republicans, when they tried to fight obamacare, are fighting for jobs legislation. what stops jobs from being created? in many cases, it's regulation and having to comply with regulations. there are a lot of policies that are not seen as jobs bills. i would argue and this would be controversial but you could say that raising the minimum wage is a job killer. you may have fewer people making a little more money but people who own a small business and you have to pay your employees more money, by law, you have to, rather than just rewording folks who deserve it, you may hire fewer people. republicans do not get credit for this. they are not very good at getting good publicity or pr and it looks like they are being recalcitrant and a party of no. in fairness to them, a lot of the stuff -- a lot of the bills they try to kill, the things

they try to fight, especially on regulation, are actually an attempt to help businesses thrive. i will give you a local example in washington, dc which i just wrote about. i am a huge fan u ofber car service where you can use your smart phone, order a car, they have gps so they know where you are. they have had a really difficult time in the nation's capital because the taxi companies, the dc taxi commission, stands to lose. it becomes a political fight. you have this innovation that i think is a smart and fun i do it benefits the consumer you have incumbent companies who want to stifle it. this goes back to the whole theory of creative destruction. it used to be their workforces

and buggies and that the automobile automobile came along and put them out of business. -- it used to be horses and buggies and the automobile industry came along and put them out of business. now there is a better service. sometimes what liberal policies do is try to prop up and save failing ideas. they do it under the guise of compassion. i think this is a big philosophical and theoretical debate that takes place. when you see republicans voting no and getting bad publicity, what they are really doing is trying to stop things that would prohibit job growth. i agree with the caller. we talk about deficits and debt and we can cut but the way we fix the economy is to actually grow it. host: from twitter -- guest: that's a loaded question.

i will use one example of a race that i think sort of defies that question. it was in arkansas, arguably the most exciting republican running this year is a guy named tom cotton. it's hard to say if he is a tea party guy. he is an incumbent member of the house. he is a former military guy. in many ways, >> serving his first term? >> serving his first term and a mansion republican but also i would reject the binary choice whether he is a tea party guy or an establishment guy. i think he is maybe in that marco rubio sweet spot which means he could appeal to a wide swathe and possibly turn off the people marco rubio managed to do this year. i really think it is a false choice to have to choose.

ultimately, what i hope happens is that conservatives find a way to elect smart, mature, conservatives, not rhinos but conservatives who go to washington and govern as opposed to just being in it for the theatrics and the gimmickry. i reject the notion that you either get the tea party or the establishment. i think we can get solid conservatives who are fresh and energetic but also want to get things done. host: on our line for republicans, connecticut -- caller: i just want to thank you so much for what you are saying. i have thought the same thing about the republicans leaving ken cucinelli in the cold and not doing anything to help them. how do you get your word out to the public? i called my friends in virginia and they feel that i am naive

about the tea party and it's not really made up of grassroots mom and pops and it's some kind of sinister movement. they did not vote for cucinelli and i said i didn't understand. i asked for they are getting their information. i think you have a an important message. i was a flaming democrat while i lived in new york and i always admired -- i can't think of his name -- he said you can have your own opinion but you cannot have your own fax -- daniel moynihan. i want to ask you how you can get your wonderful analysis out more? that's my question. guest: follow me on twitter. tell your friends and click the ads. send us some money. i think this is hopefully a message -- as someone who writes, it is awesome. my dad was a correctional officer. he literally went to prison for 30 years.

voluntarily. so that i could get to write and opine about politics. i feel really honored and privileged to get to do what i do. i hope it makes some small difference. we just have to keep reaching it. i do think that there are a lot of mistakes made in virginia in this race. i will say that the negative ads that terry mcauliffe and other democrats ran against cucinelli utterly destroyed and crushed him in northern virginia. unfortunately, a lot of them are false. a lot of the social issues, for example, there was a notion that he wanted to ban all contraception. politifact called a pants on fire lie. most people believe tv ads. if there were more money pushing back on those negative ads, we might have had a different result. sadly, not everyone reads my log or they might know that.

host: fred barnes wrote in the weekly standard about that very issue -- guest: democrats have figured out that this is the way to win elections. barack obama now terry mcauliffe used it very effectively. if you look at the demographics of who elected terry mcauliffe, look at the cohort for unmarried women. i think he won that by 40%. it's ridiculous. clearly, those ads targeting ken cucinelli saying he is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest, these issues when they are run over and over hit home. chris christie was not a victim

of this. i just wrote a piece where i think he needs to be very careful. he gets in the face of teachers and says to do your job. imagine him doing that in davenport, iowa to a teacher and imagine that teacher big coming and that could be the start of a war on women. if chris christie has -- uses his confrontational style which is fun now, you can see very easily how they could take some teacher and make them into a cause celebre and chris christie could be a bully and not in a good way. host: these are the exit polls out of virginia. look at the female vote -- terry mcauliffe got 51% of the female vote. ken cucinelli got 42% from the exit polls in the virginia governor's race. guest: married women were a little bit for terry mcauliffe.

