here. >> one local paper reported you're pro-choice, and you support same-sex marriage. has that hurt your campaign at all in south carolina? >> no. actually, i don't think it has at all. if you would like me to address both of those -- >> sure, go ahead. >> i would be happy to. when we talk about choice, let's be very candid. choice is a very difficult thing for a woman. it's a very personal issue for a woman. it's a personal issue between herself, her god, and her doctor. and we are -- they have the absolute right to choice. and it is the law of the land. so that is where we are with that subject. now, on the gay rights, here is how i feel about that. ten years ago, this was a huge issue, absolutely huge issue. ten years from now it will not be a huge issue. it's the fastest movement of a wave of understanding, of pure rights and equal protection under the law. >> even in south carolina you think there has been an attitude change?

>> there has definitely been an attitude change in south carolina. and we see it moving rapidly, as a matter of fact. now south carolina is a state that does not -- does not allow same-sex marriage. but we'll see where that takes us in ten years. there is a definite movement, a definite change of attitude in south carolina, yes. >> okay. let's say you win the primary, and then it's, of course, i would pick maybe mark sanford on the other side. i don't know what the polling is there, but it would certainly be great to see you defeat him. could you defeat him? >> well, ed, let me be really clear about something first. we have got to get through the first primary, march 19th. and i do have -- i do have a competitor, as you mentioned. and so right now this campaign is focused on getting through that primary, getting the vote out, and winning the democratic seat. and as you so aptly mentioned, there are so many republicans at this point that we have no idea who is going to shake out. and until that shakes out, we're going to keep our eye on the prize. >> all right. this is really the first

election since all of the mess in washington since we thought we had control of things. elizabeth colbert-busch, great to have you with us. best of luck to you. we'll visit again. thank you. and that is "the ed show." i'm ed schultz. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening, ed. thank you, my friend. >> you bet. >> and thanks to you at home for joining us on a news day in which it does not seem possible that all of these things happened on the same day. today is the day that the dow set an all-time record high, all-time. it's also the day that hugo chavez died. today the united states government said we might conceivably use drone strikes to kill people inside the united states. they also said today the last drone strikes in pakistan were not done by us. who were they done by then? today arkansas teetered on the edge of doing something outrageously unconstitutional. today an msnbc host's book came out. today jeb bush's new book also came out, although the msnbc host is not disavowing her book already the way jeb bush is

disavowing his book the day it first went on sale. north korea threatened to restart the korean war today, the one from the 1950s. the anti-gun trafficking bill got introduced in the senate today. a second giant sinkhole, a second one, opened up in tampa today. this is a nutso day in the news, just in terms of the sheer amount of news that happened today. and we'll get to as much of it as possible this hour. but we need to start tonight with the aforementioned record. >> this is an nbc news special report. >> good day from new york, and let's go downtown, lower manhattan, where moments ago on the floor of the new york stock exchange, the dow jones industrial average closed at an all-time high. there is the number. remember, there is some fluctuation as the day draws on. sue herera is on the floor of the exchange. sue, this has been a long road since '07. >> it has certainly been a long road, brian, but it was a very,

very strong day today, and it is a day for the record books. >> the dow jones today hit its all-time record high. it hit its highest number ever during the course of the day, and then it closed at its highest number ever in the 116-year history of that index existing. the dow, of course, is not a generic indicator of the health of the economy. it's not even a generic indicator of the health of the markets, broadly speaking. it is just a snapshot of 30 blue chip stock. but it is the thing that honestly we think of generically as the market. and it is a real indicator of how we're doing in some ways, and it is important enough to us that when it hits a record, nbc news breaks into local programing across the country to alert the nation in this special report that there has been a new record high. and if you are someone who sees national news mostly in terms of national politics, it can be incongruous to see all the champagne corks popping on wall street. while washington continues to

punch itself in the face with this sequester thing, which follows us punching ourselves in the face with the fiscal cliff thing, and which proceeds us punching ourselves in the face with the government shutdown looming in the month. another debt ceiling fight. when it comes to politics about money, washington has never been more even quixotically self-defeating and dumb right now. and i say that as a term of art, dumb. because we have just enacted a voluntary new fiscal policy that both sides call dumb and even disastrous. and it was voluntary, and we did it anyway. but wall street is psyched anyway. apparently they have reason to be if you read from their holy scripture, which of course is corporate properties. corporate profits are and have been a very happy story during our current supposedly socialistic administration. president obama takes over, right, during the great recession.

