oldie and goldie. >> i don't know what that means to play it out. what does that mean? to end the show? >> yeah, yeah. >> all right. go, go. >> in five, four, three -- >> that's tomorrow and that is it -- >> again. five, four, three -- >> that's tomorrow, and that is it for us today. and we will leave you with a -- i can't do it. we'll do it live. >> okay. we'll do it live, [ bleep ] it! do it live. i'll write it and we'll do it live. >> what can you tell after watching that clip? >> okay, so you see the difference. and this is what i was talking about between frustration and anger. when you start off, he is consistent. again, he starts off a little

frustrated, the brows go up. but as it progression, what happens is the brows come down, and now you see he is becoming angry. in addition you see that quick breath. in that's we need to oxygenate the brain in order to prepare for the fight or flight kicks in, and we're ready for any kind of potential danger. >> does he have anger issues? >> i can't tell you that i'm not a psychologist. >> what is with the finger-pointing? >> this is one of his keystone signals. he is an aggressive individual, and he points to people to indicate that he tells them. especially you're in my house. so this is where i live, and you can't come in here and tell me what to do. and that's one of his trademark signals. he'll never change that. >> all right. o'reilly often resorts to finger-pointing. but what does it tell you about how he handles conflict? is he a very domineering guy? >> it's a dominant personality trait. when people do that, they typically do it in a way to say that i'm this one who is in charge here. and that's why over the years we've seen that politicians have changed from like the finger-point to a more lighter point so that people don't feel offended. because when someone points at you, there is an opportunity for you to feel offended. does it mean you always will? no, but there is a chance.

>> all right. tanya reiman, great to have you with us. >> thank you. >> thank you so much for joining us here on "the ed show." that is "the ed show." i'm ed schultz. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. i've never been more self-conscious about how i talk and flap my hands around than hearing you talk to the body language expert. i have to be a robot now. i'm doing everything wrong. i'm showing my cards. >> we are very normal. i feel good about that tonight. >> i've never tried to be normal before, but i'll feel good about that now. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. i have to hold still. we often end this show with something we called the best new thing in the world. but tonight's best new thing in the world deserves pride of place, i think, right here at the top of the show instead of at the end of the show, because something happened in american politics today that never happens. at least that never happens anymore. something dramatic and significant and full of meaning that used to happen in our politics, but that recently had been banished.

today it came back. what you're looking at here, of course, is not an actual senator. this is the actor jimmy stewart in "mr. smith goes to washington." in this part of the movie, he is talking himself to exhaustion on the senate floor in order to block something from happening in the senate. the united states senate lets you do that. it is a rare and weird part of our system of government. in the legislature, aside from a few things that the constitution says have to have a supermajority, stuff like impeaching someone or kicking somebody out of congress or ratifying a treaty, aside from those few reserved things in the constitution, in our legislature, it's majority rules. but in the senate, by tradition, by the rules of that body, one senator, or a minority of senators is invested with the power to stand up and block something from happening, even if the majority wants it to happen. it is a rare beast, or at least it ought to be a rare beast. a single senator or a minority of seniors effectively throwing themselves on the gears of

democracy and saying i must be heard on this. you cannot go forward with this until i say my piece. and so a la "mr. smith goes to washington", a single senator may take it upon himself or herself to effectively play the hero, right, to bring all business to a halt, to bring the spotlight upon himself or upon herself, to hold the floor, speaking about whatever it is that is so important that it is worth this effort until the effort expires by necessity, because the senator can physically go on no longer. or because a supermajority of senators says enough and ends it. it is a very dramatic thing. or at least it used to be a dramatic thing. in recent years the senate changed the rules so all it took to filibuster something now was to say you wanted to filibuster it. no need to take the senate familiar, no need to turn on the spotlight, let alone shine it on yourself for a long time, you and your extraordinary concern.

