the former chairman of the republican national committee from 2009 to 2011, and we will certainly get into a little bit of what i discovered as the chairman of the party and some of the things that we did as i like to say to turn the elephant between 2009 and 2011 which seems to be turning itself back for some reason. the author of a book called right now to deal with this age

we find ourselves where the political landscape is shifting almost daily. the attitudes of voters are much more open as we've seen recently and the thing that confronts them the most and that is citizenry who are actually engaged and know what's going on and are developing a political mind of their own and a new form of activism. i'm very honored to be joined by a dear friend and colleague i will let him go into the details of his background but needless to say she had the presence of mind while in congress and has

the presence of the voice today to really like a path because the future growth of republicanism and the republican party and as he will tell you and share his journey unlike not that different from mine has been a little bit more interesting at times, but mickey edwards is one of those great voices out there and so it's a real pleasure to welcome for an mickey edwards. >> thanks to key school having this event getting a chance to come and talk. it's a privilege because mike has been a good friend of mine for a long time, and i like to share the stage with him. so let me tell you a little bit about my book. it comes at this a little bit differently than what mike does although when we sit and talk about issues we think very much

alike. i have this new book out from yale university press, and the title to give you a little bit of an idea of where i'm coming from is the party's first is the people, yet it has a subtitle. parties versus the people doesn't sound really terribly exciting what people usually get most entranced by is the subtitle of the book the book started with an article in the atlantic magazine coming and the subtitle they put on the article is now the subtitle of the book is called how to turn republicans and democrats in two americans. and when i first heard that it sounds pretty harsh, and the others said did you read one you wrote? and so where i am coming from and the talk that we just heard, one of the authors talking about

the issues talked about structural questions. i actually talk about it as systemic issues. when i left congress i was there 16 years and a member of the republican leadership in the house coming and then i left and i went to teach and i taught at harvard for 11 years ended in princeton and one of the things that happens when you teach is you have a chance to step back from the daily grind. you are on when you are in the classroom, but then you have time to think and reflect and undeserved and decide what you see happening. and what i saw is no matter what the issue was and this is true whether bush was president or obama it didn't matter whether you're talking out an economic issue or a cabinet appointment or anything else. republicans were all on one side and republicans were on the other. it no matter what the issue was our government had become more like the nfl, not like americans

sitting down together to say here are the problems let's beat them and talk about them and solve them. instead of was how can i d.c. q? how can i teach you because you belong to a different club, you have a different label on your head, and i start thinking about why that was and how did we get to that point. if you read the papers every day coming you see here's two or three republicans talking to two or three democrats about doing something together, and that is front-page news we've actually got republicans and democrats working together so why is that the way it is? i go back and i thought about to the only thing i ever found that our first presidents agreed with each other is don't create political parties. washington, adams, they don't create political parties. they had them but they weren't like these.

me against you just because you belong to the other club. why did we get to that point? and i concluded you all know there is the role of money and i'd like to talk about those who but i want to give you a couple of examples on the political system we've created triet so i was giving a talk to the american academy for the advancement of science, and i know nothing about science, nothing about technology. i should admit that since i had to vote on issues about science and technology which i didn't understand, but i looked at -- sure is a starting point. what does the constitution envisioned in terms of how we as a people are going to govern ourselves? one thing coming it envisions that because the power of this country is not in the white house, the power is in the congress, almost every major

power, war, spending, taxing, uprooting trees, the cabinet appointments, everyone is a congressional power and the power was put there where the people themselves could control the outcomes so the idea was the people are going to go to the polls and elect their leaders. well what happens if it's not the voice of the people? that's being heard so i want to give you two quick examples of the party system that we created and what happens. when joe biden became vice president there was an opening now in the u.s. senate in delaware. everyone knew who was going to be the new senator, it was mike castle, former governor and members of congress, and he had challenged in a primary by a lady named christina adamle and she beat him. two things happened. one, there are 1 million people