so this is the valley of corporate despair. but since then, corporate profits have just gone up and up and up. for a hot minute last summer, the financial press warned us that the fun was over, that record corporate profits would not last, but after that, hey, look, they lasted, and then some. by the december report, we hit a new new record, corporate profits at a new all-time high by the latest quarter for which we've got the data. america's corporations showed in that quarter the largest after-tax profit in the history of our nation. right? the problem with that is that success is not necessarily redounding to the humans who make up our nation. here is a really big issue for our country. here is what corporate profits have been doing over time, four decades, basically over my lifeline. that's the red line there. and the blue line there is how working american humans have done at the same time. this is their slice of the pie.

one is going up, and that is not helping the other one go up. this are those who would argue that corporations are people, my friend, and corporations doing well helps people. and there are a certain number of people who benefit from corporations doing particularly awesome in the way they are now. people who are for example directors of corporations or shareholders. they of course are happy to see their share prices and the value of the company go up. people who are executives at those corporations. for them, these really have been great times. but for everybody else, no. and so we are faced with really big, bold-faced, bright easy-to-remember headlines about who we are as a country on days like this. but the headlines fit together in a way that feels off. on the other hand we've got the dow hitting an all-time record high today. wall street at an all-time record high. corporate profits at an all-time record high, and that success is not helping the average american. all of that success is essentially being captured by corporations themselves and by

the very richest people in the country who continue to do exceedingly well. and we sense that the fact that that might be working out for them and not for everybody else might be a big defining problem for us as a country. at least we kind of sense it. if you poll on this issue, you get something interesting. if you ask americans how they think the wealth of this country ought to be distributed, if you asked americans how they think we ought to divide everything up in this country, how wealth ought to be divided, you get an answer that looks like this. the bright yellow on the left, those are the richest people in the country. they do have the largest share. orange is the second richest, red is the middle. the gray block on the right is the poorest americans. this is how we think capitalism ought to divide wealth in our country. yeah, the rich are going to be richer than everybody else. but this is how everybody else will share in the spoils of our american capitalist output. that's the american consensus, what it ought to be. and we know that this is not

exactly true. if you ask americans, well, how do you see life actually as being? americans will tell you, well, the country doesn't look the way i want it to look. what i think the country looks like is this. we think that the rich, the yellow one on the left there, they have more than their share, but we think it's not exactly the way we want it to be. but this is how we imagine it to be. now if you want to look at what the chart actually is, if you want to look at how wealth actually is divided in the country, this is the truth. this is the truth of how unequal we are as a country. this is the way that wealth is divided. again, the top 20% there is on yellow. you can't even see the little gray bar, it's been squeezed off the right. the richest folks in right yellow in real life take up more than half the chart. the blue is shoved off to the side. and the poorest folks, the gray block, they almost do not register. it's not how we think should it be or how we imagine it to be, this is how it is.

so on this day when this is true, right, when we just hit the all-time record high in the dow, why is this huge and worsening inequality problem that we've got happening? is this happening because we did something wrong as a country? could we fix this problem if we wanted to? and do we even want to fix it? joining us now are two guests whose expertise on the politics of this and on the economics of this issue are rather unsurpassed. joseph stiglitz is a nobel prize winning economist. he is author of "the price of equality: how today's divided society endangers our future." and frank rich looks at republican rebranding efforts and the future of that party. gentlemen, thank you both for being here. i very rarely talk to two people at once, but i really wanted to with you. professor stiglitz, why is why is this happening? why do we have such pronounced inequality in the face of what looks like some bottom line economic success?