the filibuster when they changed the rules just became a quiet everyday part of senate life. since the democrats have been in charge in the senate, republicans have used it to effectively make democrats have to get a 60-vote supermajority for everything. it's become absolutely run-of-the-mill. but nobody has to take the floor and say why. nobody has to expend any effort at all. it's permanently around. in other words, they killed mr. smith, or at least they kidnapped mr. smith. the only time he was seen in spirit in recent years was once in december 2010 when the contrarian liberal senator bernie sanders of vermont brought mr. smith back without warning. december 10th, 2010, senator bernie sanders took the floor of the senate at 10:30 in the morning, and he talked for eight and a half straight hours. he talked on the collapse of the american middle class, the huge escalation of income inequality in our country, and the policies that either ignore those

problems or that make them happen. despite being eight and a half hours long, the bernie sanders pseudo filibuster that date, december 2010, was actually sort of a cogent beginning, middle, and end argument. when it was over, that were able to publish it as a book. they just put a new introduction on it and published his filibuster because it reads like a book. if you want to get a sense of the kind of impact that dramatic action by bernie sanders had, i want to show you a little piece of tape. this is just 20 seconds long. it's kind of a weird thing to show on cable news. but this is only 20 seconds. just watch. >> there is a war going on in this country, and i'm not referring to the war in iraq or the war in afghanistan. i'm talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the united states of america, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country.

>> that is an installation art piece, piece 1, by nora ligorano. "the middle class" is spelled out there as an ice sculpture, and you're watching a time lapse video of it melting with words from senator bernie sanders' filibuster. we have a link to the full thing if you want to watch it. senator sanders has a link to it at his website as well. what he did that day when he took the floor for eight and a half straight hours and made a single eight-and-a-half-hour-long argument on a single point, it made an impact. i do not know if it changed the course of the country in terms of policy, but an elected official going back to the old rules and commandeering the floor of the united states senate for hours to stand alone, mr. smith-style, and make his point, to throw himself on the gears, to hold things up as long as he holds up physically, this kind of thing is designed to make a point. and it does.

and, of course, you can use this tactic that is unique to the united states senate. you can use it to make good points. or you can use it to make terrible points. the heroic one man against the world filibuster back this the day of course was a favored tool of the segregationist senators from the deep south to slow down civil rights legislation and to try to look like heroes to the south for doing it. looking back at that as a cause is stomach-churning. but at least it was not some no fingerprints no effort anonymous tactic, like how this thing is used today. you actually had to stand out there and say your piece. with the exception of bernie sanders, we do not do it like that anymore. but then today it happened again. at 11:47 a.m., the republican kentucky senator rand paul took the floor of the senate and announced that he would not be leaving the floor of the senate any time soon. >> i yield the floor. >> the senator from kentucky.

>> i rise today to begin to filibuster john brennan's nomination for the cia. i will speak until i can no longer speak. i will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm has sounded from coast-to-coast that our constitution is important. >> that started at 11:47 a.m. today, and it went on all day long. and it is still going on. but it is not happening via some secret behind-the-scenes paper rules in which people said they were filibusters, but they weren't actually standing on the floor and talking and refusing to sit down. in this case, they were actually standing on the floor of the senate and refusing to sit down. for short periods of time senator paul engaged with other senators, or they sometimes took over for him for a while. mike lee of utah, jerry moran, marco rubio, ted cruz, john cornyn, pat tomb mix, saxby chambliss, the democratic senator from oregon, ron wyden.

but it was senator paul who did the lion's share of the talking by himself. he argued today, he is still arguing now, that there should be more information disclosed about the government killing people with drones, and the rules under which that happens should be made more available to the congress and to the american public. now, what senator paul did today i have to say will never be publishable as a book. it was not the most coherent thing on two legs. and honestly, because it is rand paul, we barely got a half hour into him starting talking before he got to his gratuitous hitler references. >> hitler was elected democratically. they elected him out of this chaos. the point isn't that anybody in our country is hitler. i'm not accusing anybody of being that evil. i think it's an overplayed and a misused analogy. but what i am saying is that in a democracy you could some day elect someone who is very evil. >> i'm not saying anybody is like hitler.