than delaware. christine o'donnell only got 30,000 votes. so why didn't he just beat her in the general election clacks because delaware has a crease dewaal it's called the sore loser that if you run for your party's nomination and you lose your name can't be on the ballot in november. those 30,000 people kept all of the million people of delaware from choosing who they wanted in the u.s. set. so go over to utah where senator mike castle was running -- you should have put him in the senate, like steel and mike castle, i'm not going to give you those, robert benet was running for reelection of the senate in utah. they have a convention. there are 3 million people in utah, 3500 were at the convention. 2,000 voted for other candidates

other than robert benet. because of those 2,000 people, his name couldn't be on the ballot in november for the 3 million people of utah because they had this sore loser law. how many states have this? 46. 46. here's another provision of the constitution. every senator and representative must be an actual inhabitants of the state from which they are elected. the idea is if i were running for congress year i would know you and the people of an adolescent or economic interest, you know me and my reputation in the community, that's the idea. but what happens when you allow the political parties to control redistricting? if the idea is that congressmen

and women are supposed to know the community so frattali person paucity i am a city guy. i've been on the farm once or twice. i had no idea what i was looking at and i am a republican that was selected in a district that hadn't elected a republican since 1928 and there were 74% democrat. democrats couldn't figure out how i want. my mother didn't know, but i did. so the other party at that time controlled the state legislature and the graybill to regional my district from the middle of oklahoma, all of new england, it's not just a small place, from the middle of oklahoma all the way to kansas, halfway across to arkansas and what happened? i was now representing wheat farmers and cattle ranchers and i didn't understand their interests and i couldn't speak for them. they were entitled to somebody that cut the both of those

examples i gave you of because allow the political parties to control our electoral process and that we wonder how come our congress is controlled by the hard-line ideologues from the cyber partisan who promised never to compromise with the other side. it's because they know that if they compromise they are going to get primary and. they are going to get knocked off in a primary where small numbers of fighter partisan ideologues dominates the outcome. how did we allow these political clubs to be a will to control who we vote for? and with the district -- i was an active republican and the party. i ran and started thinking leader what have we done to ourselves? when you see a congress where people will not sit down and talk to somebody on the other side of the it's because we set

up a system that elect those kind of people and gives them the power so just one more quick thing and then we will get into this conversation. then you get elected to congress and you take the oath of congress which by the way is not an oath to be loyal to the president and it's nottloyal ear to your party it's to be loyal to the country. and you they are elected at the same time i was. i thought now we are all together. the parties that is that here we're all members of the united states congress that lasted about three minutes until we started voting on who would be speaker and who would dominate each committee in congress. if you have been to the house floor or if you have seen the house floor, if somebody speaks here without this panel, you

have a lectern. they're already is. not in the u.s. house. there are two lecterns, the republicans stand at one to talk to republicans, democrats and another to talk to democrats. if you want to go have a cigarette or eat a sandwich or make a phone call you go to the cloakroom but there isn't one. there's one for republicans and democrats can we operated the united states congress the branch of government with all the power that is supposed to make decisions for the country. we treated as rival clubs. at the bottom line for what i did in my book is not electing stupid people we are not electing and patriotic people. we are electing good people who are trapped in a system that we have created the three words and stability, rewards intransigence

, that punishes cooperation and compromise and then we are shocked at the result we get so that's what my book is about and i am glad to talk about that. i want to hear about my next book but that's where i was coming from. >> that is pretty scary but that's our congress, that our government and that's part of the political process. now, has mickey was laying out in the first scenario, the race and the christine o'donnell race, both of those happened on my watch as national chairman. and i remember meeting with a group of very, very excited and some argue excitable republicans about a month after i had become chairman who were laying out for me a new strategy that was beginning to emerge from iran of the country and they called themselves to a party years.

i said what's the deal and they were very clear about the focus that they wanted to bring to the discussion come to the debate about the role of government, the size of government, the expense of government. so we met and at that time they began to talk about being outside the party to read and part of my responsibility as the national chairman looking at the political process to elective individuals like mickey to the congress is to make sure we have as queen of the process as possible that we don't cut our nose off to spite our face in the effort to getting to victory. in other words, but the race that matters, about all that matters is the one in november, not in september or june or february, meaning the primary process.