>> well, what is going on in the stock market right now is very simple. the economy is not doing very well. that's why the fed is keeping interest rates very low and looks like it's going to keep interest rates very low. so that means the cost of capital to firms is very low. unemployment is high. that drives down wages. the two of those together means high corporate profits, as your chart showed. so in a way, what we're seeing here as the interest rate is low, stock market goes up, bonds are not doing very well, people, older people, for instance, who depend on interest from t-bills, doing terribly. so all of this is a picture actually not of success, but a picture of an economy not doing very well. and when you look at those corporate -- the profits of american, you know, the blue chip that constitute the dow, many of those, most of those have a large fraction of profits overseas.

and china, emerging markets, they're doing relatively well, much better than the united states. and so they can be doing well by creating jobs abroad, but meanwhile, the american economy is not doing well. >> frank, whether or not anybody tried to make these divergent outcomes happen, is the outcome that we've got with high corporate profits and american people by and large not sharing in it at all, is this a predictable outcome of the kind of policies that we have pursued? >> yes, it absolutely is. and it seems to worsen by the day. we have a government, both parties i might add that sort of stack towards corporate welfare, breaks for corporations. republicans take a looser line than the democrats. but just in today's "new york times" on the front page, the investigative piece showed state and local governments in blue states and red states are floating tax-exempt bonds not to

underwrite public works -- i mean, some of them do underwrite public works. but goldman sachs and bank of america office towers, the chevron corporation, which had a profit of well over $20 billion last year, one of the most successful companies as measured by the bottom line in the world, we have governments -- our governments, local and state and federal just marching in lockstep with this corporate america and sweeten the breaks for them every step of the way. >> and they are described as job creators. we're not just talking to wealthy people. even corporations as job creators, they need to get so much policy preference because that does redound by helping the average american. >> it's not works. >> there is no connection. >> no. and one of the things, you talked about who owns all those shares that are doing very well. >> yeah. >> one of the striking things is in the last third of a century, 97% of the increase in capital

income went to the top 5%. 97% went to the top 5%. >> wow. >> you know, that chart that you showed how it's concentrated, if you look at the capital income, it's much more concentrated. let me give you another number that shows how bad things are. in the three years, 2007-2010, the median wealth, the wealth of those in the middle in the united states declined by almost 40%. so while the shareholders and these companies are doing very well, most americans are seeing their wealth diminish. >> could this be fixed by policy? could this -- frank, i'll ask you. are policies that fix this being debated? and professor stiglitz, do you see the u.s. government as having policies within its reach that could make a significant

difference? >> i don't see any policies except around the fringes that are being debated. it seems to me completely status quo. and in a way, what you talked about at the top of the show about the dysfunction in washington, it's such a sideshow, not only is it dysfunctional, incompetent and beside the point. everyone is punching themselves in the face, but it's almost like a circus to distract people from actually discussing and debating policies that really neither party wants to put on the table because essentially they have the same corporate backers. the smartest corporations in american politics are those that give to both parties. and so, yes, we have a little bit of wall street reform. we have talk about tax reform, but we're not really debating tax reform. we're just in gridlock. >> if we had the political wherewithal to get there, are there policies that could make a difference? >> absolutely. in the last chapter of my book, i describe 21 policies that would really make a very big

difference. let me just give you one interesting one. switzerland ought to be controlled by, you know, wealthy people. just had a referendum, and that reflects very much the views that you gave in that chart. they voted to cap bonuses. they said bonuses have gotten out of control. we know that we are a place where people go with wealth. but we think it's gotten out of control even in our country. >> and then all the corporate executives fled switzerland in terror, right? now none of them live there anymore? >> we could change corporate governance rule, say and pay, the corporate leaders are taking increasingly large share of the corporate pie for themselves, leaving less for workers. financial sector. all those abuses that went on in the financial sector, it was moving money from poor and