i'm just saying think of hitler, think evil, and then close your eyes and think of people here in america. yeah. rand paul, wildly imperfect messenger for any message, really, but particularly for the nobility of the cause of talking a long time. but there is something important about the united states congress finding its footing and wanting to assert its role, its oversight role in where and why and how our country wages war. the president is the commander in chief, absolutely, but it is the congress in which the founders vested the questions of war and peace. and maybe those green shoots of responsibility only rose the way they did today because republicans can only be inspired to see such matters when the president is of the opposing party. i think that's the case. but despite its craven partisanship and rand paul's frequent and gratuitous hitler references, because rand paul cannot help himself, congress

demanding to play its part in matters of war is in broad strokes the way congress is supposed to work. it's the way our whole government is supposed to work. and when congress does use the miraculously undemocratic power to block majority rule, to hold up the operation of the whole legislature because of one guy's concern, or because of a minority concern for which regular business and regular democracy must wait so that those concerns can be heard, when that happens, it is supposed to be a giant pain. it's supposed to be exhausting and showboaty and selfish and ostentatious test and an ostentatious display of endurance, because this is not supposed to happen every day. this is supposed to be weird and rare and extraordinary circumstance in which it takes a supermajority vote, 60 votes before you can move on. blocking or delaying a presidential nomination, or

anything that is supposed to be subject to a majority vote in the legislature, blocking or delaying it until you can get 60 votes for it, that is a big harry deal. the best new thing in the world today is that it was not done today linebacker it was nothing like it is done most days now. today it was made exactly as big and as hairy a deal as it is always supposed to be. rand paul started filibustering at 11:47 this morning eastern time. this is a live image of the senate floor right now at 9:11 eastern as i speak to you. that's senator mike lee of utah, continuing rand paul's work right now. it is still going on. joining us right now is senator ron wyden of oregon. he engaged senator paul in debate during today's filibuster. he is a member of the senate select committee on intelligence. thank you so much for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me again. >> so the talking filibuster is not much used anymore. we still have to show footage of fiction of "mr. smith goes to washington" in order to give people the idea. did this debate about congressional oversight and

transparency on drones, did it get better today by use of this tactic? >> i think the american people certainly know more about the fundamental question, which is we have to strike a better balance, rachel, between protecting our security and protecting our liberty. i've just come off a two-year effort, made seven separate requests to get the obama administration to release these previously secret legal analyses which offer the justification for the drone debate. the reason i went to the floor today, i thought it was an opportune time to try to show that there is a new effort by both progressives and conservatives to try to show that in our country, it's possible both to protect our liberties and at the same time ensure that we're vigilant against the very real threats that are out there. >> it seems like the occasion of john brennan's nomination has brought about a bunch of stuff

that we now know, or at least that you know as a senator that we were not able to know before. we saw, first, reported by nbc's michael isikoff a summary of legal reasoning by the administration on killing americans abroad with the drone program. we also then saw released to the intelligence committee a couple office of legal council memos on the same subject. then more memos on the same subject released to the intelligence committee. it seems like things are going in the direction that you want. but how much further do you think the administration should go in terms of making information available? and do you think should it be limited to these disclosures about killing americans, or do you think it should be about killing anybody using this program? >> first of all, i think there does need to be more information made available. i think kit be done consistent with national security about drones. and i am going to make a concerted effort to declassify more of that information in the days ahead. this debate, rachel, is just beginning. the fact is the very nature of warfare is changing so dramatically, we have just begun the discussion.

