include indigestion, stomach pain, upset, or burning. if you or someone you love has afib not caused by a heart valve problem... ...ask your doctor about reducing the risk of stroke with pradaxa. hello, disrupters. i'm karen finney. many the weather forecast this sunday, bundle up. there is a dangerous arctic blast hitting much of the country. can the president and democrats restore a lifeline to millions of americans? >> for so many of you this morning it is a frigid one. >> an arctic blast of freezing air is roaring through much of the u.s. >> two-thirds of the country in its grip, from the midwest to the northeast. >> more than 100 million americans will be affected. >> it can be deadly. >> up first this week, a showdown over a three-month extension of long-term unemployment benefits. >> i'm not opposed to unemployment insurance. i am opposed to having it without paying for it.

>> this is typical for republican members of congress. >> it does provide some disincentive to work. >> they want to work. they don't want unemployment benefits. >> these giveaway programs, government programs don't create one job. >> these people need to be able to have food on the table. >> what people want is freedom and opportunity. and you don't get that through the mighty hand of the government. >> it may be a vote tomorrow in the u.s. senate. >> the rich are getting richer. the poor are getting poorer. the middle class is being squeezed out of exhaustence. in your forecast for this frigid first full week of 2014, a brutal arctic blast hits much of the country, bringing record low temperatures to the midwest and the northeast. but in washington, things are heating up as lawmakers return to start the 2014 legislative session. and the first order of business, a vote on extending unemployment benefits. according to house democrats,

the failure to extend benefits passed the december 26th expiration date has already cost the economy $400 million. not to mention the impact it's had on the families who depend on those benefits. senate majority leader harry reid has scheduled a vote tomorrow on a bipartisan bill to extend the program. and president obama who returned to the white house from hawaii today will hold an event on tuesday to press congress to get it done. but the bill faces staunch opposition from republicans, who insist they won't pass it without offsetting the costs. and they're being typically stubborn about where to find the offsets. >> there has to be some compromise coming from the democrats. i don't want to have this permanent state of unemployment insurance where we end up like europe. >> the fact is these giveaway programs, government programs don't create one job. not one job. if we want to energize the job market, we need to get rid of backbreaking, job-breaking regulations. >> i've always said i'm not opposed to unemployment insurance. i am opposed to having it without paying for it.

i think it's wrong to borrow money from china or simply to print up money for it. >> i'm pleased to welcome congressman jim mcdermott from washington state. thank you, congressman, for joining me. >> my pleasure. >> so i feel like here we are once again. we've got republicans demanding that there are offsets. what are democrats going to be able to do to get this done and to get unemployment insurance passed? >> i think maybe god is helping us with the weather. if some of these guys understand what it's like to have no money to pay the rent and no money to feed your family, and you're sleeping in the car in the weather that we're now having in the united states, they're going to have to begin to ask themselves what kind of human beings are they? do they care about anybody? i -- i personally think that the pressure from the american people will make this bill pass. the democrats, we put it up

there. we know it creates. we save jobs. we put money in the pockets of people who go out and spend it and small business gets the benefit from that. we know all the benefits from it. but that doesn't move these people. i think they are basically going to have to be moved by the circumstances of having in the middle of the winter saying to somebody no money for rent, no money for your food. >> but, you know, congressman, they surely didn't seem to care people would lose their benefits three days after christmas. i would have thought that would be a motivator. so what options do democrats have to try to move this? we're also hearing today that in the senate side where senator harry reid has scheduled a vote for tomorrow, now it sounds like senator lamar alexander is suggesting that he might try to, i don't know if you would say it's a filibuster, but he definitely sounds like he is going to make some waves before letting that vote go through. >> well, if i were him, he has a death wish to be doing that in front of everybody in the whole

country. when everybody knows that the humane thing to do is to give it. and harry reid is putting it out there and saying hey, guys, come on, let's be human beings for a moment here. we've given unemployment benefits before without finding offsets, and the sky has not fallen, and the country has not gone gao into the dumpster. and we are still doing just fine. and we can do it right now. we can fix this stuff later as we get to the budget. >> right. >> but right now they need something over their head and in their stomach. and that's really what is at stake here. >> so congressman, very quickly, before i let you go, it sounds like at a minimum one of the things we can do, or people can do is call their member of congress and tell them to vote for this legislation. because as you say, it's cold temperatures and christmas didn't seem to, you know, warm their hearts to the importance of this. >> the chill factor in parts of -- my staff just called me and told me should we turn the heat up in your house, because the chill factor in washington,

