meet the gop's new plan. same as the old plan. cripple obamacare. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm michael smerconish in for chris matthews. leading off tonight, retreat or reload? that's a question now facing the gop. yesterday greg sergeant posed an interesting question in "the washington post." he wondered whether it would be possible to envision a future where republicans and democrats would get into real negotiation over the future of the affordable care act in which case each side will get one thing for the other. in other words, negotiating benefits from the other side.

maybe republicans get the sale of insurance across state lines and democrats get a medicaid expansion. don't hold your breath. today republicans in the form of eric cantor tipped their hands with regard of how the health care battle will be fought in 2014. it seems like a repeat of 2013 rather than a negotiation. the gop spent the bulk of last year trying to repeal the entirety of the president's health care law. when that didn't work, they tried to defund it in mid-september. when that didn't work, they tried to delay it. by september 30th on the eve of government shutdown, they tried to delay just the individual mandate which failed. by mid-october, it was clear it was a disaster for the party. so they scaled back their demands, trying for a symbolic victory to repeal the law's medical device tax which also failed. by mid-november, they had abandoned outright attempts to kill the law, instead trying to

ease restrictions on so-called junk insurance plans as a way to disrupt the law. and that didn't work. so today party leadership outlined a new strategy for 2014. according to a party memo from house majority leader eric cantor, the plan is to introduce legislation to, quote, strengthen security requirements of the website including a law to require the government to publicly disclose every time personal information is compromised. cms put out a response to cantor telling him if you're looking for smoke, keep looking. quote, today there have been no successful security attack on healthcare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information from the site. meanwhile, there are signs the battle will soon shift to the local level including ad blitzes and legal challenges. which begs the question is the republican party signaling a retreat or just a different kind of assault when it comes to health care? the most important issue of 2014. joy reid is an msnbc contributor

and john feehery is a republican strategist. you know, joy, i run through the litany of what the gop attempted to do in 2013 and i say this failed and that failed and this failed. but with regard to 2014 at the ballot box, maybe that's not a bad strategy. >> well, you know, when you show all that litany of things that republicans did last year it was sort of like a sign wave. there was escalation and then dim mission. when the republicans were on stronger ground was really before the law was actually passed. in 2010 when they were arguing a very simple message. do not let this law happen. obamacare is bad. right? after the law passed they had another very simple message. repeal, repeal, repeal. now what you're seeing is eric cantor and others sending a complicated message. we're going to get these security breaches and will find them when we get them. as you you drill down the strategy to things that are more complex but smaller bore, it makes it difficult to use as a political message. what republicans are counting on is being able to maintain, not

dislike for the affordable care act, but rage and anger. that's what you had in 2010 against the law. can you maintain that for a full year when people then have the lived experience of either having insurance or not being affected by the affordable care act? i don't think so. >> i hear what you're saying. i'm thinking, john feehery, what's the real objective? to maintain control of the house? to win re-election in 2014? or to do something about health care in this country? in other words, why does greg sergeant have a bad idea? why not negotiate for selling insurance across state lines in return for an expansion of medicaid? >> i think that would require both the president and the congressional republicans to come to an agreement which has been pretty hard to do, michael. i think right now as you pointed out over this litany, the republicans have tried many ways to try to fix this law or get rid of it or defund it or delay it or do all kinds of things and have reached no common ground with this president on any of those things. i think that what eric cantor

and other republicans are going to do is keep pointing out some of the concerns about this law. privacy's a big concern. especially post-target. the target fiasco. people are worried about what's happening with their privacy on a wide variety of things. but not only that, they're worried about their health care costs going up, their inability to find a doctor. a lot of these things are going to keep popping up. this goes back also to the president's credibility. when the president said if you want your health care, you can keep it, that proved to be false. this is not only about obamacare, it's also about the president, and i think that is what the election is going to be about. >> joy, this is day three for me being insured through insurance that i procured for healthcare.gov. i'm worried about my privacy. i had to hand over a number of personal details about my wife and me as well as our children. is eric cantor onto something when he proposes this today? >> i mean, i would say -- you know, sure, everybody is concerned about privacy.