and certainly now it's time to bring the public into this. the members of the intelligence committee have just gotten access to the documents. people have asked am i satisfied with that. of course not. i'm going to have additional follow-up questions, probably next week on some of the issues, and some of that will be public. some of it will have to be classified. but this debate has really just begun. >> i know that you engaged senator paul today in debate as he held the floor. i was careful to say it that way, because as far as i understand it, you are not participating in the filibuster of john brennan's nomination. you do believe he should get an up or down vote. you do not want it delayed. is that accurate? >> i already voted for mr. brennan in the intelligence committee. i have announced that i'm going to vote for him on the floor. there were parts of his nomination hearing that i was quite encouraged by. i liked the fact that he wanted to make clear that if mistakes were made with respect to drones, that ought to be made

public. at the same time, i was concerned about the fact it was hard to get information from him about countries where lethal force was used. but we have made some progress. i think now we ought to be trying to build on it. >> when -- i should say if and when john brennan is confirmed for the cia when he does get his full floor vote in the senate, and it's expected that he will be confirm in order position, what do you think will be the next point of leverage? or what do you think will be the next occasion for which to continue to press the administration for the kind of transparency that you want? attorney general eric holder says we should expect to hear the president himself discuss these matters. do you feel like the administration is in the mood to continue to disclose further information, or do they need to be pushed with a nomination like this on the line the way they have over the brennan situation? >> the president has told me, rachel, personally, and i've talked to him twice on this, that he is committed to a more fulsome airing, let us say,

about these kinds of issues. and i think that is so important. we have to protect what is called the operations and methods in the intelligence community. but the law itself should not be kept secret. and it's this fight against secret law that has been so important. it shouldn't have taken seven requests. that's how many i made, rachel, over a two-year period to get this kind of information. now, i will tell you just in the last few days, the letter from mr. brennan was quite forthright on the question of making sure that he didn't believe the cia could use drones in the united states. the letter from mr. holder, while moving in the right direction, he in effect said he could only see using the military against what would amount to a foreign attack in the united states like pearl harbor. there still are some unanswered question there's. that's what we're going to have to keep digging into. i think you saw today those

efforts will be bipartisan. >> senator ron wyden of oregon. that distinction that you're making there, the difference between secret operations and secret law is one that for all these different ways of resistance i believe is really starting to sink in, and the way people talk than in a way that i think is mostly attributable to you. thank you for advances our discourse on that and being here tonight. >> thank you. one last thing. every time we cover the issue of killing people in this way, every time we cover counterterrorism and killing people with drones, we get rafts of hate mail on this show. i'm here to tell you i love your hate mail. i do. the whole show does. it's often very informative. but i want to make sure you send to it the right place. so it goes to rachel@msnbc.com. the e-mail address really does work. rachel@msnbc.com. so when you want to write to me to tell me to stop covering the story and call me names and question my motives for covering it, really, tell me more. i love to hear it. weet monk fru,

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headline this week in the newark, new jersey "star ledger." gun control poll. nearly everyone in new jersey's gop districts supports universal background checks. headline in "the milwaukee journal sentinel." new polls support background checks for gun buyers. headline in the "philadelphia enquirer." poll: overwhelming local support for background checks. that's based on four republican-controlled districts

getting polled in pennsylvania. local media in wildly different parts of the country reporting on their local politicians and their local voters based on new polling that is geographically specific to each of those disparate places. it's all happening at the same time. do you sense that something is going on here? that's because something is going on here. the group mayors against illegal guns have rolled this out slowly and subtly in local media first, but it is about to go national. they very quietly did a huge new polling effort. they asked people if they supported background checks for all gun sales. they pulled in 21 states and 41 congressional districts. huge effort. but up until now, you would only know about this if you had been doing a close reading of local newspapers from mostly republican states in congressional districts. well, tomorrow, they are due to publish the results all together in one place, in a full page ad in three major beltway newspapers. we got it from them tonight when we asked them about what seemed like this quiet round of polling

they were doing and only publicizing locally. we are the first news outlet to break this. it says americans overwhelmingly support background checks for all gun sales. and then it lists the polling results from dozens of states and congressional districts, along with who is the office holder there and what their nra rating is. since the nra is opposed to background checks, right, that matters. the majority of folks on this list have an "a" or "a"-plus rating from the nra. again, the nra opposes background checks. but look what these people's constituents think about background checks. look at those numbers. in every single case, come on, who care what's the nra says. the view of the residents in these dribs is just overwhelming. only three times on this entire list does the support dip below 80% support for background checks. and in those three cases, it's still 79% wanting background checks. look in arizona, for example, where senators john mccain and jeff flake have between them an

