the court today to hear his first argument on the high court. just as kavanaugh family -- justice kavanaugh's family was in the courtroom for his first day. -- require enhanced sensing under federal law -- sentencing under federal law. according to our producer at the supreme court, justice kavanagh asked several questions of the litigants. process,s confirmation -- as during his confirmation process, protests continued outside the court. a bob schieffer will moderate discussion this afternoon with the heads of the national democratic institute and national republican institute talking about promoting democracy abroad at 5:30 eastern here on c-span. 28 days until the midterm elections. at 8:00 eastern, we will be live with you talk's u.s. -- utah's

senate debate to fill the seat of orrin hatch. live on c-span 2 at 8:00, gonzalezaker debates j . here on c-span at 10:00 p.m., arizona's second congressional district debate. c-span, your primary source for campaign 2018. mayor and strategist and the fabric -- liz mair. as far as republicans go this time around, what is the message you would send to them as they reach out to potential voters? guest: if i were them, what i would try to focus on as much as humanly possible, especially because a lot of people are

focusing on suburban women voters and trying to keep them in the republican cap, -- camp, -- if iity is we have were republicans, what i would be talking about is i would be talking about what was the indication of tax cuts? for most people, i think that was positive. with my own employees, when i calculate what their paychecks are, these are not people who are like 1%-ers. they are bringing more home and focusing on that can be beneficial in some places. the other thing i would focus on is trying to talk about how broken the health care system is and if we have anything we can talk about aimed at bringing actual health care costs down, that would be beneficial.

it appears to me the ray of inflation in health care cost -- you have a lot of people grappling with that, college tuition cost. i would be focusing on pocketbook and kitchen table issues. people understand the economy is in reasonably good shape. if you give them a reason to believe by keeping you around money inp with more your pocket, that will be about the best argument i think republicans can present to this point for swing voters. host: how well our republicans selling those messages? guest: the problem with the tax cuts message and i -- is i think a lot of voters don't vote on things that are already done. corey lewandowski made the point that voters don't go to the polls to say thank you. i think that is one reason why

you have seen house republicans on the ways and means committee go ahead and get through the house this sort of permanentization of the lot of taxtax cuts included in reform package. they have that as a promise if you put us in again, we can get this done. i think that is important. with health care, it is trickier because the fundamental problem we have is that we all have the ability to rally around opposing obamacare. within the republican party, you have about 6 different camps. we don't really have a unified message. i don't know that we need a unified message. we need candidates running in these swing districts with their own ideas about health care and can go out and talk about this persuasively. what barbara comstock has to say about that will probably be different than what jeff denham has to say and i think that is

fine. you cannot leave the question unanswered and that is a worry i have, that a lot of republicans are leaving the question unanswered. democrats have an answer, but most people will take an answer after no answer. host: we showed a poll showing women who were voting in november were breaking for democrats. is that something you are seeing and why? guest: that seems to be the case. a lot of this is just the national tendency. -- generally speaking, you are going to see voters go and say, maybe we need to do a little bit of course correction, so they vote the opposite party in. i think a lot of that is the national gravitational pull in politics. obviously, we do have issues -- the president is not popular with women.

he has a lot of issues with female voters and in general, there are a lot of women who feel congress is not doing its job. one of the things that is overlooked by political strategists is women are used to juggling a lot of different roles and having to do a lot of multitasking. the difficulty with that from a political standpoint is when you see guys sitting literally in the capital and cannot get stuff done, you are automatically going to have a bunch of people who run small businesses or have relatively high-powered management jobs and who are also parents and dealing with all their skit -- all their kids' school activities and leading their own lives and managing family finances. -- doing, if i can all all this in a single day, why can't they pass a single bill? guest: our guest -- host: our guest is with us to talk about

women in 2018. 202-748-8001 for republicans. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. what do you think of the brett kavanaugh confirmation? how does that play out amongst women voters? guest: i think it depends on where they are and what their affiliation is. clearly you have democrats and anybody on the left super pissed off and that will energize them to go to the polls. i think it helps with the blue wave in that respect. there are a lot of republicans disenchanted with the way the administration handled things. for a lot of them, the kavanaugh confirmation has been unifying and and enabled them to get behind the republican party more forcefully than what they had been. unifying and allowing them to get behind the republican party. when you think about those swing voters, it is tricky.