average americans up to financial executives. monopolies, you know, they don't -- monopolies make money by contracting output, not by making the size of our national pie bigger. education, you know, if most americans are going to do well, it's going to be through increasing productivity. but we're underinvesting in education. so you look at the tax laws in the united states, we tax speculators at less than half the rate we tax people who work for a living. when you do that, what do you do? you encourage gambling and calls for speculation. you don't lead to a stronger economy. >> frank, as we pivot sort of from policy toward both sides already looking at 2014, this president has a record of overseeing spectacular gains in corporate profits and no gains on the inequality issues that he talks about so much. is there an opening for a republican populist here that the democrats should be worried

about from the right, or should they only worry about their left flank on this? >> i wish there were competition in the political marketplace, and they could be worried from the right. yes, there would be an opening for a teddy roosevelt, that kind of republican populist. but look at that party. i mean, they don't even know how to find the key to the men's room at this point. so they're not going to muster a strong challenge. so it's interesting. a few conservative pundits are talking about policies that might benefit the middle class, serious tax reform. but as they themselves admit that. >> don't have any champion in the political arena to fight for these. >> but one of the problems of the gridlock in the united states is the tea party movement. and one of the reasons for the tea party is anger, i think, over the problems of inequality where they say the government is helping the bankers and look what is happening to our wages. it's understandable. >> i've long felt that the tea party and the occupy movement, even though they hated each

other, were two sides of the same coin, and both reflected that anger. and neither party has addressed that anger. >> exactly. and they're both exploiting an opening both parties to try to make progress on those issues. nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz, "new york" magazine writer at large frank rich. professor, will you come back and talk about the book again when it officially comes out? >> yes. >> all right. venezuela's president hugo chavez has died. the united states is a step closer to having a new cia director. and republicans in washington and across the country have finally eschewed conservative social caws to focus on job truth. two of those are true. the third one i made up a fact. please stay tuned. [ female announcer ] when a woman wears a pad she can't always move the way she wants. now you can. with stayfree ultra thins. flexible layers move with your body while thermocontrol wicks moisture away. keep moving. stayfree.

three months after he was sworn into office in april 2009, president obama embarked on one of his first oversees trips. the president traveled south to trinidad and tobago to attend the summit of americas. three months after he was sworn in, april '0 , and it's the new president's first chance to engage with his fellow world leaders in the western hemisphere. it was all going along sort of swimmingly until this happened. >> in a meeting with the leaders of 12 south american country, president obama sounded conciliatory. >> i have a lot to learn, and i'm very much looking forward to listening. >> but the meeting turned into yet another hugo chavez photo op. venezuela's leader launched what appeared to be a publicity

stunt, a presidential gift, a book written nearly 40 years ago about how european and american policies have hurt latin america. >> welcome to your relationship with venezuela, new mr. president. enjoy your stay. it's not like the new president then could not see this sort of thing happening from hugo chavez. at the time president chavez had just recently expelled america's ambassador to his country, insisting that the ambassador was plotting a coup to oust mr. chavez from office. mr. chavez held a televised rally after sending the american ambassador home, telling a throng of supporters, quote, go to hell a hundred times, bleeping yankees. well, hugo chavez died today at the age of 58. he lost a two-year battle with an undisclosed form of cancer, and the united states lost a man who had positioned himself for more than a decade now as america's chief foe in its own hemisphere. during his 14 years in power, hugo chavez maintained a provocative and at times

cartoonishly oppositional stance when it comes to his relationship with the u.s. government. he buddy up ostentatiously with the castro brothers in cuba. he allayed himself with mahmoud ahmadinejad, the president of iran. he signed oil contracts with the chinese government. he bought weapons and fighter jets from the russians. hugo chavez, while he was in power, while he was still a player on the world stage, became in this country almost a figure of fun for playing up his opposition to american leaders in very over-the-top ways, particularly when it came to former president george w. bush. >> the devil came here yesterday. >> translator: yesterday the devil came here. right here. right here. and it smells of sulfur still today. that was in 2006. hugo chavez referring to president george w. bush as the devil during a speech at the