"a" and a "b"-plus rating from the nra. 90% of their constituents in arizona want background checks, even if the nra is opposed. so the senators are going to do what they want or are they going to do what 90% of their constituents want? in three different congressional districts, the congressmen from those districts have "a" ratings from the nra. but the people who live in those districts support background checks by 87% to 92%. so what is it going to be fred upton and tim walberg and mike rogers? are you going to do with the nra wants? you got an "a" rating from the nra. are you going to do what the nra wants or do the opposite of what the nra wants, which is what 87 to 92% of people in your districts want you to do. in oklahoma, home of a plus rated senator jim inhofe and tom coburn, 87% of oklahoma residents want universal background checks. 87.

that is a particularly important part of oklahoma, because one of the senators from oklahoma, the nra's "a" rated tom coburn was being aggressively courted to co-sponsor a bipartisan bill in the senate for universal background checks. today we learned that that effort has failed. tom coburn will not be signing on to the universal background check measure that is set to be introduced in the senate tomorrow. the one that 87% of his constituents support. he is going to give the one-finger salute to 87% of his constituents in order to do what the nra wants him to do instead. "the washington post" reporting tonight that negotiations for a broad, bipartisan background check bill, including tom coburn, have stalled. now it will be left to democrats chuck schumer and joe manchin and lone republican mark kirk of illinois to try to find republican support elsewhere. and yes, senator mark kirk is himself a republican, but his "f" rating from the nra may not make him the best pitchman for

recruiting more republican support to this bill. and they will need that if they're going to pass this bill over an all but certain republican filibuster. is it really possible that the congress is so far to the right of the people of oklahoma that this kind of thing is impossible now? this one straight forward fix, background checks, is something that people in super gun-friendly states and republican congressional districts support by a low of 79% and a maximum of 100%. literally in one new jersey republican district, support for background checks clocked in at 100%. is it possible that something with this much popular support can attract the support in the senate of only one republican? one. that's how far the republican party is from public opinion right now? this seems to be not sustainable. frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep.

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in 2006, the republican-controlled congress studied 15,000 pages of evidence and held 21 hearings over ten months to debate whether the voting rights act should be renewed. congress decided resoundingly that the answer was yes. they voted in favor of it by a huge bipartisan margin. you can see the house vote, 390-33. the vote in the senate was unanimous. it was 98-0. last week conservative supreme court justice antonin scalia said he did not believe that for a second.

>> this last enactment, not a single vote in the senate against it. and the house is pretty much the same. now, i don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. i think it is attributed -- very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. it's been written about. >> perpetuation of racial entitlement. it's been written about. a search by st. louis university law professor chad flanders reveals one prominent piece of writing on the subject of the perpetuation of racial entitlement. this permanent piece of writing was written by a young lawyer in 1979, a fellow named antonin scalia. oh, i get it. you say racial entitlement has been written about? it turns out it has been written about by you. we posted justice scalia's 1970s musings on racial entitlement at

maddowblog.com today in case you want to prove to yourself it exists. it's amazing. was he right, though? was he right that senators didn't really mean it when they voted to reup the voting rights act? was he right when he says they were brainwashed with racial entitlement, or whatever, and that they didn't really mean to cast those votes? there is a way to answer that question, it turns out, which is so creepy, you won't believe it. that's coming up. ♪ [ jen garner ] what skincare brand is so effective... so trusted... so clinically proven dermatologists recommend it twice as much as any other brand? neutrogena®.