d.c. is going to be down to around 20 below zero. and if people -- people need to be reminded that that's affecting real people. and the only way it's going to come is from people pick up a phone or writing a letter or going down to the office and letting people know that you care about your neighbors. >> congressman mcdermott, we have to leave it there. thank you so much for your time. >> you're welcome. all right. let's bring in john stan, washington bureau chief for buzzfeed and victoria defrancesco. i want to start with you, john, in reaction to the congressman. you know, it strikes me that the challenge that democrats have is that there really aren't that many tools at their disposal to just get this done, given the obstruction that we've seen from republicans and this insistence on offsets, but this very begrudging sort of attitude about what is an acceptable offset. >> yeah, i think you're right. democrats during the last sort of go-round on this fight didn't do themselves a lot of favorites

when they ultimately did agree to have offsets for unemployment insurance. by doing that, set a precedent that republicans can point to that moderate democrats maybe agree with republicans can point to. it makes the position much more difficult in any kind of negotiations between the house and the senate. and i think the other thing is that republicans used to sort of go along with the unemployment insurance extensions. >> right. >> because of the fear it would hurt them politically. what they found, though, in fact, even at the statewide level with senators, when they have blocked extensions for short or even medium periods of time, they have not seen very much of a political fallout. and i think that makes it much less likely that democrats can simply get this through. >> as we know, if there is not a political consequence, nothing seems to get done. i want to move on, because we also saw friday house member eric cantor put out a memo that we found very interesting, kind of laying out some of their goals for the beginning of the year. and not surprisingly, item

number one, not unemployment insurance, but obamacare, and essentially undermining obamacare. and he basically suggests that they're going to hold a vote and look at the security of the website, which by my recollection, every report i have seen suggests that the securities is one of the parts from the beginning that is working quite well. isn't this risk to start right out of the block with obamacare again? >> it's their new year's resolution, karen. but it's not a new year's resolution that they're actually going to be very successful at. i think they're trying to ride the wave here of public discontent with the nsa and with preoccupations with spying. but it's a whole different ball game. you're comparing apples to oranges here. what people want to do is they want to see obama care working. people want to get their insurance. they want to go on with the year. so i think focusing on this, trying to distract from what obama care is supposed to do, get people covered, is not going to help them, and might even hurt them. in terms of unemployment insurance, they have another element that is going to only

hurt them. going into the 2014 election, even though john just said it doesn't necessarily work against republicans. but we see a larger narrative about income inequality. the democrats are putting forward to republicans. and they are not going to just let republicans who are in the states with high unemployment rates not be peeled off. they're going to try to go for the votes. folks that need the aca and need that unemployment insurance, they're going to be ripe for the picking for democrats. >> let's hope. i want to read some of the items and have a little fun with this memo. having worked in washington and written talking points myself, some of this language was very interesting. in one part he says several of our colleagues have introduced legislation to require prompt notification in the event of a breach involving personal information. i would decode that to say, quote, we're trying to scare people away in order to sabotage the program. that's what it seems to be to me. one of my other favorites, they talk about robust oversight. don't you love that? this spring we can expect a

robust season of oversight. that says to me, get ready. we're going to have more meaningful wasteful hearings about nothing. and another one that i loved, and continued emphasis on spending reforms. that sounds like more cuts to key safety net programs. and lastly, which reflect our priority of being good stewards of taxpayer dollars. john, to me that says we're going to continue to protect the 1% in everything we do. >> well i don't think you're going to see any major shift in the republican party's platform. these are things they've had some success politically with. arguing that they're looking to do necessary oversight, for instance, over the obama administration has turned out pretty well, particularly for house members and their districts. they look at this idea of prompt notification. that plays to people's fears. not just about the government, but also in general about having their credit card information leaked or stolen like target. >> right. >> people hear that, they suddenly feel nervous. maybe there is a problem. >> but john, that really is

about fearmongering, right? because the system the government has is not like target. i personally broadly think we should have a much broader conversation about the security. but to take an incident that truly scared people and to try to gasp that on to obamacare, i totally get the political calculation. but that feels to me like that is more about scaring people and trying to prevent them from signing up so you won't see those numbers that the administration is looking for. >> to a certain extent, that may be the case. although i do think they are playing less for worrying about what is going to happen with signups than they are for trying to convince the people that are in the middle, people who have maybe not yet decided where they are politically in the next election, that there are these problems or potential problems. and those people may look at this because the problems with the roll-out as a legitimate question to raise, even if they've already been told by the government everything is okay. those people may say to themselves they don't know fits