u.n. general assembly. because mr. chavez positioned himself as u.s. enemy number one in the western hemisphere, mr. chavez often got denounced in political terms in this country as a tyrant, as a tyrant and a dictator and a south american strongman thug. now that he is dead, there is a real question of whether that u.s. image of venezuela, and whether venezuela's image of us dies with hugo chavez. i mean, venezuela is a serious country in the world stage. it is sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves. it has more oil than even saudi arabia does, and that is in part what makes hugo chavez more than just a vitriolic leader who hated america. all of that oil gave him real power and influence. what happens to all of that oil now and that oil-related power now that hugo chavez is not in charge of it anymore. how much of his over-the-top opposition to the united states government was real, and how much of it was for show? the political posturing around

hugo chavez, the screaming about sulfur and the devil and all of that, in a way it obscures how seriously we have been able to think about his legacy, both in terms of whether or not he really was the tyrant that american politicians have denounced him for being, and whether or not him dying could potentially change american influence in the world or the balance of power in our own hemisphere. in case you're wondering what happens next, in case you're wondering if our relationship with venezuela is going to get any less wacky any time soon now that he is gone, consider that the man who is expected to replace hugo chavez, the country's current vice president said today he believes that foreign imperialists, aka the united states, killed hugo chavez, poisoned hugo chavez with the cancer that he ultimately died from. venezuela's vice president made that statement shortly after, you guessed it, expelling two u.s. diplomats from the country. so there is that for setting the tone. joining us now is pulitzer prize winning columnist for "the

washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. eugene covered venezuela for "the post" in the '90s when he was working at "the post's" bureau in buenos aires. thanks for being here. >> it's great to be here, rachel. >> do you think that hugo chavez was effectively the monster that he was made out to be in this country? he was obviously cartoonishly oppositional to us, but that led to some cartoonish characterizing of him too, didn't it? >> it did. there was nobody quite like him. charismatic. he could act like a buffoon, but he was very smart and obviously, and tenacious and determined. was he a tyrant? you should remember he was democratically elected president of venezuela three times with healthy majorities. and it is very clear that he had popular support. why did he have popular support? because for many, many years, for many decades, the poor of venezuela had been ignored by a corrupt political class and

business class that essentially lived very well on the proceeds of all that oil, allowing none of to it trickle down, or so little to trickle down that the slums of caracas were just horrible places, violent places seething with anger. and what chavez could do was connect with those people and give them hope, and then give them actual benefits in the form of health clinics and educational service they never had before. he paid attention to people who had been the left behinds, and they rewarded him with their very loyal support. >> in terms of the criticism directed towards chavez as being essentially somebody who did not advance freedom in his country, even as he did advance economic populist aims, what do you make of those criticisms? >> well, they have some merit. he leaned on, coerced, threatening to shot down, at times did shut down independent

press voices and media voices. he was a -- he ridiculed his political opponents in the most vile ways. he gerrymandered the election districts in a way -- of course, where have we heard that before? that happens elsewhere as well. but he did do it in a particularly egregious way in venezuela to aid in his electoral prospects. he didn't want to leave anything to chance. so, no, he was not what we would call a lover of democracy as we would like to see it practiced. >> as a leader who is, as you said, suis generis, and who was so much larger than life and was so dominant in the politics of that country, and in a country that has so much oil, when you look ahead to what comes after hugo chavez, do you see a period of chaos or do you feel like there is a way to predict what is going to happen next there? >> well, first of all, let's

hope it's not chaos. when chaos happens in venezuela, it's really bad. worse than in most places that i covered in latin america. something about venezuela, when there is a riot, there was a big one in the early '90s that they called the caracazo in which dozens and dozens of people were killed. i don't necessarily predict that, though. what i do think we know is nobody can be hugo chavez. it's very clear that the vice president, nicolas maduro was his anointed successor. i believe he returned to venezuela from cuba where chavez returned to venezuela from cuba where he was getting cancer treatment, in part to die in venezuela, but in so doing to essentially pass along the torch to maduro. we don't know him the way we know chavez, but we know that he is associated with the faction of chavez's movement that is more closely aligned with cuba. so this may signal a continuation of a very close