but what i recognized very early on a new but is this tension that was beginning to build within the political structure at the primary level. at the popoff point, the volcanic moment was new york 23, the 23rd congressional district of new york, the spring of 2009 where the party officials of the local party decided to go around the ordained a political process in other words having a primary, but instead takes their nominee for the frustrated voices of activists within that particular congressional district. he was put on the ballot as a republican nominee and that was one of the key turning points politically within the gop of

activist tea party voices raising up against the system. part of my job as the national chairmen, and something that i wanted to capture and i thought and i believe i captured in the book was coming out of the system that we had alr and witnessed devastating losses in 2006 of which i was one of the casualties in my senate run here in maryland. in 2008 presidential the party had lost its brand, it had become tarnished to the point it was basically sound. we had to be put on the table whether it was philosophically, politically, policy lies, our donors were beginning to dry up the conference by holding back their checks because they denied the party the direction was

going to be the republican as some had began to take hold in the last term of the bush administration. so a lot of the economic conservatives who would eventually form themselves into the tea party really begin to figure it out and find another way to assert pressure back on of the establishment of the party to read as the grassroots activist, i found myself in a very interesting position because lenders to both sides to the establishment to sort of protect the status quo and other words the process to get a clean primary to go fight the democrats in november and the frustration of this new emerging voice of activists who were upset that the party had rolled back on its principles to the economics. not social. one of the big misnomers about

the tea party is that it is somehow the social conservative movement. it is not. what it has morphed into and has subsequently become is very different from the first meeting i had into a fury of 2009 as they were beginning to emerge from the country. and does use all played out in the town hall meetings that summer. you didn't see or hear these voices raging on abortion or marriage or social issues. they were raising against the violation of the constitution, the proper role of the congress to come to the table with a budget to manage the spending of the country etc. so you have these different dynamics that were beginning to emerge in some cases sub merge and part of my responsibility as the chairman is to try to figure out the best route to win in november so in looking at the potential

candidates to help me make the argument that the elephant had to turn and focus on what the citizens of the country wanted done and to of those individuals that summer happened to be chris christi of new jersey in the bob macdonald of virginia. when you look at where the party is now and where it needs to go, those governors i believe are examples of the future direction in many respects. you have a blue state like new jersey with a governor, republican governor-elect christie who was able to navigate but more importantly on a foreign policy position to take the full use of the party, articulate them and translate them into the policy while is very, very smart and reflective of what the people want. however you have a competing

interest that's grown in the two years between -- since 2011 that pushed back against that because it's now become intertwined with a social agenda, and it's kind of lost some of the economic edge with the success of obamacare and other successes the administration had so politically the party finds itself against the proverbial wall and the direction it takes in my estimation will determine when or not it goes the way of the whigs, or it actually becomes a party that competes for a governable majority were in the future and that ties back to what mickey has written in his book, and i think his book really reflects the attitude of voters out, this idea can you as an elected official be more like

us where i am sitting on the political process side, the party organization and structure, the challenge is to create a structure in which the voters feel that their ideas and their views are respected and heard what as they go through the overall process of running for office and talking about message points and stuff like that, so it becomes a very interesting dynamic for the political party that largely helped sway in the 1980's and 1990's and much of the first part of the 2000 s, at least 2,004. 2005 is when the wheels began to come off and since then, they're has been a massive struggle as we see get played out from candidates who talk about vaginal probes and legitimate rape verses those that want to talk like a chris christi on how

to govern a state in the country in these changing times. so what i tried to do it in my book of the political strategy standpoint right now is to get the party to focus on both its challenges and opportunities right now and the like any good 12 step program you have to begin with acknowledging you have a problem. and our problem is us, largely what we think of ourselves, what we value, how we articulate those principles and ideals that are part of the famine organization of the party in the world that looks vastly different if he entered the

republican primary today, he would lose. so for all the stock and embraced of ronald reagan they are doing a disservice in my estimation to his honor and his memory because they but not elect him today given his stance on immigration as president and governor of texas taxes and some of the other social issues and goes to the heart of the struggle that mickey and i had to deal with the inside of the party trying to get the elephant to recognize its core and therefore word in this world is changing around us. and not necessarily throwing your finger up to the wind and testing the waters every 30 minutes, but standing on firm