okay. >> one other topic very quickly, vicky, i want to get to you. immigration. we saw reports last week that supposedly this week speaker john boehner may try to figure out a way to take up immigration reform in a piecemeal form. some are suggesting that that is probably window dressing and not really going to happen. i want to get your reaction. >> i'm very pessimistic on the issue, karen. there is nothing i would like more to see comprehensive immigration reform pass. but we're just too close to the election 2014. we know that immigration is just one of these issues that parties don't like to touch in an election year. republicans and democrats alike. and we also know that there is very strong opposition from democrats of taking that piecemeal approach. so quite frankly, karen, i don't see much coming forward with immigration in this year. >> all right. well, it promises to be another interesting shall we say session of congress. thank you to john stanton and victoria defrancesca soto.

we're continuing to follow breaking news out of colorado where an airplane has crashed at the aspen pitkin county airport. a member of pitkin county sheriff's department tells nbc news that one person has been killed and two people were injured and transported to a local hospital. airport officials have closed the facility as emergency responders work to evaluate the situation. and we're continuing to gather more information. we'll bring that you as soon as it comes in. stay with us. we'll be right back. [ mom ] over the years, i've learned how to stretch my party budget. but when my so-called bargain brand towel made a mess of things, i switched to bounty basic. look! one sheet of bounty basic is 50% stronger than a full sheet of the bargain brand. bounty basic. the strong but affordable picker upper.

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for a party that has spent much of the last year talking about being more inclusive, a new pugh poll out suggests how far and how fast the gop has gone toward becoming a collection of older white

evangelical christians defined as much by religion as politics. now, the poll found that among republicans, only 43% believe humans have evolved over time. that's down 11 points from 2009. compare that to the overall population with 60% believing in evolution, and you start to see a real divide. i have no qualms with anyone's religious and personal views. obviously everyone is entitled to believe what they want. but for a party that has been trying to sell itself as a big tent, it appears the gop continues to become just the opposite. as a recent summit of social conservatives in washington at the ritz carlton makes clear, these groups are looking to be even more active in intellectual politics this year. according to politico, gop leaders like jim demint dined on a menu including roast turkey sliders with brie, arugula and spicy mustarded on pretzel roll buns. i just got to say that. got to know the republicans like arugula too. coming up with an aggressive agenda geared toward elevating

the place of social issues and abortion and gay marriage in conservative politics, a bitter and expensive struggle against the tea party for the soul of the republican party. so what does this mean for republicans both now and upcoming elections? joining me now is dana milbank, and environmental energy editor indicate shepherd. thanks to you both for joining me. >> hey, karen. >> thanks. >> dana, i want to start with you. you wrote about this week. what is most interesting is what the data suggests about what is happening to the base of the republican party. talk a little bit about that. >> well, look, it's one poll. so you never know exactly what is going on. but it's consistent with other things that suggest that the party is getting -- was already pretty much all white, 86% white, getting older, and having an increasing amount of religious devotion. it's not just the evolution. it's more people are going to

church weekly who identify as republicans. and i think the point here is not that suddenly there is a large segment of the american public that said you know, i think i've changed my mind on this whole darwin thing. it's saying people who identify with the republican party are changing. they are different. >> right. >> even than they were four years ago. and overall, they're a more conservative group. and it probably means that those who are more of the chamber of commerce businessmen main street republicans are saying maybe i don't want to identify myself with this republican party. that's more likely than people saying they have rethought this whole galapagos thing. >> i think we're pretty set on galapagos. kate, it was interesting. it was a very interesting reaction from vin weber, who is former republican minnesota congressman. and he said vehicling about the poll, quote, i suspect this is a reflection of a trend we've seen where the most educated people who used to be republicans are now democrats. and people with less educational status are now moving into the republican party. now that was a reaction from a

former republican congressman. that was not from a democrat. >> well, i mean, that could be the case as well. i think you also see a number of people who are now identifying as independents for that reason as well. they don't see themselves reflected in the republican party in the way that they may have 10 or 20 years ago. i think we're seeing more people who are not identifying as strongly with the republican party or the democratic party anymore. another point i want to make, there is also an effort across the country i think to make the whole idea of evolution seem controversial to pass laws to force teachers to teach as if it was controversial. there is this larger effort to make this more of a political issue than it actually is. >> that's exactly right. dana, in the past four years, we've seen a number of state controversies actually over textbooks and how it treats the topic of evolution, states like texas, tennessee, louisiana, oklahoma, kentucky, i see a pattern there maybe, new mexico have all had versions of this