but first of all, since they don't have violations of anyone's privacy it seems a little desperate. i think what you just heard more importantly from john feehery was an answer to your question. is this about the election or health care reform? it's about the election. it's 100% about not agreeing on one thing. not a bunch of things but one thing. that the affordable care act is the law. if republicans agreed on that, then maybe they'd have an interest in fixing the law. but they don't agree on that. >> to your point about the location, americans for prosperity, political arm of the conservative billionaire koch brothers, is going local now. they're launching a multi-million dollar ad in north carolina, louisiana, and new hampshire. and the goal is to continue to exploit the president's misstep when he said that if americans like their insurance plans they could keep them. here are a couple of excerpts. they're from the ads. >> those individuals who like the coverage they already have will be able to keep their current plan.

this is a very accurate description of this bill. >> but now louisianians are finding out that they lied. >> i was shocked when i got the notice that my health care policy was canceled. kay hagen told us if you like your insurance plans and your doctors, you could keep them. >> it's the lie of the year. >> you can keep your insurance if you like it. >> and senator shaheen kept telling it. truth is thousands have already had their insurance canceled. >> isn't that advocacy for the right to be underinsured and does that run contrary to a sort of bedrock republican principle which is individualism, take care of yourself, don't show up at the e.r. and become a burden to society? >> well, i think it also says that there's an issue for conservative democrats and democrats in difficult elections. are they going to keep with the president and keep defending obamacare or are they going to run against obamacare and trying to distance themselves from the president?

i think the strategic choice, difficult choice for a lot of these democrats in difficult states. red states especially. and i tell you as you see democrats starting to run away from the president, it puts him in a much more difficult spot and weakens his hand. i think that's what you're going to see as this election year rolls around. >> but joy reid, what they're saying in those spots is we're fighting for your right to not have catastrophic coverage. to have a bare minimum, something that doesn't comply with federal law. and if you show up in the e.r., you become that burden to society that the affordable care act was designed in part to take care of. >> and it'll take about 20 minutes for a decent reporter in one of those states to find out if "a," those people saying they lost insurance is a real person or "b," if they found another policy. which means their insurance -- i'm not in politics anymore, but all mary landrieu has to do is say in my state x-hundred thousand people have health insurance.

i'm proud of the fact that i voted to make sure they were covered. so democrats can all repeat and rinse and repeat that ad. you know what, barack obama is not on the ballot in 2014. they can keep saying obama, obama, obama, but all the democrats have to do is find people who have insurance and put them on tv. >> john feehery, here's another strategy that's at work by members of your party. republicans at the national level have largely failed in crippling the health care laws we've described. resistance from republican state leaders -- have refused the law's expansion of medicaid. and now 11 states attorneys general are accusing the president of breaking the law. they contend that the administration acted illegally when it made certain administrative changes to the law without congressional action. something the administration says is well within its legal right. if you take a look at this map, these ags come from conservative states. all but three hail from states that have tried to cripple the law by rejecting its expansion of medicaid, a part of the law that would have extended health

insurance to millions of low income working americans at basically no cost to the states. long-term do you think that's a successful strategy? or will the people say why hasn't medicaid been expanded in our geographic area? >> it's a good question. i'm not sure how it plays out long-term. as the cost -- the big question i think for a lot of republican legislators, yeah, we get the short-term but long-term are we going to have a lot more that we're going to have to pay for? and we've seen with a lot of these more medicaid patients going into emergency rooms almost immediately when they're getting signed up. so you're going to have an increasing burden on the system. i think the bigger problem here for democrats is they've got to decide are they going to run with the president and try to as joy points out try to defend this program like she advises mary landrieu to do or are they going to run against its and run into enemy lines? it's a tough decision.