unmarried women, dramatically on the democratic side. host: here is the headline -- tampa, florida, independent caller. caller: good morning. would you hand the loaded gun to somebody who said they wanted to shoot you? i think that's a perfect analogy for the antiestablishment tea party being upset with the establishment for not handing that and that gun. -- handing them that gun. guest: there are a lot of folks who feel that way. it's amazing. there is a real sense that the republican establishment cannot be trusted. frankly, i am surprised by this. i agree there have been a lot of if you go to the george w. bush

administration, spending, he did not veto a lot of spending bills, you had the bailouts and tarpon all sorts of things that happened. -- tarp and also s -- and all sorts of things that happen and cronyism and a lot of reasons why conservatives might reject circa 2003, medicare part d. there are many good reasons why conservatives might reject republican party in 2003. bill frist is not in the senate anymore. dentist has to do is not there and george w. bush is not there. in the couple of years, you have elected this incredible crop from marco rubio to rand paul and susanna martinez and chris christie. there is so many exciting things happening. i don't get why now there is this resentment. maybe they won't be happy until

mitch mcconnell and john banner will be gone. i'm not sure but why not have senator pat twomey and kelly ayotte and this new crop of conservatives -- why not give them a chance to get things done? it seems they are being labeled the establishment now, two. why should they pay? 10 years ago, republican was a bad thing but maybe move past that. host: i want to show our viewers the female vote in the new jersey race to compare. the female vote for chris christie, 57% compared to his female opponent who garnered 42% of the female vote in that state. guest: absolutely, chris christie had a great night. one thing to learn is clearly you can be a conservative. chris christie is a conservative.

he defunded planned parenthood in new jersey. and yet his priority has always been helping people in new jersey, standing up for them against washington, helping them overcome the hurricane. you can be a hard-core conservative and also give the sense that you care about getting things done in standing up for your voters. that's a big key. one got the sense in virginia that cucinelli was more it just it in ideas and being a cultural warrior. it is harder to talk about helping people when you have not been the governor. chris christie was the incumbent so that was a benefit. as i said, i think there is also a danger chris christie to assume that now he can -- everything he did in new jersey, he can do again if he runs for president and he will win the women vote. very dangerous. against hillary clinton. host: and possibly the hispanic vote. he got 51% of the hispanic vote.

two e-mails for you -- there is that and then this e- mail from john in pennsylvania. guest: the first e-mail about the binary choice between the establishment and the tea party it is messy. it's not that simple. libertarians tend to be pro- immigration reform. that sort of shows how these things get conflated.

rand paul did not support this specific senate bill but he has talked very favorably about a path to citizenship and pro- immigration reform and libertarians in general, whether they are tea party or not, tend to be very much in favor of more immigration and of immigration reform. chris christie and susanna martinez would be a very interesting ticket. two governors, two winners, susanna martinez obviously is hispanic but unlike marco rubio who is cuban, she is mexican american and i think that would be very interesting. we will have to see. the temptation would be for -- it would be like in 1992 when bill clinton became the nominee and rather than balancing the ticket with a northern, liberal, he doubled down and picked al gore. you had two young, seen as

moderate democrats. they had an interesting brand. chris christie and susanna martinez would be similar. there would be a temptation for him to go to the right to balance the ticket with maybe rand paul or someone in the u.s. senate was a proven conservative. i think chris christie -- susanna martinez would double down on a pragmatic version. select c, watch out. new jersey may become in play and new mexico may be in play. this would really change the blue versus red state paradigm we have gotten used to in the past decade. host: battle creek, michigan, democratic caller -- caller: hello, i wanted to talk about the history of the obamacare and its origins. i am thinking it's kind of a middle-of-the-road health care policy. it is patterned after romneycare

which apparently is working in massachusetts. it uses ideas out of the heritage foundation. the individual mandate was originated in the heritage foundation in 1989. the republicans introduced a similar legislation in 1992. you guys are complaining that this is a radical thing. it is filled with republican ideas and the other problem is, you guys have complained for four years and jumping up and down and complaining about how awful obamacare is. there is no republican alternative as far as i know. there is none that has been passed in the house. you don't have a comprehensive health care plan. the health care costs that we have in the united states have been rising and rising for the past 20 years. they are projected to continue to rise if there is no change.