fight. and bill nye the science guy responded, made a comment about that. i want to play that for you and then we'll talk about it. >> i say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your -- in your world that is completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine. but don't make your kids do it. because we need them. we need is effectcally literate voters and taxpayers for. >> okay. >> i'm sure they'll be suede by that. >> i think it seems to me the point being that you've got, as kate points out, there are two things within this poll. one is telling us something about what is happening with the republican party. and the other is i think pointing out that there really is a growing political effort. and it does feel like to some degree these social issues are becoming more political conversations. >> right. >> than policy conversations. >> yeah. that's another piece of this.

when you think about you have to now set aside climate change, if we can't even agree on some matters about evolution, which has been with us the better part of a century. it does seem part of this people are seeing everything in terms of the political lens. either matters of science there. and when you look at it, look at that poll, these people were rejecting not just the notion of evolution without any intervention by god. they're even rejecting the notion of evolution occurring with a supreme being's intervention. and they're just saying no, man was fully formed in his current state 10,000 years ago watching fox news. >> of course. what else is there? msnbc hadn't been created yet. >> no, that was 5,000 years. >> exactly. kate, it's interesting. as we're taking a look at, this political story i thought was very interesting. what it suggests is we've been talking so much about the establishment conservatives and the tea party conservatives.

but this group that gathered at the ritz carlton seemed as though they're trying to break away from the tea party group to be even more far to the right to insure that the social ires stay on the front burner. time and again in elections, they get told we have to have a candidate who can get elected nationally. and it really seems like this time around they want to raise their own money, support their own candidates. and there might even then be a third faction within the republican party. >> absolutely. i mean, they seem to think that, you know, if we didn't do enough of that pushing social conservative issues last time, we'll just do more of it. and that will solve our problem. and i think they've been told repeatedly at the polls that's not what voters want to see. but they think they can win with it and throwing a lot more money at it that the message willing be somehow what gets them through in the election. >> and dana, last question to you. that, i think again sheds solve light on what we can expect in the primaries coming up, because, again, the pool of people who are the likely

voters, this is the pool that we're talking about, right? >> right, right. >> these are the issues. >> exactly. this money isn't being used to influence the overall electorate. it's being used to influence that really small sliver of people who inflation the primaries on the republican side. it's particularly in offyear elections, it's such a small number of the voters who come out and do this. that's why the huge amounts of money that are coming in here into the political have such an impact. >> it's also why people need to make sure they go vote. i'm going keep saying that until we get to election day. thank you, dana milbank and kate sheppard. and later, our disrupter of the week. a man who stood up to fear and bigotry. stay with us. ♪ love... in the nation, what's precious to you is precious to us. ♪ love is strange so when coverage really counts, count on nationwide insurance.

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news of a plane accident in aspen, colorado. officials tell msnbc the plane crashed at the aspen-pitkin airport while trying to land this afternoon, leaving at least one person dead and two injured. the challenger 600 is registered to a bank of utah trustee out of salt lake city. witnesses say it burst into flames upon impact. we're continuing to gather more information and will bring that to you as soon as it comes in. and we'll be right back. [ indistinct conversations ] [ male announcer ] when you wear dentures you may not know it, but your mouth is under attack. food particles infiltrate

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we should not be judged on how many new laws we create. well ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal. >> speaker boehner's rather disturbing response when asked how he feels about presiding over one of the least productive and least popular congresses in history. someone must have told the speaker that's not what the american people want to hear, because he has kicked the year off with a new -- seemingly new tune. on thursday, he tweeted, quote, here is an always up to date guy to pass jobs bills. this focus on jobs will continue in the year ahead.

