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tv   Up W Chris Hayes  MSNBC  March 17, 2012 8:00am-10:00am EDT

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good morning from new york, i'm ezra klein in for the great chris hayes n a case that has drawn national attention, police in florida yesterday releasing 911 tapes from the shooting of 17-year-old tray von martin by neighborhood watch captain george zimmermann in which zimmermann is heard describing martin as "a suspicious person." zimmermann has not been charged. and mitt romney arrived in puerto rico yesterday. tomorrow's primary there expected to be a close one with rick santorum who showed up earlier in the week. we will be talking more about the gop and hispanic voters later in the morning. right now, however, i'm joined by elise jordan, former speechwriter for secretary of state condoleezza rice, nancy giles from cbs this morning, jody canter, author of the book, the obamas and spencer ackerman, senior reporter for wire and danger.com blog. thank you for being here. the war in afghanistan began on october 7, 2001 that is to say
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it has been ongoing for 11 years, five months and ten days, outlasted both the iraq war and osama bin laden, who was, of course the reason we went into afghanistan in the first place and this week was a stark reminder that not only is it not over but it is not even going particularly well. on sunday, an american soldier, staff sergeant robert bales was accused of going on a shooting spree and massacring 16 afghanistan civilians in their homes. he arrived yesterday at fort leavenworth, kansas, where he is being held awaiting possible criminal charges n days since the shootings, the afghan taliban has withdrawn from peace talk with us the americans n a separate incident three days later, an afghan interpreter threat tonight crash a speeding truck into secretary of defense leon panetta's plane as it was taxes on a run way at a military base in afghanistan. panetta was unhurt but the driver who set himself on fire in the crash, died of his injuries. this week's violence follows other high-profile atrocities from earlier this year, including american soldiers urinating on afghan corpses and american troops burning copies of the koran.
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>> the united nations says 2011 was the deadliest year on record for civilians in the afghan war with 3,021 killed. 3,021 afghan president hamid karzai this week says he is "at the end of the rope", asked the united states to confine its soldiers to their bases rather than letting them operate in the villages and the country side. as the counterinsurgency strategy-to-would dictate. president obama speaking at a press conference alongside uk prime minister david cameron tried empathize with an increasingly war-weary public. >> the general afghan question, i can't do you think it is that people feel that you talk a good game but they don't buy it? >> it's because we have been there for ten years and people get weary. they know friends and minutes have lost someone as a result of war. no one wants war. >> is occasionally necessary h we go to war sometimes because
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there are objective wes feel we need to attain. i want to begin with you, spencer, you covered this for years, you have been to afghanistan a number of times what is the objective at this point we are trying to attain what is our purpose in afghanistan? >> one stated purpose and another unstate bud probably more serious one. the stated purpose is that we are going to train the afghan security forces and then get them in a position to take over come sboot that the united states can basically get out. the unstated one, stay for the special operations war in pakistan. afghanistan is basically the only point from which you can launch that war because pakistan won't let u.s. troops in. >> jody, you reported about the talks about the strategy, talk we will accelerate withdrawal from 2014 to 2013, which is a
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fairly big deal. do you hear anything on that now? any sense of what the white house thinks on afghanistan going forward? >> we have seen a couple of things in the last few months. from the beginning, i think everybody in the white house has acknowledged that nobody has perfect certainty about this situation. and anybody who pretends that they do should not be believed but the two things we hear most recently are that the people who are concern dshd who have been concerned in the beginning, like vice president biden, within the white house, who have been concern about the lingering american presence there are growing more concerned and also that budgetary issues are very serious. and people internally have begun to question the amount of money we are spending on this war and whether the american public has an appetite for that >> i think this strategy has been a disaster, obama decided on the surge to trim our sprens in afghanistan but there wasn't any political or diplomatic strategy alongside that the