venezuela/cuba relationship. that doesn't bode particularly well for any sort of kumbahyah warming with the united states. >> it's fascinating. he was a fascinating figure. the potential transition in his wake is going to be amazing to watch. >> very -- in person a very bright and quick and witty person. a man of contradictions. >> pulitzer prize winning columnist eugene robinson of "the washington post," the only person i know who has met hugo chavez. gene, thank you for helping us understand this tonight. i really appreciate it. >> happy to be here. >> all right. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] when ziggy the cat appeared at their door, he opened up jake's very private world. at first, jake's family thought they saved ziggy, but his connection with jake has been a lifesaver. for a love this strong, his family only feeds him iams. compared to other leading brands, it has 50% more animal protein... ...to help keep ziggy's body as strong as a love

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hey, in terms of whether or not we're going to avert the next self-imposed fiscal disaster in washington, house republicans today introduced a new short-term budget to forestall that next crisis. among other things in the new short-term budget, they have banned federal funding for a.c.o.r.n.

a.c.o.r.n., the community organizing group that already does not exist because congress killed it years ago. republicans now this year are still prioritizing defunding the corpse of that organization. priorities. more ahead. stay with us. ♪ [ jen garner ] what skincare brand is so effective... so trusted... so clinically proven dermatologists recommend it twice as much as any other brand? neutrogena®. recommended by dermatologists 2 times more than any other brand. now that's beautiful. neutrogena®.

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there is something slightly inexplicable going on in the great state of arkansas right now. the republican-controlled legislature in arkansas has just passed back-to-back unconstitutional bans on abortion. you can't ban abortion. roe v. wade, right? arkansas's governor mike beebe vetoed both of the bans. he has a mixed record on the subject. he has vetoed the bills because, dude, they are blatantly unconstitutional. quote, the adoption of blatantly unconstitutional laws can be very costly to the taxpayers of our state. well, today after already overriding the governor's veto of the first ban, the arkansas senate voted to override the second even stricter abortion ban. if the house also votes to override the veto, the aclu naturally has already promised that costly lawsuit that the governor was talking about in his veto messages.

nonetheless, the republican-led legislature is poised to commit the state of arkansas to spend a huge amount of money defending itself in a lawsuit, the filing of which is a forgone conclusion. and quite frankly, it is all but a forgone conclusion that the state will lose that lawsuit. so what they've done here is essentially make a bonfire of taxpayer money. that's about to happen in arkansas. also, the legislature can go on record as having tried to illegally ban abortion, even000 they all know that is not a thing they are allowed to do. apparently nothing is a waste of money when it comes to making the same point ever more emphatically in anti-abortion republican politics. we're also waiting this week on action from south dakota's republican governor on an almost equally ridiculous anti-abortion bill that passed through that state's legislature. south dakota already has a law in the books that will force women into the longest in the nation delay for having an abortion.

now, the legislature in its wisdom has passed a measure to augment the waiting period. so the clock doesn't start ticking on the forced delay if the day in question is a weekend or a holiday. the whole justification for forcing women to wait is that women are too dumb to understand what an abortion is on their own, and they need to be forced by the state to sit and wait and think about it for 72 hours. but apparently all that state mandated sitting and thinking is banned on days when the bank is closed. so in your real life, you are still waiting on weekends and holidays, of course, but the state government refuses to acknowledge that you are doing so. it's like if you were sentenced to prison time, and when the warden went home at the end of the business day, the state would stop counting the time you're in prison against your sentence. not because you're not in prison after business hours, but because the warden isn't there to observe you being there. he is home. business day is over. again, that has passed both the house and the senate in south dakota. it was due to land on the governor's desk this week. so far the governor's office is