right. so the link leads us to a list of house-passed bills that we're told represent real action and job creation. just a problem. the majority of the 31 various measures have little chance of making it through the senate. only three have been signed into law. two are in conference committee, and the rest, like repealing the affordable care act are job killers, not job creators. what's more, a handful of these bills offer more breaks to big energy than they do the american worker. as for the few ideas that actually are worth considering? many of those have already been proposed by democrats in congress and later rejected by republicans. one democratic aide put it perfectly when he said, quote, i don't think this is new, just a new blog post with their warmed over stew of bad ideas that they sent to the senate to die. there you have it. here to help me hash through the rest of this warmed over stew, msnbc contributor and senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities jared bernstein, and daily beast columnist and author of the

gop's job hypocrisy, thank you to you both. >> thank you. >> so jared, i'm going to start with you. it struck me when i took a look, because i thought all right, i'll give them a chance. let's take a look at some of these job creation ideas. but a lot of them are wasting time like, i think we've got a full screen of this, repealing obamacare. haven't we already been through this? that's a job killer. the keystone pipeline, and the keep theirs off your health care act. i'm sorry, how is that going to create jobs? >> i did the same thing you did. i went through the list. by the way, as you mentioned earlier, a bunch of that stuff is basically gifts to the energy sector. now what is one sector in this economy that has actually been pretty booming lately? that's energy. so it's kind of an agenda really looking for jobs in all the wrong places. basically, what i'm going to say now is going to sound a little like a caricature.

but i don't think it is. for a long time, the idea has been to create jobs if you're a republican, is trickle down tax cuts. >> sure. >> and deregulation. so cut taxes for rich people, shutter the epa, repeal dodd/frank. they have really yet to come up with much new, although michael's article gets some interesting nuance there's. >> michael, here is another piece of this list that i just had to read. it basically, i mean, this is more about -- these are warmed over ideas that seem to be about hurting families than actually creating jobs. it's sort of like putting lipstick on a pig, if you will there is the working families flexibility act, which we know it actually is harmful to families, not helpful to families. the path to prosperity budget. the epi says that would eliminate two million jobs and increase the unemployment rate. and the farm bill, which we know we're looking at cuts to snap.

and each $1 billion reduction in snap eliminates 13,718 jobs. they're trying to gussie this up and tell us this is a job creator. >> exactly right. boy, i can't ask for a better handoff than the one jerry gave me. that allows me to point out that another aspect of this, karen, over the past five years, over the length of obama's presidency really is that the republicans have fought tooth and nail projects and proposals of his that would have created jobs. the most obvious example to me is the infrastructure bank. now this infrastructure bank had a degree, a degree of bipartisan support in the congress. john kerry was the main democratic sponsor, and he had kay bailey hutchison, the republican from texas who has since retired as his chief republican co-sponsor. had the support of the united states chamber of commerce. not a left wing organization. and an organization that has

been very, very committed to infrastructure investment for many, many years. it couldn't get anywhere in the senate because there was just no prayer of it getting 60 votes. which means there was no prayer of it getting even a small handful of republicans going for it. they've blocked that. and many things like it. >> well, and jared, i want to read something from mike's piece that i found brilliant. and let you weigh in. but in the piece he says they maintained the fiction that their party is a party of rational people who will listen to rational argument and isn't simply dug into a state of psychotic opposition to anything barack obama wants to do. you were there on the inside. you know about the attempts to get the infrastructure bank done, right? and yet they pretend like this is a good idea when it suits them. and if it's an idea that president obama would suggest, then it's a terrible idea. >> right. and i think the problem that they're having and that mike's piece begins to get into is that

it's sort of like the electability problem they deal with on the immigration side. it's very hard to imagine that the next republican presidential candidate will be able to go out there and kind of do what mitt romney did, which is don't worry, i'm a really rich guy. listen to me. it's all about private equity, cutting taxes for rich people, shuttering the epa and repealing everything. that worked very badly. and so has the opposition to every idea that president obama puts forth in this regard. i'll remind you that the american jobs act, kind of a follow-on package to the -- >> right. >> to the recovery act never got a vote in either house as far as i know. and so at some point you have to wonder if they're going to come up with any new ideas, any policies. and what you begin to see, again, in mike's piece is a couple of people are thinking that way. when i say a couple of people, i mean like two. so i don't know there is much there there as you might wish

for if you're on that side. >> and you know, mike, to that point, as you do point out, from aei, there are a couple of people who sound thoughtful and rational and maybe these are good ideas, but at the same time you know as you read that that can't possibly go anywhere. it feels like once you attach president obama to it, even though there may be an empirical reality as you point out it falls dead on its face. >> karen, i bet you that if mitt romney had won the election and he were the president of the united states right now and were proposing some of these same things, these guys would be for them you. i know they would. >> you think? maybe? >> i know they would. that alone tells you just everything you need to know. it's very sad. it's putting political opposition, political ideology ahead of the good of the country. and it's happened for five years. you know, we've seen it time and time again on a number of fronts.