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in case you are not already acquainted with "the rachel maddow show" white board, here it is. we use it to plan out the show every day. we write our ideas for the shows from the day's potential news stories up there. and if it is humanely possible to ever read my handwriting, you would be able to make out the notes on about the segments on tonight's show. this is how our planning board looks when we come up with what is going to be on the show and signed out all the segments and everything. it's covered with writing, as you can see. this is what it looks like every day when we come into work for the day. terrifyingly blank. we erase it every day, all but one little tiny part in the upper right. we keep one little part of it permanently that does not get erased. it's a little note in the top right corner.

it is always there, because that is our one and only permanent rule about what kinds of stories we will and will not cover on this show. it is a self-imposed rule. it is the only rule that we have when it comes to story selection. you ski it here. first you can see the date the rule went into effect, november 27th, 2012. so that's a couple of weeks after the presidential election. and it says 2016 ban. and then i've signed it, rm. so that's the rule. it's a ban on stories about the next presidential election. i refuse to cover those stories. it's against our rule until the rule is repealed. and there is no provision for repealing the rule. and we needed to impose this rule for a reason. remember the presidential election, the one that felt like it lasted years and it ended a very short time ago, and immediately after it was done, like the next week there were already all these stories in the news about who was going run in the next presidential election four years later? it's insane. it can't be the way we run the news. and so we got this ban. no stories about who may or may

not run in 2016, no, no way, not yet. not here, not for a while. except i'm breaking the rule. i'm sorry. i'm sorry, but it's for a reason. look, all right, breaking the rule. here you go. jeb bush open to 2016 white house bid. jeb bush quietly lays campaign groundwork through foundation. jeb bush sounding more like a presidential candidate. jeb bush thinking about 2016. jeb bush, the 2016 race is on. right. conventional wisdom is that jeb bush will be running for president in 2016, and so there. i submit myself for sentencing. i have officially violated the ban. and it's about a member of the bush family, which makes it somehow worse. i am sorry. it pains me to do this, but i'm doing it for a reason. i'm doing it because this story, even though it's about 2016 and is therefore inherently stupid, this story does actually help answer a really important

current question that has nothing to do with 2016 and nothing to do with the bush family. it has to do with the direction of the country right now and policy and particularly the future of the republican party. on last night's show, we talked with nicolle wallace, who i always really enjoy having on the show, and not only because she is one of the only republicans in the country who will speak to me with a camera around. nicolle is a former communications director for george w. bush. she was a senior adviser to the last presidential campaign. she is very bright. she is also one of more than 100 republicans who signed a brief to the supreme court in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples. the court hears a case on that at the on the other hand of this month. in addition to nicolle, 11 other high-ranking seasoned political operatives have signed into this brief, many of whom have worked for very anti-gay campaigns in the past. as for republican elected officials, seven former republican governors, including tom ridge and christie todd whitman and jon huntsman.

other signatures from ten former republican members of congress, including chris shays. so seven former republican governors, ten former republican members of congress on the record in support of gay couples having a constitutional right to get married. but what about republicans who are holding office right now? not former office holders, but current office holders. how many, for example, sitting republican governors are signed on to this brief? zero. how about sitting republican senators? zero. again, no republican senator currently serving in the senate signed that brief. what about the house? well, there are a lot of members of the house from the republican party, right? there is 233 republican members of the house serving in this current congress. i think we have a list of all of their names. by necessity, it's in a very, very tiny font, because there are 233 of them. of the 233 republican members of the house, how many of them decided to go on the record in support of marriage equality?

ding ding ding ding ding. those two, two out of 233. richard hanna and florida congressman ileana ros-lehtinen, two republicans who have long bucked their party's line on gay marriage. as i said, less than 1% of the republican party's congressional membership. big picture we are led to believe that something is changing on this issue in the republican party. leaders in the republican party evolving on the issue of gay rights. and that is true of some people who could be called leaders within the republican party by some measure. but it is not true of the party's elected officials. and why is that? why is the party changing for everybody except elected officials? i asked nicolle wallace last night why virtually no sitting republican elected official signed that brief supporting marriage equality when so many other big-name republicans did. and as much as i love talking to nicolle, she did not answer any question. but there is something about holding elected office that is keeping republicans from evolving on the issue of gay rights either when other republicans who aren't holding elected office can evolve.