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relationship in 2009 completely deteriorated as karzai thought americans were supporting the candidates in the run-up to the 2009 election. karzai didn't get along with the ambassador there carl icon berry, didn't get along with holbrooke and carl eikenberry was kept there, for i think another two years, was it? so it has just been such an utter failure and i don't understand how you had that many troops over in a war zone and yet on the diplomatic side, you are pursuing failed strategy. >> spencer is that correct, not been a political strategy to back the military one? >> i want to disagree with elise somewhat on that i think there was a diplomatic strategy in 2009, which was to marginalize karzai and it failed massively. >> why are we pursuing a counterinsurgency when the key premise of that is to have a reliable partner, you try marginalize your reliable partner? very flawed from the get-go. >> you are bright that the thinking as it went there you
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saw this from the first time that joe biden, who during the bush administration had a pretty good relationship with karzai, went to afghanistan along i think with jim jones, might actually, different country when they do it, but basically, biden hector also karzai about all the ways add free ride during the bush tempt he wasn't going to have that anymore. that makes sense if you were going to start from the perspective of saying we don't need you and you we are going to find a way to get around you and prosecute this war while promoting other afghan alternatives to you but then they didn't do that or at least they didn't succeed at it, so then huff just got years of drifting this relationship and no way of really getting karzai back on board. >> think it's very bizarre. why do you try to alienate karzai when you still have to work with him? and karzai opposed the troop surge from the beginning and karzai is kind of a peacenik. karzai didn't want the troop
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surge and i think you see that now this public statement and with what he is saying and a very perilous point. the american involvement in afghanistan has essentially come to -- it is coming to a close. >> those public statements i think are worth evaluating for a minute more because you are getting very weird interpretations of them what karzai says is he wants u.s. troops to pull took their operating bases more quickly and he has not exactly give an timetable you hear a lot of blind quotes in the newspapers from administration officials saying he has not said when, he didn't really mean it he is posturing for domestic consumption. i don't know. nancy, i read things like that i read the leader of afghanistan saying he want the u.s. troops out and the u.s. saying they want troops to pull back and not be involved. >> why are we not doing that? >> why are we not doing that? >> i don't know this is not my strong suit. all i can say is it is obvious the troop there is are exhausted. weary and they have been there over and over and over again.
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if you can call it a good thing, something jodi says, the war, the length, the amount of money has made people aware of the cost of war, the financial and physical toll of war and on both sides of the aisle, you have got people that are like, let's go. let's end it. >> it's interesting, nancy, when we looked at the wait story played thought week, there was a real mystery to it the first day or two, we didn't know hot here is the was or what his story was and think we kind of suspected what turned out to be true, which is that this is guy who had served several tours of duty. >> i think it was four, wasn't it? >> who appeared to be at the end of his rope t does seem to be like a paraboll of american military involvement in afghanistan and iraq and of the incredibly high cost. >> quickly before we go to break -- >> we have so many american troops who have gone to and from war over the years and they haven't committed atrocities. i don't want us to day say that the length of tour makes you a madman or a psychopath.
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we knee is not true r. >> we will be right back to talk about this more here with my colleague who reports on and from afghanistan for the post. no one i would rather discuss this with than him and he will be here when we come back. we always hear about jobs leaving america. here's a chance to create jobs in america. oil sands projects, like kearl, and the keystone pipeline will provide secure and reliable energy to the united states. over the coming years, projects like these could create more than half a million jobs in the us alone. from the canadian border, through the mid west, to the gulf coast. benefiting hundreds of thousands of families throughout the country. this is just what our economy needs right now. mid grade dark roast forest fresh full tank brain freeze cake donettes rolling hot dogs bag of ice anti-freeze wash and dry diesel self-serve fix a flat jumper cables 5% cashback right now, get 5% cashback at gas stations. it pays to discover.