principal ground that recognizes the value of the american dream, that recognizes that these lawyers of those that ought to be part of the dreamed whether they are here now or coming in the future that understands the direction demographically that this country is taken and 30 years it will be a majority minority country. what does that mean? held to the political parties deal with that? the licht surface to the minorities that frankly what you don't believe me the change happens around, not within. the gop instead of throwing black faces and hispanic faces up their saying we know who won, too, should be embracing the movements going on in the various communities. in other words, shut up and listen and pay attention. so, example, when my friend

senator randy paul goes to harvard university, you don't go to howard university and tell them what they already know, you don't insult their intelligence that way. you bring them why they should listen to you what value are you offering, how will you make there opportunity to access the american dream as they have defined it real? the political parties find themselves and i think the democrats are going to find this when they get to 2016 particularly if hillary is not the nominee of the party those tensions that exist within the party began to get exposed. it will be on the left, not the right. moderate conservative democrats will tangle with the senate

deacons senator flatted progressive democrats just as you have seen in the republican party since ronald reagan stepped off the state and since that in blue is no longer there, but ideological glue he was able to bring the right, left and center reasonably together. you see now with the crackings that occur as the foundation. so the political party for the challenge right now is how you begin to mend those before the foundation completely breaks in light of the demographic political economic shift that is occurring in the country. right now the goal is to recognize the challenges, had met the feelings that we have committed and then begin to turn the elephant in a direction that points to the future standing on a foundation that is all about individual opportunity, of of individual traces and freedoms

and decisions. we cannot be a party that says we are about individuals making choices, but then we want to limit some of those choices. we cannot be the party that says we are about creating economic opportunities but then not put policies on the table that basically even surgery to those economic opportunities particularly for the poor and those that are at the margins. we can be a party that speaks to a limited role for government without being anti-government, without being disrespectful of those institutions that heretofore have been beneficial in helping people get up and move forward. the challenge than for government, sure you saw this in the congress it has the tendency to throw stuff out and then not follow up and not manage the

opportunity, not managed responsibly their resources and that creates the tension we see today where we are not going to spend one more dime until you cut and we aren't going to cut until we have the resources come so the back-and-forth has now bled into the political what was policy has now become more political which makes it much more difficult to do policy. >> i agree largely with mike in terms of changes the would be good for the republican party to make. i can think of changes that would be good for the democratic party to make. i really don't care about either one. i spent my life -- and jerry -- the life i was telling before about how we run our primaries, how we ll the ideologues of both parties to control the outcome has driven me in a different direction and while that story that i told about the examples

of the 46 states that allow underrepresented minorities to be on the delicate and so forth and naturally optimistic. 40% of americans today register as independent. usa today had a big article about the american people are fleeing from the political parties. in 2006 from the people in washington state were to have a petition and the constitution. the people of washington state having followed all of this, having followed the republicans versus the democrats on everything, there is unity. all the republicans agree on one thing they are against whatever the democrats are for and all of them agree they are against

whatever the republicans are for and the people in washington state said enough of that nonsense and they went to the polls on an initiative they created what, and they got rid of the party primaries. and they got rid of the ability of the political parties to control what congressional districts were shaped like. 13 states have now done that. that was in 2006. in 2010, california did it, california got rid of party primaries and party control of the redistricting. the bill to do it in texas has been reintroduced. it's been reintroduced in arizona. but the people are saying we want more democracy in our democracy. we want a system that lets the majority of people that want candidates to have to appeal in order to move forward to all of

the electorate not just the ideologues, so i think the people are finally getting that point, they are fed up to here as i have become. i am republican. always have been one. i have a lot of friends who are democrats. i love them all, and i want them to sit down together. we want you to do something for this school which deserves whatever good you can do for it. if you want to do something good for this school, a new facility, a new building, where should it be, how much should it cost, what should you do in the building, how many rooms, what equipment coming you all get together and form of group and say let's make a decision and not one person in this entire room what say okay all the republicans sit over there and the democrats over there and let's come up with different plans and fight it out.