not saying whether or not he'll sign it, but he does say he has been supportive of the concept of a longer waiting period. that's some of what is happening in the states where republicans are running things. federally, you're at least seeing a different message about republican governance. "roll call" newspaper writing this week about senate republicans' comeback strategy for the next elections, a major piece of which is avoiding, so-called, todd akin moments. the new head of the nrsc saying the todd akin campaigns of the last election cycle, quote, not only infected themselves, they infected all the rest of the campaigns. so they will be training senate candidates now not to say creepy things about forcing rain victims to bear their rapist's child. the basic idea here is that social issues are not the party's future. social issues are the republican party's past, not the future. and that does seem to be what pretty much everybody think, at least in the beltway that is the common wisdom diagnosis. the problem is it's really not what is going on in the party outside the beltway. i mean, take the marquee social

issue of gay rights on which the republican party is supposedly having this big change of heart, right? there is definitely sufficient evidence to justify the kind of headlines we've seen recently about the republican party diversifying its previously uniformly anti-gay stance. but there ought to be a subheadline under that headline, or maybe a paragraph in the body of the story underneath that headline that acknowledges the really important detail in this shift in the republican party. and the really important detail there is that apparently applies almost exclusively to retirees. the big story of the week on republicans' turnaround on gay rights revolves on ken mehlman, the now openly gay bush aide and recruiter who recruited dozens and dozen of other republicans to sign on to a legal brief before the supreme court arguing for a constitutional right to gay marriage. he did get a mess of republicans to sign on in support of gay marriage.

but out of the roughly 130 republican signatories, exactly two are currently holding federal elected office. and exactly zero are sitting governors. and exactly zero are sitting u.s. senators. among the many former office holders is tom ridge, former pennsylvania governor, george w. bush's first secretary of homeland security. tom ridge signed the letter arguing for gay marriage. but, you know, tom ridge no longer holds elected office. he no longer makes policy on marriage, gay or otherwise. and when he did, when he was governor of pennsylvania, tom ridge signed into law that state's own ban on same-sex marriage. what he did in office is one thing. what you're doing now that you're freed from office is the new thing. what is actually happening in the party right now? are the politics on social issues changing for the whole party, or are they only changing among the retired class? the republicans who are no longer making policy.

where are all the elected? joining us is nicolle wallace, former communications director for the bush administration, former senior adviser for the mccain/palin campaign. nicolle is one of the republicans who signed the brief in support of same-sex marriage rights. nicolle, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> i miss you since you went elsewhere. >> i miss being here, now that i'm elsewhere. >> i know. you should come back. there, i said it. only two republicans who are currently holding elected office have signed on to this brief, with more than 100 other prominent republicans. where are all the elected? >> we have to start somewhere. and i think that each president obama has seen the shift in his own position come about very quickly. he did not run for reelection for with the position he announced last week. the politics are shifting faster than anyone can decipher. you have to assume people are doing what they think is the right thing to do. i think the politics are indiscernible. i couldn't tell you what they are. we don't know what the universe

of voters is going to look like in the next presidential campaign. but if they -- if they, you know, include a lot of people under 40, it's indiscernible. this brief, this friend of the court brief that a lot of my former colleagues and i have signed i think represents folks that sign on for three different reasons. one, ted olson is one of the most respected legal minds on the right. and he is partnered with david boyce, who is famous for a lot of things, but one of them for representing al gore in the recount. they have made this argument that even someone like me who is -- can understand, that the equal protection clause, that everyone is entitled to equal protection under our laws. and you can't have a separate set of laws for a class of people. you can't deny people access to marriage because they want to have a same-sex marriage. you can't have different rules for different classes of people.