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my colleague at the "washington post" is a senior editor and correspondent, bureau chief in baghdad for the first years of the iraq war and author. welcome rajiv. >> good to be on with you, ezra. >> i want to know about the events of this week, we talked about the shooting, we talk about the attempt on panetta's plane. are these indicative of anything happening to the war effort or simply high-profile events happening around american troops
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that are refocusing us on the war effort and the broader questions? >> as horrific as some of these events are as ugly as they are for us to see back here at home, to some degree, quite frankly, they are sort of unforced errors in the third or fourth quarter of a football game where the score is not entirely in our favor but these errors are not necessary liz determinative of the progress of the overall strategy. into the trying to say the strategy is working, far from it. the reason the mission there is so troubled goes well beyond one deranged army staff sergeant who goes on a killing spree or the unfortunate burning of a handful of core rans on an army base. it is deeper than that. it gets to some of the broader issues that you touched upon in the first segment, particularly, the lack of a civil military strategy. i just wanted to follow up on something elise was saying.
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you know, he is remark you are right that there is -- that the civilian strategy has not been necessarily linked to the military one but it's more than just an issue with the state department here. fundamentally, hamid karzai doesn't believe in our counterinsurgency strategy. he doesn't believe the problem is in the villages and disstroichblgts afghanistan, he believe it is entirely emmates in from pakistan and can't understand why we don't have all our troops on the border keeping out infiltrating taliban. >> curious if you agree, what i wanted to talk about, a lot of what seemed to feet into our strategy early on was analogy to the surge in iraq but a lot happening in the surge there was a resistant to al qaeda terrorism, beginning to bring local down cities to our side, was that misplaced, we can transpose from one country to other?
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we were fooling ourselves and caught with a wrong strategy in a place that is not working? >> the wrong lessons from those in iraq. many of the factors leading to a dedplin violence were starting to take place before the surge troops arrived in baghdad. what our forces were able to do was accelerate the changes and put them on dividing lines between sunni and shiite communities, for instance. in afghanistan, trying to create those factors from scratch. we were trying to convince the villagers of afghanistan that it would be better for them to cast their lot with the afghan government as opposed to the taliban. the problem is in many cases you the afghan government is far more rapacious and corrupt as seen by the villagers. with earn trying to do something very different than iraq. we thought if we poured in more money, brought in more troops, diplomats on the field, quo make this happen from scratch what it reveals is the limits of american power in trying to make this happen fanned you don't have a good local partner, your odds of trying to make it happen reason all that much more slim.
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>> think rajiv is making some great points and i think i would point out the stark difference, we surge in iraq, we were primarily surge nothing baghdad and surge nothing afghanistan, we were surging into southern afghanistan into village which is is what hamid karzai complaining, why are we going into the village, attacking the taliban, very ambiguous energy these villages in helmand, he sees the real problem being in pakistan. >> what is the difference between doing an urban surge and a rural surge? how does that change the questions and the tack 'tis you have to ask and employ? >> first, when we are talking about an urban surge, we have the luxury of a clustered population in one area, you secure a neighborhood there are adjacent neighborhoods where perhaps insurgents you can use as a staging point and clear the neighborhoods and expand. the an jal jie an ink spot. >> strength in one place creates
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strength in others. >> it can if it works well. with afghanistan isn't like that villages are cut off from one another for a tremendous, very distance. there around roads in afghanistan, hard to get from one place to another. when i was in one province traveling down dirt roads in a humvee, we came to a point in a road traveling over a quasibridge, the bridge itself, the passage was just too far this froert axle of the vehicle so you have to just get out and walk in a place where on your way to a potential house where insurgents are is totally exposed. you can't connect these place notice same way that you could in iraq. >> jodi, you have this scene in your book, before announce decision, a side with joe biden which wanted too pull out quickly, the generals wanted a surge and obama came to the middle path and demanded before he went out, everybody there affirmed t everybody there had
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consens consensus. i read that, it sounds in one way like a great political coup, the other, if you have got everybody from these two quite different camps agreeing with each other, maybe you actually haven't come to a decision on which path you are really going to follow. maybe you have a mudded strategy. >> they went through an exhaustive process, took quite a long time and needed to come to some sort of conclusion, the question exthat was the fall of 2009 this is early 2012. is the strategy they concocted then still the right one? what's changed on the ground what is the president's set of choices now? >> at the time, it sounds like it made sense.