actively have hurt the push for more jobs. >> you know, just very briefly, jared, earlier today we heard gene sperling talking about the possibility that the 39 with talk about a grand bargain for jobs. i thought we weren't supposed to say grand bargain anymore, but apparently it's back. with the idea of some tax cuts on one hand. sort of offsetting some ideas for investments and job creation. and, again, to the point that mike makes in his piece and that you have made, many of these ideas have already been out there. they've already been rejected. and we seem to be up against a group that thinks cutting programs like safety net programs is a way to create jobs. and we know that's just not true. >> right. i don't think there is a lot of energy for coming together on the kinds of ideas that would really help create significant jobs. i will say this. this little budget plan at the end of the year, which paul ryan was a considerable advocate of

did reduce the fiscal damage that was baked in the cake for 2014 and 2015. so, again, if you kind of look at some knew answered policy changes, you can see some recognition that the agenda that republicans have had on jobs has been a big failure. but you got to look pretty carefully to see any of that. >> that is for sure. thank you, michael thomasky and jared bernstein. we discussed ohio governor john kasich who is facing potentially a reelection challenge on the far right from tea partier ted steven. our guests believed this wasn't a credible threat and apparently steven agreed. he announced saturday night that he won't be running against kasich after all. coming up, personal beliefs and locker room politics collide. but should standing by your convictions cost you your job? our disrupter of the week is next.

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this week now former minnesota vikings punter chris kluwe had more than just the sports world talking when he posted this essay on deadspin.com, the title of which says it all. quote, i was an nfl player until i was fired by two cowards and a bigot. in the piece he describes various interactions with coaches and teammates following his taking a public stance in support of marriage equality in minnesota and lgbt rights in general. >> gay people would like to get married. and i think that's something when we look back 20, 25 years ago and you look at history, which side were you on? were you on the side that supported this or did you try and take people's rights away? >> it was a beautifully disruptive moment to see a straight male professional athlete speak out in defense of equal rights for every america .

kluwe said he spoke on as a private citizen. he says it led to his being fired after eight seasons with the vikings. the men he calls cowards in his essay would will leslie frazier and current general manager rick spielman. the so-called bigot would be special teams coordinator mike priefer, who kluwe used homophobic language in his presence after he became an advocate for equality. saying things like we should round up all the gays, send it to an island and then nuke it until it glows. priefer has vehemently denied the comments in a statement to the minnesota star tribune. and while the vikings are taking the matter seriously, opening an investigation into the allegations, they have said that kluwe was fired strictly based on his performance on the football field. it's worth noting that he averaged 45 yards a punt in 2012. and this year without kluwe, the team's average fell as did their record. but perhaps the most important

part of this story is he has sparked a conversation in a world where normally the conversation is about the next play. so for his courage to speak out, chris kluwe is our disrupter of the week. coming up next, two experts help make sense of the senseless violence in the middle east. that's coming up. victim of fraud. most people don't even know it. fraud could mean lower credit scores... ...and higher interest rates when you apply for a credit card. it's a problem waiting to happen. check your credit score, check your credit report, at experian.com. america's number one provider of

this week brought the violence of the syrian civil war to the streets of beirut, lebanon, with two separate bombings linked to al qaeda-aligned groups. additionally hezbollah, the lebanese militia group has begun to move long-range weapons out of syria into lebanon after rockets were fired back and forth with israel a week ago. and in iraq, al qaeda has recaptured fallujah and ramadi, both of which were hard fought gains during the iraq war. while the obama administration faces questions about a seeming resurgence of al qaeda, additional questions and concerns are being raised about the impact of a larger vacuum of leadership in the region. as the "new york times" reported

today, quote, but for all its echoes, the bloodshed that has engulfed iraq, lebanon and syria in the past two weeks exposes something new and destabilizing, the emergence of a post american middle east in which no broker has the power or the will to contain the region's sectarian hatreds. hereby to help me make sense of the various warring factions, the american interests and options in the region and former ambassador mark ginsburg. thanks for joining me. >> sure, karen. >> ambassador, i want to start with you. we talked about syria as a proxy war. now as it's spilling into lebanon, it feels like, this is what "the new york times" was sort of getting at, this is a war that doesn't have a geographic boundary. it is much more of a boundary among allied groups, if you will. >> well, absolutely. in fact, we fought al qaeda after afghanistan and 9/11 on