the polling suggests women really don't like republicans handled this process. they probably don't think he should be on the court. he does not have high approval ratings among women. he has better approval ratings among men. you see that gender split. there is also pulling that suggests that basically everyone across the board think both parties handled this fairly. i would tend to agree with that. my personal view is that i would not have voted to confirm him if i were sitting on the hill, mainly because i think the display of emotion we had in his last round of testimony, i don't believe based on that that he can do the job of a supreme court justice. i think it is appropriate to leave him at the court of appeals level. game over. we are done with it. my suspicion is it may not have the effect that republicans are hoping, simply because, in the era of the donald trump presidency, things that happened two days ago feel like they

happened two months ago. i don't know that when people are going to the polls, anybody with an absentee ballot, they may for people who are glenda vote on election day, by the time we get to that point, they may not be thinking about brett kavanaugh. if they are, they may already be hard-core for him or hard-core against him. there will be more people hard-core against him already part of that blue wave. that is a problem for the republican party. host: we have a call lined up for you. independent line, you are on with liz mair. caller: i apologize, i just came in for the last little bit of you speaking. i wanted to call -- i am from northeast tennessee where the destroyedve really this area and our two candidates

are olson and rowe and i am he wasfor olson because an officer in johnson city and the only officer i know of who tried to get women who were in recovery off of the medication they were on. medication and he is the only doctor in this area who would attempt to get women in this area off that medication so their babies would not be addicted. host: where are you as far as the tennessee senate race? blackburnam between -- host: bredeson. caller: i am not there he sure due to both of their involvement with the pharmaceutical company know would really like to

where they stand on the changes that are being pushed in congress right now because of the changes to the hippo laws -- lippa laws. laws. a guest: it is ravaging communities, she is absolutely right. i go to martinsburg west virginia quite a lot and you see carse passed out in their with the car door open having od'ed/ . that is an issue not very many people in washington, d.c. are focused on. when you look at these appalachian states, that's a big deal and it draws questions about who is receiving support from which pharmaceutical companies and which pharmaceutical companies are more on getting rid of the dependency and addiction side and which ones have been part of the supply problem and i think

that could the part of an issue that washington, d.c. are not paying attention to. when i go back and look at the 2016 election, one of the things that is remarkable, people have this perception trump went out and did not talk about issues and any substantive way. one of the things that is interesting about donald trump ,s during the 2016 primary donald trump was the only one who spent significant time talking about the opioid crisis when he went into these states. i wonder if the effect would have been different in new hampshire if you had more people paying attention to this. i hope anybody running in tennessee and west virginia and appalachian -- the section of ohio, i hope people from those areas and candidates from those areas are listening sayhat ashley has to because they have the capacity to pick up votes on this if they

show political courage. it is a tough issue to tackle. i am not convinced it can be done entirely or mostly through legislation. i think voters like ashley will give people a lot of credit if they appear to be trying. host: there is the compromise bill that passed in the senate for opioid funding. have been, and there individual pieces of legislation and when you look at the narrow effect, there will be an effect. the problem is when you look at someplace like west virginia. if you need four times the number of hospital beds when looking at treatment centers, nobody has done anything about that problem. that is the area i think candidates may make inroads. in her district, you have a candidate who has a record as a doctor and that is something candidates can successfully pivot off of. from ohio,is sandra republican line. good morning to you. caller: good morning.