and it's not just the issue of gay rights, no. it is more interesting than that. and that's why this example from the bush family is worth violating the one rule that we have on the show about what not to talk about. former florida governor, current 2016 presidential hopeful apparently, bring to george w. bush, jeb bush left office in 2007, all right. he was florida governor. he hasn't been in office since '07. he has been out of office in six years. in that time out of office, he has built a national profile specifically on the issue of immigration by taking a relatively progressive stance on immigration, supporting a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. during the presidential campaign, you may remember him staking out that territory, right? i mean, there was mitt romney praising arizona's papers please law saying he thought an appropriate immigration strategy was to help for self-deportation by immigrants. at the time, jeb bush criticized mitt romney. he said governor romney has used this as a means to connect with a group of voters that were quite angry.

but now he is in this somewhat of a box. so i think the broader message is how do you get out of that box. well, jeb bush's advice to mitt romney, watching the presidential race from the sidelines is stop pandering to the angry people, mitt. don't box yourself in. but now, now that jeb bush is going to be not just a former elected official again, apparently he is going to try to run, be a candidate himself again, now he has crawled into the box with mitt romney, announcing in his new book that he is no longer for a pathway to citizenship. now he believes a pathway to citizenship would be a reward for illegal immigration. jeb bush, in simultaneously letting it be known that he wants to run in 2016, also letting it be known that he now has mitt romney's stance on illegal immigration. which really annoyed some of the people who worked for mitt romney's campaign. that undermined romney's campaign that urged a softer approach to immigration.

quote, where the hell was this jeb bush during the campaign, said one romney adviser. well, not where was he, but where did he go? what is it about running for office that makes a person less evolved in republican policy than being a former official? that is the more interesting question. later in the week, governor bush went on to say that maybe he could be for a path to citizenship again under certain circumstances, it depends. but regardless, his story is instructive. we can see it happening from people leaving office and suddenly becoming more enlightened, and we can see it in reverse with him, having been enlightened and suddenly devolving where people have to vote for him again. what is happening in the republican party right now is strange and fascinating. why can you be a republican who supports gay rights, but not if you're currently in office? why can you support a pathway for citizenship to up documented immigrants, what is it about elected office that precludes republican evolution on social

issues? how does this work if you are a candidate? what is the right advice to you if you have to decide what you believe right now?

when it comes to a path to citizenship, you fall short of that.

you want legal residency. >> yep. our proposal is a proposal that looks forward, and if we want to create an immigration policy that's going to work, we can't continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than immigration. so going forward, we broke this last year, going forward, if there is a difference if you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there is an incentive for people to come illegally, i'm for it. i have created both, a path to legalization or a path to citizenship. >> potential presidential candidate in 2016, jeb bush, and his varying positions on immigration coming fast in the course of a week. joining us now is steve schmidt from palin campaign '08. steve, thanks for being here. >> good to be here, rachel.

>> you were one of the republicans that signed on to the supreme court in support of illegal immigration. >> i was. >> now we see jeb bush going to a much more conservative position on this issue. >> first off, i think they're two very different issues, but let's look at the immigration issue first, and let's evaluate jeb bush through the prism of potential candidacy for president. there is no question that he has stumbled over this issue, that he's been inconsistent on this over the past couple days, but we should remember he has been a voice of reason on this issue, he has been a voice for solutions on this issue, he has been a great friend to the hispanic community in this country. jeb bush is an important voice in forging a consensus around this issue.