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everybody admitted the situation was incredibly fluid and unstable. >> the question is what is the job to finish, right? the actual strategy obama announced, objective designed to lead to, exists in pakistan and that's disrupting, dismantling, defeating al qaeda, which isn't in afghanistan. >> i want to get took that right when we come back here. this one's for all us lawnsmiths. grass gurus. doers. here's to more saturdays in the sun. and budgets better spent. here's to turning rookies - into experts, and shoppers into savers.
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afghanistan. al qaeda is across the border in pakistan. >> right. >> the goal supposedly, as we heard a lot in 2009, disrupt, dismantle, defeat al qaeda. then what happens, what happens is obama orders a surge after connotati consultation with new military commanders come up with a different concept a rather round about way of getting to this goal which is we center a surge around southern afghanistan in twice two provinces, hell imagined and kandahar, a big change from the way the war was fought the past eight years. the reason being, we were out of kabul the past eight years, we were in eastern afghanistan, lining with the eastern provinces there, but the parts of pakistan where al qaeda seems to be. sudd suddenly, pouring massive, massive troop dfrnlt you can't argue that baghdad was the center of gravity in the iraq war. >> what ends up happening is the
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last two years, we have essentially afghanized a war that was supposed to be about an afghan ajunlt for a strategy that works if it works, we will work in pakistan. you get focus about seizing and holding ground in afghanistan that doesn't really contribute to the goal of getting rid of al qaeda. the problem with this strategy is the more you focus on solving all of afghanistan's wicked problems, the fewer problems solve and the more you create for yourself. >> rajrajiv, are we in essence fighting the wrong war? the logic of the afghan war has become a logic to itself somewhat divorced from the original objectives we were trying to achieve and still need
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to achieve? >> we are fighting in places we probably don't have any need to be in such great numbers. you mentioned helmand. we sent in huge numbers of groups to a part of the country with 3%s, counterinsurgency to help the people, we were off in the desert, fool'ser rand. >> do you know how many troops we have in helmand, approximately? >> 20,000 u.s. troops and 10,000 british troops for a province of less than 4% of the country's population. >> wow. >> back in the spring of 2009, the first wave of obama -- troops that obama deployed, 17,000 troops, we spent 10,500 of them to a part of helmand that was home to less than 1% of the country's population. and this -- i am writing a book about all this stuff, ezra. it really goes to rivalries within the pentagon and complete misunderstanding of the conflict that led those marines to go to these places.
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they said, look, if you want to embark on a counterterrorism strategy, kill these high-level al qaeda and taliban operatives, you can't do that unless you do counterinsurgency, their argument to joe biden. can't do ct unless you do coin. what we now know, that was a -- that was completely misleading. if you look at the vast majority of all of these night raids, things that give hamid karzai so much heartburn but have been rounding up here and there high-profile figures, the vast majority are driven by signals intelligence it is eavesdropping, it is nsa intercept these are picking up and tracking cell phone calls by taliban and al qaeda leaders. it's not because some dude just walks into a forward operating base and says my neighbor's a bad guy. in fact, we dissuade intelligence -- we actually discount intelligence like that, in the first years of the war, we got drawn into tribal conflicts because, you know, we