the other thing is republicans, i think, traditionally had ideas about marriage because they so revered the institution. and if you so revere the institution of marriage, then shouldn't you want every family to have access to marriage? >> people wanting to get into the institution. >> right. let everybody in. because a marriage creates the kind of families that if you're a conservative, you think create the kind of neighborhoods that create the kind of society that we want. so it is a truly conservative stance. and i think ken mehlman has been a wonderful, you know, person to articulate these sort of conservative ideals in this legal framework. the third class of people who signed on are people who have always been supportive of marriage equality, but maybe were guilty of being too quiet about that support. so i think this brief brought together people in all three buckets. and nobody is walking around asking for a ribbon for coming around to what is obviously the more enlightened position and

one that i think is the future direction of this country. but i think it is significant that even before the obama white house announced its position, which is very similar to that expressed in the republican friend of the court brief. but i think it is an interesting coalition emerging. i think it is where anybody under 40 tends to view these issues. >> except if you're a republican elected official. like i understand your whole argument about why the argument is effective in conservative circles. and i understand the whole argument about how increasing visibility on the right of people being willing to say they're for this works and sort of builds momentum on these issues. but what is the bulwark that is stopping all of those forces from working on people who are elected? >> some people simply disagree. and, i mean, i think there are some debates. >> all but two elected house republicans? >> i have to say some people disagree. i mean some people just -- >> sure. >> hold the position that marriage is between a man and a

woman. and out of respect for people who disagree with me, that is a different point of view that is still represented in the republican party. but i think we have to wait and see. i think we have to wait and see how the supreme court rules. i think that if prop 8 is overturned, i think states may be reluctant to pass bans on same-sex marriage for some of the same reasons that you just described in your piece about abortion rights. but i think we have to wait and see. and i think that if you believe that this is a moment, and i imagine that's why we're here talking about it, this is a moment, i think we have to wait and see if there are more sitting elected officials who are in the republican party who come around to this view. i hope so. >> what we need to do is we need to get somebody in silhouette with their voice disguised who will tell us that they are

pro-gay rights, but they can't say so because. we need somebody -- >> and i understand because i couldn't tell you. i really think that there is no single issue in american politics on either side in which the politics are churning and changing so quickly. >> that's right. >> because i don't think that -- i think there is political liability on both sides here. and i think that if you're someone running in the state where there are voters under 40 that you're trying to court, i think it's a liability to be on the other side of this one. so i think you have to assume that people on both sides of the issue in both parties, they're democrats who oppose same-sex marriage. >> they're just moving faster. >> they're moving a little faster. they have the leadership from the white house, and that always creates more momentum. the president still leads his party in places where they haven't been before. so that is significant for the democrats. but i think ken mehlman and ted olson are leading our party to places we haven't been before. and i think that's a very good thing. >> some day ken mehlman will talk to me about it on television. >> i think so. >> some day. former communications director for the george bush administration, former senior adviser to mccain/palin. again, i miss you. >> ah, thank you. it's really fun to be back. >> all right. we'll be back.

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so in the months ahead, i will continue to engage congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the american people and to the world. >> exactly a month ago, nbc's michael isikoff had a big scoop related to the cia. for years, people had been trying to pry out of the cia the reason why it's supposedly legal for the cia to kill a u.s. citizen overseas using a drone. mr. isikoff was the first person to get ahold some of that reasoning when he obtained this summary of the administration's legal arguments. after that, some senators were allowed to go a step further when the president decided to show them the intelligence committee, specifically, a couple of legal memos advising the president about his legal ability to use drones. with the senators happy to have that much, but dissatisfied that it was not enough, those senators on the intelligence committee pushed for more. and today, they got what they wanted. as of today, they get to see, apparently, more of the justice

department's legal opinions about so-called targeted killing of americans. the senators get to see more memos and, crucially, their staff members get to read them as well. this is progress. when the president pledged in the state of the union more transparency on this issue, this is more transparency. it helped that senators of both parties essentially made john brennan's nomination to run the cia contingent on getting that transparency, but they did get it. and accordingly, john brennan today got a 12-3 vote out of that committee, which means his nomination to run the cia goes to the senate floor and he'll probably get confirmed to run the agency by the end of the week. and lest there be any doubt about the connection between john brennan's nomination and our government killing people with drones, in "the new york times" today, in a crazy story where three u.s. officials say that the last reported drone strikes in pakistan were not by us, the most interesting, unresolved question, of course, is, well, who did them if it wasn't us? but the other revelation is that some analyin