we don't do that except the way we run our country. and we cannot continue to do that. so i hope that the republican party does make the changes mike talks about and i've talked about, but i hope ultimately our decisions don't get made by what's good for my party, both by what's good for my country. >> we have some time left for questions from anyone in the audience if you have any. there is a microphone right back there if you could advance to the microphone that way they will take it up. >> i would like each of you -- me you can start first with your thoughts on citizens united, the short-term and long-term. >> citizens united. i have to be careful. i am a lawyer so i don't know if i'm allowed to say that the

justices for smoking something illegal. the only thing i will say about that is if corporations are people, give me a break. first of all, i am not going to challenge the knowledge that supreme court justices have about the constitution. but they obviously skipped corporate law because corporate law makes it clear that there's a distinction between corporations and persons. i have a chapter on this in my book, and i probably have one of the more extreme positions coming and that is that when you go to cast a vote, there is nobody in line with you accept another human being. and that when you give money to the campaign there should be nobody giving money except a human being, no corporateno

political party money, no money except from human beings in limited amounts cannot casino owners in las vegas but putting tens of millions of dollars into a campaign that's the way to fix the money system. >> so, how would you address what the mayor is doing in new york right now? basically threw his pack, based on what you are saying that he would outlaw something like that. >> i think what mayor bloomberg should try to do is encourage as many people as possible to individually give money to defend the people he's trying to defend. i'm not trying to take people out of the system i just want it to be people, and i don't want -- you know, i agree with bloomberg, but i don't think it should be okay i've got more money than you so i'm going to determine the outcome. he is an articulate guy.

going to the states and say i want you to put the money of to help elect. >> the citizens united case, again it is one of those things that happened on -- what happened when i was rnc chairman as that also happened during that time we had a case before the court as well as a thing apart from citizens union as companion or sister case which spoke to a lulling the parties. our argument was a third party entity pact shouldn't be the source of campaign funds but the money should be back within the political parties. mccain-feingold did that if you have unlimited wealth and you want to share that with the political parties you could only to the extent of $30,000 a year

before mccain-feingold that money that we see getting poured into the packs, millions of dollars in individual could write. the difference was writing the check to the political party you have full disclosure. we had to record the date, the time, the amount of the job, etc. to get all of that pertinent information and then put that on the public record within 30 days. citizen united says okay not only is the corporation a person for purposes of campaign finance law, but we will let that person do what no other person in the country can and that is to give unlimited amounts without any record. unlimited amounts without any record. so there is no way of knowing that you just wrote $25 million checks to a pack from a democrat republican, doesn't matter, they know you wrote it but we've the

citizens don't. they claim we will disclose that information. okay, selectively because if you say don't disclose i'm not writing a check, what do you think they are going to do? so i think what you are going to see is over the next couple of years the congress particularly if the republicans lose the house next year, the congress will proactively go after citizens united and put in place some of the controls of the notification identification and record as i think should have been done in the first instance. yes, sir? >> it's my view that political divisiveness, especially hard line political divisiveness has increased in direct correlation to the incessant pounding of talk radio. i'm wondering if you have any comments, role of talk radio and the formulation of policy

especially within the party itself. >> there is no doubt that talk radio has been to the political process and certainly to the political parties. the growth at least from the republican and the conservative side really hearkens back to the only viable outlet that a lot of conservatives felt they had to express their views on a lot of issues and hence you see for example the success of the conservative talk radio in various forms and the failure of the liberal talk radio and america and other efforts it is the way that the political process for those activists unfolds itself. they want the issue and to count, count compound.

a lot of folks on the left its more visual and television oriented. if you look at msnbc, my network where i looked it's much more oriented that way. the impact however on the political process has been profound for both the radio and the television aspect, and i think you see now both fox and msnbc and cnn to a certain degree trying to adapt to this landscape that we have already talked about in terms of the attitudes of the voters being less edgy and much more looking for the conversation. i don't want to hear you yell and scream and shout and talk over me. i don't want to hear you have to agree with me. i want to ury solution to the fact it's been unemployed for 18 months.