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went in and raided the neighbor's house and discovered the neighbor was just from a rival tribe and we got sucked into local conflicts we didn't want any part of. >> spencer, on that note, my understanding is inside the administration there is' mer jent faction, which includes joe biden, but includes bill mccraven, the general who led the osama bin laden operation, believes we can sort of special forcesize -- that is not a great -- very good term, but we can move back to special forces more aggressively in this war s that right? >> admiral mckrachb, who designed the campaign who killed osama bin laden sees afghanistan as a residual presence that basically will become the job of special operations forces. that's going to have its own set of problems. reducing troops, from the perspective that war is a bad thing starks good thing, talking
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before about what hamid karzai is angry about, things like night raids, that's what special operations forces do. >> right. >> so the footprint will be smaller, a lot stealthier, a lot more lethal, the military likes it say the word kinetic, the euphemism for this. >> really orwellian. >> i don't dipsagree with that. >> wondering how long, how long or how quickly can we get out of there? >> we can be there -- >> sounds so complicated and so intricatesome there a way to speed up us getting snout is there a turf war going on right now, we should stay, we should go >> this is the complexity. the way in which everyone sort of decided is your path to getting sought getting the afghan security forces into a position of competence, basically hand it over to them. the thing is this is not static
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training, classroom training, the only way to really train them is to get them going out on mission these use, so they see what competence looks like and get to maybe not the level of competency that the united states military possess bus something more than we have now. we are talking about a really low, low baseline. the question becomes, as we built this force to such a large, large degrees, something like 360,000 troops, soldiers and cops, by october. >> cost $6 billion every year. >> we have to look at what kind of army we are trying to build. we are trying to blood modern army the u.s. image with' will be a borat field hospitals and core commands, think back to the '80s. the afghans wearing flip flops and carrying ak-47, perhaps a few hell fire missiles or stinger missiles provided by the cia, they were able to defeat theself yet. the afghans can actually fight, they have believe in what they are fighting for. right now you a lot of afghans aren't believing in the
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government of hamid karzai. trying to say, put in money do all this stuff, i actually think there is a broader question in terms of if you can fix some of the governance issues, perhaps the issues with training the army can do that and we don't need to be spending as many billions of dollars to build the army that is the ideal for americans in the pentagon. >> i think rajiv was talking earlier about the pentagon and conflating counterinsurgency with counterterrorism. i think what has been missing is that at the end of the day, we have always needed a political solution to what's happening in afghanistan. >> isn't that a war of distinction though? >> in 2008, i was working for the nsc in afghanistan. look how over the course of, you know ex'09, the obama administration, we have absolutely no relationship with this civilian government whose capacity we had hoped to build. >> that is a crucial
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distinction. like to say another word on it the difference between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. people hear them and they sound the same. >> counter insurgency is basically we have a ton of troops in a lot of place in afghanistan and it is winning hearts and minds that is a very oversimplified explanation but i think for the purposes of this, counterterrorism would be a lighter footprint, which is what at the beginning of the afghan war, rumsfeld endorsed. always the strategy initially with the bush administration she's more, never going to be possible to construct afghanistan since we are basically -- a country decimated 30 years by war and, you know, suddenly look at where we are in 2012 and we have got 99,000 troops over in afghanistan. >> speaking of rumsfeld, i want to come back and talk about the gop's plans for -- the gop's plans we can do in afghanistan. that will be up next. i get cong. but now, with zyrtec-d®, i have the proven allergy relief of zyrtec®, plus a powerful decongestant. zyrtec-d® lets me breath freer, so i can love the air.
