to grow so we can help veterans. but i have the understanding when i hire a wounded veteran i know that there's going to be doctors appointments at the v.a. that they're required to go to whether they're weekly or monthly. and i don't -- every employer to include regular civil yb employers, they all have personal lives and are all going to have issues and all have times they need to go to the doctor or pick up their child. so it's unfair if a veteran is going to be stereo tippede because they may have to go see a doctor for two hours a day. you're talking about a person who is going to be more productive than a larger population in the country anyway. so it's unfortunate people aren't hiring veterans just due to the fact that they may have to see a doctor once in a while. shame on you if that's an employer doing so. host: one more call. guest: isn't it true that when the economy was good the military was upset because they didn't want to have to pay bonuses for hiring these guys? and now that when the economy

is moork managed out of d.c. it ruined, that instead, these guys get to reinlist or girls and guys, and they're demoted to a lower status. and so that kind of works out good instead of having the competition and having small business and have it be grassroots-made, d.c. would rather handle it all and lead the propaganda parade. so that it doesn't get fixed. host: we'll leave it there. guest: i'm not sure if i understood the question correctly. i know when i got out in 2008, i know they were currently still paying reinlistment bonuses in some service branches depending on the job specificications for veterans to reinlist. and there's obviously. but veterans do not receive money when they get out of the military unless they have a service connected disability. so i'm not sure i understand that question correctly. host: brian is with the group

hired heroes joining us from atlanta, georgia. today. the website is hire here ost u.s.a..org. thank you. guest: thank you very much. i appreciate you having me on. host: on the program tomorrow, we will talk with steven emerson with the investigator project on terrorism. he is there executive director and he will look at the growth of islamic radicalism within the united states. dare el west wl also join us. rethinking u.s. immigration policy. and we'll talk about proposals for attracting more highly educated and entrepreneurial immigrants to the u.s. and then sarah kline, center for the science and public interest, a food safety attorney. and it's a kickoff of our week long series examining food policy in the united states. for monday we'll look at the food safety legislation that was passed by congress. all that the papers and your calls on "washington journal" tomorrow. stay tuned for "newsmakers" right after this show.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> i think a mistake that a lot of british people make is to think that they're broadly comparable, the british and

american system. your president is like our prime minister and that you have to two house us and we do too. no, our prime minister has much more power than your president. host: >> comparing the briish an american forms of government as we talk with our guest about elections, the impact of money, the power of the prime minister, taxes, social issues and the cost of living. tonight on "q&a". >> joining us on "newsmakers" is jentry collins a candidate for the chair of the national republican committee. thanks for being with us. why are you running? why do you want to be party chair? >> i'm running because if we're going to beat barack obama and roll back his policies and beat

his ydology, we've got to put the rnc back on track. in 2010 plinls had a good cycle as you know, but that cycle was not driven by the rnc. and in many respects we sort of got away with that organization at the republican national committee through a variety of other committees in a nonpresident istial cycle that helped capture all the energy that was available. that can't happen in 2012. in a presidential cycle. by federal law. there are several things that only the republican national committee can do. if we're going to have another successful cycle. so i'm running to put it back on track so that we can beat barack obama and beat his policies in 2012. host: your constituency, 168 members of the r.n.c. how do you win? guest: you go out and see as many members as you can. i've been to 20 states and after the christmas holiday plan to be to many more. and you win by offering a

specific plan about how you put the r.n.c. back on a financial track and how you keep the party together not just in 2012 but in 2011, how do you darn es all of the energy available -- harness all of the energy available and convince the grassroots base and the party and the tea party that they have a home in the republican party. >> you're talking about the organization. until right after the election you were one of the top strategists. don't you bear some responsibility for the disorganization of the rnc? >> the condition of the rnc at and the lack that we had was financial and not political. i think folks at the rnc, and not just me but many of my predecessors, built a great deal of knowledge both academic and practical about how to run outstanding turnout programs both the 72-hour program which focuses on election day turnout but also more recently, as

elections change around the country, how republicans run a top-rate absentee and early voting programs as well. and we had so many of those sitting on the shelf this year. not just at the rnc but as state parties that traditionally were funded, whose turnout programs were funded by the rnc. so the real lack, the real driver of problems at the rnc was not you're ability to put good programming in the field. it wurs our ability to fund those programs, to resource those programs and the state parties that run those programs. >> but you had resources to send money to guam and the virgin islands. >> which was entirely inappropriate and i've said so publicly and it's part of the reason why i threft rnc. and i think it's part of the reason that i joined so many of our members in saying we need new leadership. >> when you left the rnc, you left on november 16. you sent a letter that was very harshly critical of chairman steel and of some of what's