for $50,000 versus $20,000.10 years ago. these are the new realities i think we are beginning to shake some of that. we have the edginess of the conservative talk radio with rush limbaugh and a few others, and i think that hasn't been helpful as we have seen the case is a good example of not helping the the date from the talk-radio standpoint simply because it puts the party and a cut the candidates running for office in the position of having to go out and either slam rush or do the right thing and say he is bonehead and stupid and we saw how that played out. we saw how that played out in that case. that is a real dynamic within the party to contend with also i will say it's getting less and less so. >> i want to have just one thing. i totally agree, talk radio and

talk tv or a major problem. they just high cut the anger and the instability a lot. we don't do a very good job of putting the blame on te people that own those networks and make their money off of touring plays into the political system, but its more complicated than that. they are a part of the problem that there's been a lot of studies that show with the exception of the party in this room while all of you are not part of this but everybody else you know talks only to people who think the way they do. you and your friends generally all watched the scene shows, read the same columnists and read and watch in order to reinforce the positions you already have rather than open to listening to different points of view with somebody who thinks differently than you do and

that's a real problem. ns ower thatgives talk radio and they've got and so we would like to reform that but we have to reform some things in the culture so that we have more critical thinking that we have more people who understand six and are willing when the year a different point of view listen instead of just forming a rebuttal in their mind while the other person is talking so talk radio and tv are not the whole problem. >> i occasionally talk to people whose ideas are off-the-wall. do you listen to fox news all the time clocks and then i stop my conversation because these people aren't looking at the norm. they're looking somewhere appear with their ideas. my next comment to mickey,

michael, i watch you all the time on msnbc and sometimes i wish you could get a chance to finish your statement. when you are speaking about bipartisanship i remember when tip o'neill and ronald reagan were good friends that by partisanship always started at the water's edge and they're used to be a lot of bipartisanship and it's only recently that this debate are not increasing the national debt and turning the whole country upside down. i think the u.s. to agree on the

national debt and then he changed his mind on that. so, what do you see happening in terms of getting -- and i say the republican party closer to the minimum where it used to be. i come from new york and we have seen so many good republican senators to washington. >> let me disabuse folks of one particular idea and i will be interested to get mickey's review on this one. i've come to the conclusion as a native washingtonian that grew up in washington, d.c. who has for me my local news was national news, it was what was going on in washington. it was not national. it was backyard stuff. and i agree with you, i have awy

from this idea of bipartisanship. the last truly bipartisan era for that we had was with clinton and gingrich and we saw what could be accomplished. it started off a little rocky but both sides recognized very quickly that if they were going to tackle the debt and deficit, if they were going to try to work towards a balanced budget, if they really wanted to begin to work at the water's edge on entitlement reform for entitlement programs like welfare they would have to do this thing called a consensus. they would have to find that sweet spot. in 2000, all of that change. we became red states, blue states. the strategy implemented by grove and the team and the presidential cycle said that this paradigm of us versus them, read a verse is blue, conservative versus liberal. overlait idea of

compassion conservatism but the underlying was really in your face your mama, too to this alive concluded that in the last ten, 12 years this bipartisanship no longer exists. when you hear members of congress talking by partisanship they are lobbying. it's not going to happen becaey. as mickey illustrated the system does not allow for that anymore. what you see now that i think really speaks to this next stage of where we need to go is consensus and we begin to see it on an issue like the guns where you have senator pat to me from pennsylvania and joe manchin from west virginia find the consensus, the sweet spot on an issue that no one in washington thought we could get anywhere near some resolution what the

script on immigration reform what happened there. everyone at the beginning of immigration reform thought this train was going to rollout and we would get it done. they haven't been able to nail down the consensus yet on what to do and where that is going to go. succumbing you still see on the right and left that sort of well i'm not sure. so that's what i think the new dynamic is, whether the leaders, and i use that term loosely can find that sweet spot consensus, the point that says i know you've got to give up something and i've got to give up something. it's not about party or anything other than the people. the space in the middle of the sweet spot it may be center-right or center-left, but it's in that area that people want us to be. that, ladies and gentlemen, you

should pay close attention to to see whether the white house, the senate, the congress can find that sweet spot on these complicated issues as we have began to see emerge on things like gun-control. >> mike and i both agree that on the republican party, our party, we do have the problem. the democrats do, too. we used to call them old evils, the conservative democrats are all gone. max baucus found that out very quickly and others did as well. the same thing has happened in both parties there is focus on republicans, but the democrats have lost their conservative and to become members of congress, too. i was in congress in those days. now we can look back and talk about bipartisanship at the water's edge. it wasn't that way. it wasn't that way in vietnam or the issues in central america hitting if you know, in nicaragua, el salvador.