i am so sorry, i was an independent. i accidentally hit the wrong -- host: you are on, go ahead. guest: the republican party will happily take you if you are independent. caller: i am definitely republican. i have been watching all this mess going on with liberals acting the way they are acting. i was appalled at the way they -- democratsaugh are on my list. i cannot believe what is happening today. to me, it is like riding. -- rioting. host: anything specific for the senate race in ohio you want to talk about? caller: it's between bad and worse. i am definitely not going to vote for brown, so i guess i

will have to vote for an aussie -- rena -- is that bad to you the way you see it? caller: i don't particularly like either one of them. i don't like the democrats either. might as well get a republican. host: thank you. think, clearly, there are a lot of republican women going back to our point who had that response to the kavanaugh hearings. i think one of the mistakes the democrats made, they could have used their question time to ask more probing questions that could have perhaps gone to the same position of establishing christine blasey ford's credibility. because we have a couple of people on the senate panel who will be running for president, you had a lot of political posturing and speechmaking and

deliberately -- deliberate acting so it can be used in campaign ads and clips that will be circulated during the primary. it will always be a national -- natural tendency. when you are talking about voters like this voter, when you have people depicting everything as heavily politicized and playing up for the camera, it is very offputting in a way where they be if democrats had focused on basic prosecutorial lines of questioning or even defense attorney lines of questioning, i think probably they would have had more mileage with a voter like this voter. host: when you he or of a strategy that might be employed by republicans as casting democrats as an angry mob, what do you think of that? guest: i am not sure i would categorize protesters as an angry mob. i don't know if you watched the coverage the other day. you had one guy dressed up as a

dragon. probably would not call him part of the angry mob. another guy help -- holding up a sign that seemed to be about circumcision. totally off-topic. you have a lot of people climbing on statues and cheering and yelling. host: part of that helps democrats performed during the confirmation process. guest: there is a lot of acting out and for some people, that will be very attractive and other voters feel that is not a civilized, dignified way of handling things and they feel the whole thing has been turned into a farce and a circus. caller response is that this is ridiculous and liberals are out of control and gone off the deep end. if she was a potential he -- potentially getable voter, now she is not.

it is a reminder that people want to amp up the acting and the drama because we are in the era of crump and they know that is a way for people to get attention. -- trump and they know that is a way for people to get attention. in texas, republican line. , i was just saying -- there are some things liz is saying and i agree with her. in the beginning, all those thoughts from everybody, how can we have a good government when we are divided completely? as soon as this president came in, everything went divided. why are we not thinking for ourselves like we are supposed to do? why are we fighting against each other now?

there is one thing you have to keep in mind. there is a lot of women and i am not the only woman that will vote for this and that now. you are supposed to be loved and respected and i don't care if this judge did something as terrible as this. everybody is forgiving the lady -- if that happened to you, your mother, your sister, your think as-- we have to a human being, not republican, not democrat. thinking very carefully what i am going to do because i am tired of all these lies from the president of the united states. everybody looks at us -- the whole world will look like -- we need to come back -- host: rosie -- guest: we need -- caller: we need to come back to where we were.

you look like you are not a fair person. you are trying to defend only one type. i am on your side, not this way. host: i am trying to ask what you think about the texas senate race and if you will vote for ted cruz or beto o'rourke? caller: ted cruz not only is a hypocrite. first, he insulted the president because the president insulted his wife and father. now he is going to get the president to come with him to help him? a bunch of liars. host: thank you, rosie. guest: i think what rosie is describing is an interesting trend in texas. there is polling in texas that suggests there are voters like -- that like ted cruz when he stands apart from president trump and there are voters that like president trump. there do not seem to be many

republican voters who like both. that is tricky because ted cruz has to be able to get those trump voters. i do think ted cruz ultimately will pull this out, but i think he will not have as big a win as he ought to because he has that strange dynamic he has to deal with and he has an opponent that raised a heck of a lot of money. i don'tnd of the day, think this will look like wendy davis versus greg abbott. i think this will be different and it will show that democrats are making inroads in texas. part of the reason it will look that way will be because of the cruz-trump dynamic. a red statet still or is it purple or changing? guest: i would say it is probably sort of a deep magenta. more red than purple or blue,

but there are areas where you are going to start seeing changes. i think some of that is demographics. you obviously have a large hispanic population. it has tended to be a conservative population. i think there are things the republican party has done -- >> we will break away and take you live to the center for strategic and international studies for the first with bobnt -- schieffer leading panelists during a discussion about u.s. global leadership. live coverage here on c-span. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> we figured who better to lead us than susan. you are a real trooper for doing this. i am andrew schwartz, the chief communications officer at csis.