imbalance . For anyone wait, hold on a second. That may disqualify you and most of us. We shouldnt joke about that. That actually is going to be the most serious part. Youve got to make sure that its not i was not joking about that. Its a very serious issue. But the fact that any republican or democrat could be opposed to that kind of check yeah. Is what you speak of. Its not only style, its substance, and it makes you sound stupid, democrat or republican. North florida, in tennessee and louisiana, bill clinton from arkansas says you have to be careful that youre not attacking gun companies. Yeah. What can happen is the democrats can shoot too far here. Do you think they are . I dont think they are yet, but look, ive been around this joint for a long time. And they get full of themselves, and they get out there. Is background checks too much, more how should it be tailored . Talk about specific things you can do, and dont attack gun culture. Guns are a big part of the culture in a large part of this country. Where i grew up, it was. It still is. Its big here in new york state. People can drive 80 miles outside. Were talking about gun culture, not assault weapon culture, right . I agree. But once you go that stuff really bites back politically. Ive seen it bite democrats back. Theres this big thing in a poll and you become excessive in your language. You know it happens all the time. Its the overreach that always kills you. And ive got to say, when you talk about what the president s doing right now on sequestration, i think hes overreaching on the taxes. Hes going back to talk, we need a more balanced approach. Hes saying the same thing he said before. I dont want to get off track, but thats where the great danger is. I think in this case, if youre talking about universal background checks, youre good. If youre talking about gun trafficking, youre fine. I think even middle ground, the magazines, there you get into the middle ground. And then when you get into assault weapons, it gets into this ugly fight where is it cosmetic . Are we really talking about, you know, semiautomatic . T