it was those kind of foreign policy issues. there was a speech given by a senator saying that by partisanship ends the water's edge but it was never really true so we have always had those divisions. what's different now is that we always had some people in the house and senate that would reach out and bring people together so they could say how can we move the country forward? you and i have strong disagreements that we have to make sure the water stays pure, we have to mature the bridges don't collapse and our troops get their supplies. that's missing now and it's because the primary system if you say look we disagree about a lot let's find the area where we can agree then we are both going to get attacked and our primary fox so that's the real problem that i see to it >> one last question. do you think obama has gone a long way in his budget proposal by curtailing some entitlements and so forth to get the

conversation started again or is it dead in the water? >> i gave him props' the other day because it puts them in a box right now to have to begin to negotiate the senate finally after four years has come to the table with a budget. the white house has a budget, republicans have a budget so we have the makings of something getting done. i think the president talking about the change cpi which is indexing the indexing of inflation becomes a good starting point. the president is asking for $600 million of additional revenue getting post a $400 billion of revenue in january there is no mood on the republican party for that at

this point which is we see how the spending side places itself out of the debate. thanks very much. >> yes, sir to be a >> i am a senior and captain at ki school. congressman my dad served with you in congress. >> a great man. absolutely. >> i am a democrat but i followed with great interest the candidacy of inglis kaine who was a republican turned independent and he seemed to me to represent the idea of post partisanship working for the people. but even though you said 40% of the registered voters in the united states are independent it's incredibly hard for them to get on the ballot. i think one of the down sides of

the primary system in washington and california is that a completely shots out of them in the general election and so i am wondering over the next couple of years what you see as being the volubility of independent non-partisan candidates and how do you think if they are to become viable. i know you have to be very proud it's hard for somebody as a green party libertarian much of independent party to have much chance to succeed and the system that we have. but what has happened with the california and the washington primary, so even if you end up because it is an attorney general election in a very liberal district to seven in california the berman race, the liberal district it's not ever going to elect a republican but

those that end up in the primary in this case both liberal and the democrats have to appeal to the third party. they have to appeal to independents and appeal to libertarians and green and so forth in order to win. totally change the dynamic in that race and it's done in washington. so, i do think that is one of the things. but in this can -- there is a very positive, they have a little bit of a - that comes out of that, she was a good guy and it's good to see an independent elected as an independent running as an independent. the problem is he said absolutely. he had to caucus with the democrats because the parties controlled the system and if he doesn't caucus with the party he can't get a committee assignment and he can't get -- we have to break that, too where it's not party leaders that decide whether or not you can get a committee assignment. >> that's the key from the

political side of this i've always said we will not have a viable third-party movement effort in this country if it is from the top down. we've seen them pass, people running for president as independent and things like that. it's got to be organic from the bottom-up where the citizens decide i want you, sir search or the independent activist to be our representative and then that begins to form an organization around them that begins to crack at the gop and the democratic system which is deliberately designed to keep everyone else out. >> whether it is on redistricting, whether it is on getting on the ballot, it can be a nightmare and help you if you want to try to petition something to the voters referendum. again, the system is designed for very limited access, very few players, and those who are

players in the system already are protected by it. incumbency has enormous value. until you begin to break that, very little will change and the way you do is from the bottom-up with activists pushing up the system. we saw bipartisanship in california and washington. the republican leadership and the democratic leadership came together to fight against of the one time they wanted to be about them. >> thank you kevin >> yes, sir. >> are we done? i think we are done. >> we just got the cut off.