>> it's going to be a great year. >> but, michael, going into e.r.s where the medicaid program reimburses the hospital as opposed to hospitals going bankrupt because governors are leaving people uninsured. they're still going to the e. r, just aren't getting reimbursed. >> it's going to be a great year for debates like this. >> thank you as always. coming up, weeds, smoke signals, rocky mountain high. the jokes over colorado legalizing marijuana are easy. but there are legitimate questions. is this is a smart thing to do? does it promote the behavior society should discourage? is smoking pot no better or worse than drinking? we're going to debate that. plus american children continue to fall farther and farther behind other countries in science and math. here's one symptom. 33% of americans don't believe in evolution including 48% of republicans. much of the world shakes its head over that one. and guess which big city mayor just filed for re-election calling himself the best mayor this city has ever had. that would be rob ford of toronto. one of many politicians who

might want to rethink running for office in 2014. and let me finish tonight with the political party's selective reading of that "the new york times" report on what really happened in benghazi. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

marijuana does not have to be a burden on our community. it doesn't have to be a burden on our criminal justice systems. and it does not have to be a burden on our economies. in fact, the sale of legal marijuana can be a boom. in colorado we expect almost $400 million in sales next year. and across the nation, the marijuana industries will create $2.34 billion of economic activity. >> welcome back to "hardball." the great mile high experiment is underway.

yesterday colorado officially became the first state allowing legal recreational sales of marijuana. for the 24 pot shops across the state, that meant huge lines and even bigger sales. all told the industry estimates it raked in over $1 million in just 24 hours. and as you heard in that clip, some in the industry are predicting windfalls in the billions of dollars when all is said in done in 2014. it's a remarkable turnaround from the days of reefer madness while over the top reflected a broader american attitude demonizing pot use. that attitude has all but been snuffed out. look at this. in 1969 only 12% of americans supported legalizing marijuana according to gallop. but 2000, 31%. today, support stands at a record level of 58%. it's remarkable when you decide -- consider the political makeup of the country. and even the slow moving senate

not exactly renowned as a body that's in tune with the times held its first-ever hearing on the issue of marijuana legalization last september. but while there's growing momentum for legalization, what's happening in colorado is still an experiment. and experiments can go wrong. sometimes quickly, sometimes badly. so the question now is where does the movement go from here? and will the politics of pot light up the electorate in 2014 and beyond? ed rendell was the governor of pennsylvania and is an msnbc political analyst. josh greene is a columnist with bloomberg business week and a former coloradan. he attended the pot growing school in california as part of a series that he wrote for the atlantic. hey, governor, let me start with you. i can't wait to see what happens among the republican field headed toward 2016. because on one hand you could make a state's rights argument. possession is still against the law federally. isn't it a state right kind of notion to yield to a state like colorado. but isn't that at odds with the

law and order tenets of the gop? how do you see the party leaders handling this issue? >> i think if they're smart they'll take a position where they're for medical marijuana as an exception. ten states have passed laws allowing marijuana for medical uses. and they'll say we'll wait and see how the colorado and washington experiments go. we'll see what happens to revenue. we'll see what happens to young people. are more young people using marijuana before their adulthood? that's obviously a bad result. are there more people driving under the influence of marijuana? that's obviously a bad result. so i think they'll be cautious and say let's take a look at colorado and washington. you know, michael, we always use the term the states and laboratories for federal government. >> sure. >> let's see how those experiments go before we make a judgment. i think it's on safe ground to be for medical marijuana exemption. >> josh, let me ask you.

pot has a higher acceptance level than gay marriage. and yet the politicians don't seem ahead of the curve, not embracing that social change the way that they did same-sex marriages or unions. what accounts for that? >> i think it's a little bit harder for a politician to defend. in the case of same-sex marriage, you have a clear disparity between heterosexual couples who enjoy the right to marry and homosexual couples who historically have not. and that obviously isn't fair and there's no reason for it. in the case of pot, you don't have one subset of americans who get to smoke pot and it's regarded as a good thing and then another group that doesn't. and i think politicians who are naturally risk averse want to steer away from that kind of issue. and that's why i think this has been driven really by the grassroots and by state ballot initiatives rather than taking the lead either president obama or the democrats or the democratic governor of colorado john hickenlooper who also wasn't in favor of this initially.