gone on in the building itself. you have been known for your discretion. you don't talk to a lot of reporters, you don't talk to a lot of folks outside your meet circle. and yet, within hours that letter circumstance lated very widely and sort of made news on its own. do you regret the way you left the rnc? >> i spent a great deal of time thinking about what my responsibility was to our members. i did not -- i certainly knew that it would make its way to the press duh i did not prodied it to the spress. i ziveragettedse i provided it just to members of our executive committee at the rnc. what i had witnessed over the course of the summer and fall and particularly over the course of the fall when we were trying to deploy resources out into the field is that members simply hadn't been given the facts by leadership at the rnc. so what you say, and i know a lot 06 coverage has said that my letter was harshly critical

of chairman steel, it doesn't mention chairman steel. it looks at how much money was raised and how much was spent. not just in the last cycle but over the course of several nonpresidential cycles that i think are more comparable than 2008 or 2004 would have been. i was very careful in that let tore stick just to the facts and to omit all of the sort of squabbling that goes on and the hear save and the rumor mill type and to look just at the facts. and i think you'll find for all of the folks who have said perhaps you should have left differently none of them have been able to refuture any of the facts that i laid out in that letter. and the reason for that is that they're accurate. so over the course of the fall it became clear that members of the rnc had a sense that not all was well but they're being told by this chairman we've

raised a record amount of none and when he was challenged on why is cash on hand so low, it's because we passed out more money than we have before. we knew it wasn't true. so i decided, though all of my career has been spent working quietly building the organization as you suggest, i decided that i had a responsibility to members to make sure that someone who had seen behind the curtain, so to speak, had told the truth. and had given them the facts that they needed to make a decision about how to organize the pard party going forward. >> the rnc has taken down it's entire line of credit. there are millions more in unpaid bills. some speculate it may be higher than $25 million. that would be for you to take over the moment you get in there. you're one of the top campaign operatives in the country. why do you want this job? why not go run a presidential campaign?

>> that's a very tempting thing to do. and frankly it's something that i thought i would be doing like many republicans and certainly like many republican operatives, my chief objective among others but chief objective is to win the white house back, to add to our house majority, aed a majority to the senate? 2012. but i came to the conclusion, having seen a number of presidential campaigns from the inside, that if we didn't put the rnc back on track, that winning a presidential campaign was going to be much, much harder and maybe not possible. and so somebody has got to go in and do that job. you mentioned and i think it's absolutely true that the next chairman doesn't have a challenge just over the course of a two-year cycle. the next chairman has a challenge immediately and we find historically that the chairmen who have been able to meet those kind of challenges and meet them most rapidly with the shortest learning curve are people who come out of a

professional political background, people who have run and won campaigns in the tough cycles over the course of a variety of states. and that's a professional background that i share and i decide that had the r.n.c. needed new leadership, that was critical to winning a presidential election and that i was sort of uniquely positioned between having the professional background that is made for successful chairmen but also being close enough to enough committee members that i get a fair hearing at least as a candidate for chairman. host: talking to r.n.c. members, they want one of the 168 to take over and run the committee through this upcoming cycle, which is going to be critical for the future of the party. i'm wondering what your argument to them is that why not elect one of their own? why look outside? why bring you in? why bring someone who doesn't have a vote in the committee into the fold? >> first, i think there's a

real hunger for confidence. i think they're tired of being embarrassed, tired of being underfunded. host: you're saying chairman steel was incompetent? >> i think that a number of things that happened at the r.n.c. argue that we need new leadership, argue that we need leadership that isn't -- that doesn't have as its first mission saying provocative things on news shows, that has instead as the first mission of the next chairman to make sure that political plans are in place that can win back the white house and that those plans are resourced, that they're funded. and that was clearly a major failing of this chairman. so i think there's a hunger among membership to turn that around. and so my sense is that there's a real openness to hire the best person for the job, whether that's me or someone else. would some members like to have a voting member of the r.n.c.? certainly. but i've been around the committee a very long time as executive director and for a time acting chairman in iowa when our chairman was deployed

to iraq in 2004, and consistently ever since, as political director of the rga, most recently of course of the rnc. a couple presidential campaigns in between. i've got a long and very positive relationship with many, many committee members. and so i'm not a strange tore them. and i've had a successful working relationship to them. i think there's a real hunger to get this right. i think people understand if we don't put the r.n.c. back on track, we're not going to be able to put the country back on track. and i think more than any one other qualifier, people want somebody who can do the job, they want the best person who can do the job. >> one of the other big changes is citizens unite that led to crossroads in american across croods, didn't that ruling and outside interest groups really devalue the role of the rnc and the dnc in mid term and