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the obama administration strategy in afghanistan and whether they are rethinking t i want to play you some sound here from rick santorum. >> given all of these additional problems, we have to either make the decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out and probably get out sooner. >> and what struck me about that is that it's sort of having it both ways, right? it is either we will do way, way more in iraq -- sorry in afghanistan, many more troops or get out, seems to be strategic incoherence to create -- imply a problem, implies the republican party doesn't know exactly which take it want was to right now in afghanistan. jodi, you have been covering these folks, do you have a thought on that? >> think the candidates are limited how much pressure they they can really bring on the president to do one thing or another. as we have been discussing it is not a simplistic situation it does not lend itself well to quick one-liner political slogans. >> although that was, to be
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clear, a quick one-liner political slogan. >> sounded like he was hedging his bit, we should really make a commitment to the stay or really go. >> to me, it sounded like -- it sounded superficial to me, something a coach says in the third quarter of a game, not very specific. what should i actually do coach? >> got big -- i have said before, you know, go big, go home, all in or nothing. and by all in, i'm not talking more troops, i'm talking about high-level presidential engagement on this issue. president obama, pick up the phone and call hamid karzai you president bush used to have a vtc with him once a week, it was a big deal w new administration that kind of high-level interaction stopped and i think we have seen how our relations have suffered. >> do you agree with that you think not as much high-level presidential engagement on this issue? >> certainly hasn't and a conscious decision by this administration a few days before the inauguration, vice president-elect bind went to see har midcar zblichlt he looked forward to having the same sort
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of regular vtcs with obama. >> what is a vtc? >> video tell conference, sorry about that, have a video conference with obama and bind cut him off and said, look it is going to be a different relationship. you will talk to him a couple times a year. there was a lot of how's your son doing, a lot of chart and
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this -- this is a criticism that comes from people who were in the bush administration, they weren't really holding karzai to account. so yes, you know, karzai is sort of off the rails right now, but the real blame for that i think exists in both administrations, it would be too simple policist to say all this was fine and obama sent him off the rails so for the republican candidates this becomes an incredibly complicated issue, you hear mitt romney saying, look, we are not going to negotiate with the taliban what are we going do? kill every last single one or force them to surrender? there is a lot -- when you distill these down to these one-line soundbites, a lot of statements that just seem to be detached from reality. >> i wanted to ask rajiv how much pressure do you think the president is under to give the american people an answer pretty soon about what the way forward is and what do you expect to see from the administration in the next month or two? >> i don't expect there to be any dramatic changes coming out
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of the administration between now and the election. they are in the process of withdrawing 23,000 additional forces between now and september that is about as much as they probably can take out this summer while they are in the midst of a fighting san a big difference between afghanistan and iraq is you can't just drive those troops right out to kuwait it is much harder to even get that equipment out while you're also in the midst of a summer fighting san, but i think what we will see is toward the end of the year, perhaps after election, a more dramatic switch and military commanders want to keep the remaining, after they take these troops out, 68,000 troops on the ground. the pentagon would love to keep that number of troops there throughout 2013. i think we will see the white house saying this is way too much we want to move to a mission that put the afghans more into the lead and we will start see more dramatic draw downs next year. but i don't foresee anything too significant, part is the white house wants to avoid the optic that it is being forced into
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greater draw dawns because of a shooting rampage, mistakes made by soldiers, they have to stick to the narrative drawing down on success, deep down inside, lot don't believe that, they can't sort of say, you know what we were right and the military was wrong on the surge. we said we didn't think this was going to work, we were right u into the politically winning strategy in an election year so they are going to have to sort of all be the on the same page in terms of the public narrative how this is working. >> spencer? >> is significant from what rajiv said,th in sense of our political debate we are about to have, we see the scope of what go big means it doesn't mean add troops, it means very slowly and for as much time as possible, draw out the draw down. when santorum says go big or go home, obama trimmed troop levels, there was no appetite for doing anything more than that the most he could really propose is we will back date, we will back load the draw down until after 2013, and that really speaks to the fact that,
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you know, 54% of the public thinks that obama's draw down is too slow. >> rajiv chandrasakan, thanks for being with us. >> thank you. coming up next what if president obama cannot use a bully pulpit to get the public on the side of afghanistan or anything else my story of the week. ttd# 1-800-345-2550