>> governor rendell, maybe those figures are deceiving. and maybe you need to sort out where does the passion lie. maybe the country by a majority is supportive of legalization of marijuana, but maybe those opposed are more passionate and are coming out to the ballot box against it. >> well, that's an interesting point. and that's always the gun argument. >> right. >> gun control polls terrifically well, but to people who are for gun control vote on that single issue, no. the people who are gun rights voters vote on that issue, yes. it's interesting in pennsylvania, as you know, there's six democrats running for the right to oppose governor corbett. one of them john hanger has endorsed legalization of marijuana. let's see how he does particularly among young voters. >> colorado may be the first state to make recreational pot legal, but it won't be the last. wait until you see this. washington state is planning to open up its own recreational pot industry this year. supporters of legalization say

they have enough signatures to put legalization on the ballot this year in alaska. by 2016 they're making a push in oregon, arizona, california, maine, massachusetts, montana, and nevada. if all goes well, the attention would turn to delaware, hawaii, new hampshire, rhode island, and vermont. >> thank you both. good to see you both. thanks, michael. why allen west says hillary clinton isn't the democrats best chance for the bhiwhite house i 2016. if you want to follow me on twitter. just learn how to spell smer cannish. this -- smerconish.

>> seeing you shovel outside. >> time for the sideshow. that was bill de blasio outside

his home in brooklyn this morning. he's the newly sworn in mayor. they said today's snowstorm would be his first big challenge in office. but it's his son who's getting all the tough questions. 16-year-old dante de blasio was inundated with facebook posts last night all from his fellow classmates who wanted to know if school would be canceled. "the new york times" obtained one of those exchanges. while it seems the first son of new york had little inside information, he was willing to lobby his father for a day off. quote, everyone is asking me this, he said. old man winter will decide, but i'm trying to convince my dad. the typo there should be a too, of course. his mother had other plans for him. she responded with a photo of a snow shovel saying that's what dante will be doing if he does not go to school tomorrow. school was canceled and dante picked up where his dad left off later in the morning. up next, florida congressman and tea party darling alan west sees a new threat to the white house in 2016.

in an interview on boston herald's radio show trending now, west said that he's more concerned about a potential elizabeth warren candidacy than he is about another bid from hillary clinton. but listen to his explanation. quote, elisabeth warren is their darling. that's who they want. and they have to run another woman because they need the marketing gimmick of the first something. we had the first black president. now we're going to have the first woman president. a gimmick, he says. finally, chris christie amplified speculation he may run for president in 2016 after sending christmas cards to several republican officials in iowa over the holiday. buzzfeed reported that at least five people in the first caucus state received the cards including some who have never met the governor. one state representative seemed to reasonably suspect that he intended to say more than just seasons greetings. quote, governor christie sent me a christmas card. i mean, it's only three years until the iowa caucus. that's called thinking ahead.

actually, the caucus is two years away, but christie's latest flirtation will iowa may foreshadow a morrow vert campaign to come. to be continued. up next, your business with j.j. ramberg. [ male announcer ] so he can't let a cold keep him up tonight. vicks nyquil. powerful nighttime 6 symptom cold and flu relief. ♪ [ bell dings ] [ coughs ] hi. yo. cold? nasty cold. dayquil severe. nyquil severe. thanks, dude. [ female announcer ] walgreens. get in. get out. feel better. select dayquil severe and nyquil severe two for $14 at walgreens.

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they're called preppers. people who are ready for any type of disaster. natural or man made. how entrepreneurs are marketing to them. and she had a great business plan for a new shoe company until someone ripped off the idea. protecting yourself. coming up next on "your business." >> announcer: small businesses are revitalizing the economy and