presidential elections? >> certainly not at all in presidential elections. those outside groups, as you know, can raise and spend different kinds of money. they're largely unlimited. the rnc is very limited and as a result not inas much competition as some have suggested with these third party groups. but as i mentioned at the outset, federal law provides very specifically that the r.n.c. and the d.n.c. on the democrat side can do thing that is these other entities cannot do and other party committee cls not do. i think, for example, of the coordinated funds that can be spent on behalf of the presidential campaign, that's up to $50 million. i think, for example, of the national convention which can only be organized by the rnc, the presidential trust, a coordinated turnout program between the party organization and the federal campaigns. none of those thing ks be done by outside groups, by third party groups or in most cases

even by other party committees. and so certainly in a presidential cycle the role of the national parties has not been diminished. >> you talked about raising money and how important it is. some people have suggested that the next cycle will be a $300 million cycle for the rnc. what says you can raise money? you've never been a fund raiser or a professional who actually pulls in the money. you've been a campaign operatives. why can you raise money where as michael steel can't? >> several things. one, a commitment to go and sell to investors a political plan and a business plan to put the party back on track. i did have quite a bit of experience with that this fall when it became clear that the r.n.c. was not raising the major donor resources that it needed, our new finance team asked me to go out on the road. i met with several of the largest dozen of the donors in the country and found that the first problem is that they simply hadn't been asked in 2009 and 2010. i had braced myself as i went

out on the road for those meetings for an ant r.n.c. response and instead what i got, which surprised me, was they sort of a where have you been response? they simply had not been told how the r.n.c. planned to win elections, what a padsway to a majority looked like, why we needed their investment and how we were going to manage those dollars. and when i was able the make that case, i met with sock success. i had a da -- success. i had a day job, i wasn't doing it fulltime, but it was an introduction to financial and a successful one. i would also suggest that if there's nothing to invest in, major donors are not going to come back to the party. so the next chairman very quickly is going to have to be able to articulate not just how you win, how we maintain our majority in the house, how do we add one in the senate, but how do we keep the party together in 2011, how do we make sure that all of this energy in the grass roots of the party and outside the

party, how do we make sure that it doesn't splinter the republican party into several pieces? how do we make sure that we don't have a third party candidacy in 2012? and that's going to require a chairman who has a political background like mine. and i think, again, if you find that if you go back to r.n.c. history, you find people who have successfully run campaigns have made for the best rnc chair mone. it prepares them to sell a plan to investors. and i'm prepared to do that. >> listening to this and listening to the recent conversations among the candidates, there's not a real dinch between what all of you are selling. i guess my question is what are biggest differences or are there differences? >>s there dinks and i think it depends on who you're talking about. while others have been around politics in various capacities in one state or another, i have consistently over the course afmy career made a career out

of running and winning elections in a variety of states, in a variety of cycles, many of them in the last several cycles, tough ones. for example, you go back over the last two presidential cycles. you find what i call three positive anomalies. in 2004, there were just two states that went from gore in 2000 to bush in 2004 and i ran one of those. i was in iowa. i was executive director. we hadn't been republican since 1948. it had been since reagan's reelect two decades earlier and we were just one of two states that year that turned it around and go republican. and then in 2008, i was responsible for the midwest for senator mccain and governor palin in the general election. there was just one target state in 2008 contested by both sides that went from mccain-palin. that was the state i ran, mose. and like iowa four years earlier, most was a state that

had a history of voting not for the republican but for the winner in the presidential election regardless of party and that same night was going from a republican governship to democratic governorship. so we found a way to win a swing state when no other was going our way. so i've got a consistent background particularly in the presidential level of learning how to win tough campaigns and hard cycles and swing states. and while we certainly have other qualified candidates running for chairman, i don't think any of them share that background. >> let me ask you about 2012. 23 democratic senate seats up compared to ten republican seats. so more on the democratic side than on your side. but what worries you the most with regard to the house and senate races? >> certainly on the house side you've got to worry about redistricting. i think one of the things the next chairman has to get on top of very quickly is making sure

that the r.n.c. is financially healthy enough so we can provide redistributors in various states with the kind of data and legal support that they're going to need to have a successful redistricting cycle. as you know, we had more than a dozen and a half legislative chamber pickups but in order to take advantage of that and have the kind of redistricting cycle that we can have, the r.n.c. has got to get its financial house in order and do that very quickly. so i think the first concern from a political point of view that i have is in 2011 and not in 12i. also with respect to the house, while we had a great year in 2010, just like the other party saw in 2006 and 2008, we won a lot of swing seats frpblt and so we're going to have a lot of freshmen incumbents running in what could be a different kind of cycle in 2012 that had the