i was sitting next to him when he was on "morning joe" and he clarified his answer. what he said there was he would be open to a path for citizenship. i think, in fact, if we are to solve the immigration crisis in this country, and it is a crisis. you had a great chart a couple weeks ago that showed the insanity of our immigration system. if we are going to solve the problem, we have to have a permanent fix for the security of the border. for a sovereign country, we have to know who is in the country. we have to be able to secure the border but we also have to deal in a compassionate way to the people that are here and that means offering a path of citizenship after a process, and that's the contours of how we get to a solution on that debate. >> that has been the line from jeb bush consistently in the last seven years and even before that when he was florida governor. that is the same thing he started to take back at the same time he announced he would run for president in 2016. >> i don't think those two things are necessarily linked together.

i think if he runs for president, he is going to be an advocate for comprehensive immigration reform -- >> why didn't he just write a book? >> because i think he was offering solutions for the problem that was navigable, in his view, republican politics. there has been a small number of us that have been outspoken and vocal, talking about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. that became a flood before the last election. the book was written before the election, and i don't think the book is caught up to where the party is right now. but we should remember with jeb bush that he has been a consistent supporter of immigration reform, and i think that despite what's in the book, i think that you've seen him trying to clarify his position now and get back to where he originally was. >> i think he should blame the co-author. he should be like, dude, ghost writer stole my ideas. >> always best to blame someone

in these circumstances. >> he's going to need to. >> he's not the first politics to flip-flop on an issue. >> no, but he had been so principled on it for seven years, and you want to see him believing it and leading his party on this. >> i'm not convinced he's going to be a candidate for president. maybe he will, maybe he won't, but i think you've seen him trying to get back to where his original position was this week. >> on the gay rights issue, i was surprised there weren't more elected officials who signed on. given how bold-faced the names were that did sign on, and also it seems like so many republicans are talking about the party needing to move on this issue, particularly young republicans, but we don't see any younger, more moderate members of congress or even ranking state officials signing on for this. what is it about elected office that's stopping them? >> i think this is an issue where people's attitudes are changing very, very quickly. president obama is an example of that. when you look at republicans,

look, for example, at the legislators in the new hampshire state legislature where you had many republican members vote in favor of marriage equality at the state level. now, at the congressional level, i know many members of congress who were totally untroubled by the notion of gay marriage, who are supportive of gay marriage but aren't publicly vocal. the reason is because in politics, politicians of both parties have a finely attuned instinct for parties. i believe that organizations like the national organization of marriage with a few exceptions are all bark, no bite. and, in fact, can't determine the outcome of the race. but the day will come when you begin to see -- and it will come sooner than people think it will -- where members of congress in the northeast and

the west, in the mountain west begin to depart from what has been orthodoxy, and you will see more and more republicans demanding that the republican party embrace its traditional values of freedom and equality and that no american should be disenfranchised from the fundamental right of marriage. >> i believe you want that to be true. i believe we would see it happening in a more overt way if it was going to happen. one of those republican members of congress who is not closeted as a gay person but closeted as a pro-gay person, will you ask them if they'll do a silhouette with me and i'll hide their identity. >> the cast of elected officials in their early 40s, some in they're late 30s, who will be

the first of them to break and say we should not define conservatism along this issue? and, in fact, we support marriage, equality, not in spite of our conservatism, but because of it. i think that day will come. i gave a speech talking about the conservative case for gay marriage four years ago. there wasn't but a handful of republicans. now there are hundreds of republicans. this issue is evolving quickly. attitudes are changing rapidly. and what is clear to me is that as we look ahead to 2016, people that are disrespectful to the gay community, people that treat their fellow americans will less than respect are going to be penalized by voters across the spectrum. and the intolerance that has been out of the mouths of so many of our republican elected officials is going to be something that they pay a political price for. and when that happens, you begin

to see people break from the old standards and drop some of the conformity on some of these issues, because at the end of the day, this notion you're going to pay a political price, that you're going to lose your seat, that there are powerful organizations, that there are people who will come out in primary and take your seat away, most of it in most places is totally illusory. >> fascinating. steve schmidt, msnbc mccain-palin senior strategist, thank you for being here. i appreciate it. >> thank you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. ] 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.

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