the basis that al qaeda and its ideology was directed against the west and directed against the united states, which it still is. but what al qaeda has been able to do is seize its sunni tentacles. and in effect, become al qaeda 2.0 to use the traditional hatred between sunni and shiite to gravitate itself and to become the dominating sunni force in this confrontation that has gone on for centuries between sunnis and shiites, which is why we're seeing syria and the cancer that syria is spreading its infection to iraq, to lebanon and elsewhere, resurge itself. that's the real danger here, because there is nothing really we can do to combat that ideological division. >> you know, rula, one of the things that has happened over the last ten years, we talk about al qaeda, and now we're talking about al qaeda aligned groups. and it strikes me one of the things i certainly took away from "the new york times" report on benghazi is just how much

groups there are shifting alliances. they can crop up overnight with one name and claim they're al qaeda-alined. maybe they are. maybe they're not. the term has really become a political term and not as much of an accurate terminology in some instances it seems. >> that's right, karen. not only that, i think the big question today is our allies in the region who are financing, like saudi arabia, qatar, even the turks. they are fighting whoever is fighting the shiites. whether it's iraq, whether it's lebanon, whether it's in syria. and we're seeing these proxies. and their agenda is not to promote democracy and civil rights, human rights. and what we are doing trying as americans, of course, american administrators trying to contain somehow the violence. but it's almost impossible to help maliki, nuri al maliki, the prime minister of iraq without pushing him to be more inclusive. one of the reasons, the major reasons why these conflicts are

rising between shiite and sunni is because whoever win the election in the arab muslim world treat the others as enemies, not as opponents. instead of including them trying to dialogue and broke area deal with them and somehow share power with them, they go after them. look at egypt. look at bahrain. look at iraq. i mean, nuri al maliki, they didn't want the americans. but now he is begging the americans to come back and save him. >> so ambassador, there are talks scheduled on january 2nd to that point regarding syria. secretary kerry seemed to suggest that perhaps iran could play a role, even though we know that iran has been a major proxy player in syria in, in this region. but what is realistic for the united states to expect to get out of those talks on the 22nd? >> very little i'm afraid. the terrible tragedy of syria is that we had a chance to contain it almost 18 months ago, and the

obama administration decided to walk away from the job at hand. and the bottom line is the consequences that may want to see in negotiation. but syria is increasingly being divided on the ground between the assad regime to the south and around damascus and the al qaeda-supported factions that are basically seizing territory as a result of the support from iraq and from the al qaeda organization in iraq. so you're going to see a fight to the death continuing, irrespective of peace negotiations. >> i just want to follow up with you on that, ambassador. short of putting troops on the ground, what really are president obama's options at this point? >> frankly, the only thing that he can do is to try to stabilize lebanon from civil war breaking out there. and also, and i totally agree with rula that iraqi's prime minister maliki has been the most important reason why iraq is in the major problem it is in, because he has refused to

share power with the sunni. and we have to lean on him and have him stop attacking iranian dissidents in iraq as well. and he has to be given in effect orders from us if he wants to get the military assistance that he wants. >> rula, just briefly, switching back to iraq, obviously the reports this week that two major cities have been recaptured by al qaeda. not surprisingly john kerry and lindsey graham while traveling in the -- many of us predicted that the vacuum would be filled by america's enemies and would emerge as a threat to u.s. interests. what options? secretary of state john kerry has said no more troops on the ground. but what options again, there, do we really have? >> i really believe in diplomacy. and i'm sorry to say to

republicans and the democrat who believe that. military intervention, whether it's in iraq or syria will change the game. it will not. you can send troops. they will be slaughtered themselves. listen, president reagan sent troops within the civil war in lebanon in the '80s. and remember, that 200 and something marines were killed. and then american, they withdrawal, and others they have to withdraw. the only option is what richard holbrooke, a great diplomat used to say. talk to everybody. talk to the iranians, to the saudis, talk to everybody, and force them to broker a deal where they share power. they have to share power with the minorities. sun nice, shiites and christians. >> i certainly hope they take that advice. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> thank you. that does 40 me. thank you so much for joining us. and please don't forget to share your thoughts. you can find us on facebook and tweet us. i'll see you back here next weekend at 4:00 p.m. eastern. have a great week. ♪

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