sort of the wind in their sails, that had a more positive political environment in 2010. so making sure that those freshmen legislatures in particular in swing seats and districts around the country are doing their work at home, putting together good campaigns and getting started on that early. i think would be my chief concern. as i look at the congressia races heading into 2012. >> i want to talk about your time line. as i mentioned earlier, you resigned from the rnc. the committee that you're using to raise money actually was filed by one of your allies on november 9, a week before. how did you -- and by the way, you were meeting with top donors around the country before the election actually happened. how did you make this decision, talk about the time line that took you from r.n.c. political director to the guy who wants to take over the building. >> well, i think a couple of

questions with respect to the timeline on the filing of the committee specifically. i've got a long-time friend and supporter, former chairman of the republican party in iowa, who as we had discussions about who the next rnc chairman should be, consistently encouraged me to make a run over a period of weeks. i indicated to him that i wanted to keep the option open. and he went ahead and filed a committee on the i believe on the 9th. in terms of how the decision got made more broadly, it had always been my attention to help elect a republican president as i mentioned earlier, i think most republican operatives share that in common most republicans share that as a chief objective heading into 2012.

the conversation shifted late in the fall from do we need to do something to yes we clearly need to do something to what is that something? and as we looked back at r.n.c. history, we found, as i mentioned, that the people who had become the most successful chairmen were the people who had a background professionally of running and winning elections all over the country in tough cycles. the challenge for candidates like that is that most of them are not -- not all but most of them have been appointed by presidents, confirmed by the committee, and not necessarily elected in their own rights. so as we started looking around the country at who shared that professional qualification,

there are a number of people who do, we also added in the other criteria. who is close enough to the committee who has a long enough relationship with the committee, a good enough positive enough relationship with enough members to at least have a fair hearing if not be successful in a campaign. we came to the conclusion, i'm sure, uniquely positioned at the intersection of those two requirements. it was a decision that i did not arrive at lightly. i think that the next r.n.c. chairman is going to have enormous challenges on his or her doorstep on day one. as i mentioned earlier, not just in 2012 but in 2001. the first debt payment comes in february. just a matter of weeks art the election. plus, you've got to figure out very rapidly how to keep the party from splintering, how to make sure that twe don't have a third party challenge which i think reelects barack obama in 2012 and how do you prepare the

ground game and the convention in 2001 so that by the time -- 2011 so we have a nominee to go. and that requires an operatives for whom there will not be a long learning curve. >> you talk about third-party challenge. tea party here, mayor bloomberg? >> what worries you the most? >> i think the either the possibility. i regard either as a remote possibility and i regard either as a possibility that is avoidable with good leadership at the r.n.c. but i think the party has got to be worried about either scenario because either one draws from not only from the base of conservative support but from the growing base of no party and independent people who view the republican party and eventually our nominee as a more and more viable, more and more preferable alternative to president obama and his liberal

policies. so i think a third party candidacy, regardless of whether it comes just to the right or left of our nominee, probably pulls more votes from the republican nominee than from president obama. and so i think we've got to get that under control. i think that there is a huge amount of energy in the country and frankly our party didn't behave itself very well those, the last six or eight years that we were -- that we were in the majority. and so we've got to reearn some trust. i think that's a perfectly legitimate thing that people are worried about in the country. i think they're going to be watching how we perform in the majority and i'm sure that we'll perform well in the majority. they'll be watching how we perform as a party as well. do we believe in the platform? are we serious about that? are we providing ways for tea party activists, for example, regardless of personalities, to be part of putting the country back on track? do we have a chairman who is providing concrete ideas and opportunities to do that?

and i think these are key questions we'll have to worry about and the next chairman is going to have to be prepared for. >> one of the things you talk about is your connections and relationships with the committee. sort of talking about the strategy of this particular race. you've got just two public supporters. some of your other opponents have ten or more, at least four have more than ten public supporters. how many people do you have to have publicly on your side as you go into the new year after the christmas break to show you're really a viable candidate? >> well, so several things. first, i think identify been officially in the race for a shorter time than some of those other candidates, so at least one other having been running or working on running for a number of years at this point. and so officially the campaign is quite young. we've been to 20 states and we've had a very warm response. i think the vast majority of members, something like 120 or

-- 110 to 120 have yt to make a commitment. and we've had very positive initial conversations with many of them. the commitment that i've made to those members is that i wouldn't simply rely on the rhetoric that so many candidates for chairman are using but i would rely instead on specific plans, a specific political plan, a specific finance plan and so forth. we're rolling those out one a week, each week, as we go forward starting last week. we've got another call with 168 members, as many that care to join. tomorrow we'll be rolling out a full finance plan. and so the response that i've gotten from members is, look, that's the kind of leadership we need. we want to see what you roll out. we want to see what those plans look like. i think the vast majority of members by a very wide margin are keeping theirs dry at this point to see what kind of plans i roll out and to see whether any other candidates roll out specific plans on how they're going to put the party back on