what is the republican alternative to the awful, harvell, terrible, ghastly obamacarec which is really romneyare? guest: i think it's true that in the 1990s, there were conservatives who were trying to be proactive and look for ways to solve the healthcare problem. it is wrong to say that all republicans embrace this idea and rally around it but there are certainly some conservative opinion leaders who thought of mandate would be a good idea and they saw a conservative solution. breaking your arm and showing up in an emergency room and expecting other people to pick up the tab is not exactly conservative. clearly, that idea did not fly. whether it was a matter of opportunism and opposing hillarycare are obamacare or a matter of principle and whether conservatives oppose this on principle. for whatever reason, conservatives today by and large oppose mandates.

the question over what is the alternative is a really important one. there have been proposals. congressman price has proposed something. he had ideas bandied about like allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. included allowing catastrophic insurance. essentially you could protect yourself from bankruptcy if you were to be diagnosed with cancer. if you were to go to the hospital for something routine or a doctors office, you would pay out-of-pocket. there is a lot of different ideas for for you to do medicaid expansion. having said all that, i will agree with the caller and say that i think republicans need to very quickly settle. there have been conservative proposals for the republican version of health care, they have not settled on something. it is important that while you are poking holes in obamacare and is easy to do now that there is a republican alternative that

many people buy in on. that will be the problem now with this struggle is to get everyone to buy in on a conservative alternative. host: the house returns to washington this week coming up. on their agenda is a piece of legislation called keep your insurance plan act of 2013. they will be taking this issue of what president obama said over your insurance plan and now these cancellation notices directly to the house floor this week. fort lauderdale, florida, republican caller -- caller: good morning, how are you? i want to tellatt that he lives in lala land. the mainstream republicans, the socially conservative republicans do not want to party people. we want to get rid of them. you live in lala land and you need to stop your bs, thank you. guest: this is interesting because you hear totally

different things from different callers. this color essentially says that the tea party is the problem and social conservatives are with the establishment. i think that highlights how messy this thing is. it is not clear cut. what is a tea party candidate versus an establishment candidate? marco rubio was elected in 2010 by the tea party. today, people say he is establishment. what is pat twomey? is he establishment? he wanted to have some gun control. is he a tea party candidate or a conservative or a rhino? at the end of the day, these things -- where you stand depends on where you set. it's important that conservatives are able to sort of stick together. there is a real danger. as we have seen, the cleavages are not that clear. rhinos and other persons like

radical conservative extremists. host: caller: caller: wendy, independent caller. how are you doing? i have a question for mr. lewis. these big companies send -- they go overseas to all these countries and they make a pair of nikes that cost $10 and the comeback you're in charge $300 per it why haven't they got in with exxon who sends their monies overseas to a bank and pay no taxes because of loopholes. i am paying taxes for 31 years. i got sick and all of a sudden, my insurance was canceled. i went back to try and get it and it is $400 per month. what are they doing? obama did try to get the infrastructure putting people to work. they did not want to do that. the republicans don't seem to want to do anything that benefits taxpayers. i paid taxes for 31 years.

i never went to the government for nothing. right now, i am in a situation where i need help. they are saying -- what about the money i paid him that is going overseas to these other countries? we are willing to help them but they don't want to help the taxpayers in this country. host: you might be interested in an opinion piece in "the washington post." this is by patty murray who was involved in avoiding another government shutdown. guest: if you are upset with how things are going, we have had obama for five years. in fact, in 2008, democrats controlled everything. they controlled the presidency, the senate, and the house and they could've done something and were able to push through

obamacare through reconciliation. they could have done some sort of tax reform. i think tax reform is really important. there are things that could happen to make it more fair. you could raise the rate for people for capital gains taxes if you cut the corporate tax. there are many conservatives who would support that. the problem is, democrats are not willing to talk about tax reform unless you put revenues on the table. in other words, democrats will not negotiate over fixing these problems unless republicans are willing to raise your taxes. republicans say they are not going to raise taxes. i am not saying that republicans are always right or conservatives are always right but i think you have to give your side. it sounds like you're a supporter of democrats and giving them some blame. host: she was our last caller and matt lewis, thank you very much for your time. coming up next, we will turn our

quacks on this veterans day, washington journal is devoting its program to issues on veterans. michael noonan talks about the divide between regular citizens and military, the subject of his recent op-ed. after that, ward carroll, editor of military.com he tries to find them jobs when they return overseas. and in the broader issue inserting veterans and concerns over mental health. tom tarantino from the organization of iraq and that denniston veterans joins us. washington journal is live every day here on c-span at 7:00 a.m. eastern. tonight on c-span, q and a, with greg easterbrook. follow the questions with david

cameron. and then victory speeches from tuesday nights government speeches. ♪ "q&a," week on journalist, columnist and author greg easterbrook discusses his latest book, titled "the king of sports: football's impact on america." >> gregg easterbrook, why did you decide to name your latest book "the king of sports?" >> the book is about football, the good and bad of football. it is the king of sports, the most important, popular, most exciting game in the most important country in the world. america's can use to be baseball and baseball is still a very entertaining sport.