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that's logistics. ♪ ♪ chips from here, boards from there track it all through the air, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ clearing customs like that hurry up no time flat that's logistics. ♪ ♪ all new technology ups brings to me, that's logistics. ♪ read this week or watch this week are wrong a lot of the stories you read and watch every week in fact, are wrong, that is because one of the most foundational basic beliefs we have how american politics works, leaders in washington make things happen is wrong. too often, politics is prevented as an episode of "the west wing." now, i liked "the west wing" a good show, but the way it worked, there was a problem that needs to be solved a bill that needs to be passed, our protagonist you can the president, needs the final five
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minutes to gift stirring, inspiring, preferably aaron sorkin-scripted speech that reminds us of what unites us as americans and you roll the credits. ment and you hear this all the time. >> the most powerful person in these negotiations, our president, has failed to lead this debate. >> in order to bring that about, the president needs to lead e. >> what people are looking for is the president to lead. >> but here is the thing what the president does to lead, rhetorical persuasion, largely, it doesn't work. not only doesn't it work, it can actually make things much, much worse for him. george ed sward political scientist at texas a&m university. about 20 years ago, he was asked to give a paper on presidential rhetoric. he began looking at major speeches, trying to see what effect they had had on the polls. what he found was kind of shocking. there is no evidence, literally zero, zilch, none that presidential speeches can persuade the american people at all. let's begin with ronald reagan, the great communicator, great speech giver. when reagan left office after eight years, eight years in
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which he was talking to the american people regularly, support for regulation and spending on health care, on welfare, urban problems, education, environmental protection, aid to minority, a all that wasteful government spending and regulatory interphones are enreagan didn't like, support was higher than when he had come into office, support for defense spending, the one kind he did like, was lower than when he entered office. nor was reagan actually that popular, according to a 2004 study by gallup, compared all the presidential job approval rating it is had on record, reagan was slightly below average 53%. only later we game dime see him as the icon he is today. but this isn't just true for reagan t is true for every president. bill clinton, great, tireless communicator. between his first inauguration and midterm election, he traveled to nearly 200 cities and towns to sell his presidency and his policies. but his poll numbers fell. his signature legislation, the health care reforms, failed. and in the next election, the republicans took control of the house of representatives for the first time in more than 40 years. then there's george w. bush.
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remember this? >> let me put it to you this way, i earned capital in the campaign, political capital and know intend to spend it. >> he true i had to spend it after that on social security privatization. he created the largest, most aggressive campaign any incumbent president has ever mounted on behalf of a single legislative initiative, 60 appearances across the country in 60 days, it was a giant fail for them. candidate obama also gave pretty good speeches but president obama hasn't had any easier time of t he is unpopular, health care bill unpopular. afghanistan, unpopular and epps not that popular. but it's arguably worse than all that, not just that they can't per switched another political scientist, francis lee of maryland looked at the effect presidential persuasion has on congress, on the very people who need to vote for these initiatives. what she found was a presidential speech spoorg piece of legislation does two things. on the one hand it makes the president's party stronger in support of the bill. on the other hand, it polarizes the other party against it the
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reason is simple and it makes perfect sense, if you think about t elections are zero sum. for one party to winger the other has to lose. and the president, whatever else he is, is leader of one of the two parties. so when he throws his presidency behind a bill and that bill's passage becomes a win for him and his side, it becomes a loss for the other party. so, even if it is good policy, even if maybe supported variants of it before, they have ever political reason to oppose it. so in a system where you almost always need bipartisan cooperation to get anything at all done, aggressive presidential leadership and inspiring public speeches can actually make it harder. the president "leading" can make it. more difficult to get anything done to paraphrase upton sinclair, difficult to get a man who support something if his re-election depends on him not support it. the stories you read if only the president would give one more speech or tweak his mess emergency this direction or that, everybody would be fine. they are wrong. my guests may not agree with me. so i want them to weigh in right after this. ♪ we were skipping stones and letting go ♪
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joining us is the senior editor and staff writer at the new york, rick was the chief speechwriter for the carter administration from '79 to '81. my piece, my read there was adapted from a piece i wrote for the new yorker and rick's wife edited it, though rick didn't know that until this morning. welcome to the show. >> thanks. >> i want to begin with you, you were a speechwriter for condoleezza rice, in the bush administration. you heard there was a bit of -- i won't say the tack on speechwriter but questioning its he have cass i is there are counter examples. can you think of a time it moved opinion? >> iraq, for example. look at the irraj strategy, hugely unpopular. everyone was saying no, this isn't going to work. president bush gave an address in january 2007. over the course of the rest of his administration made a case for what we were doing and why it was important to succeed in
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iraq. now, today, cut to today and the general consensus is the surge worked. >> do you think that is an example of rhetorical persuasion or example of the search working? >> i would separate. you know, the stats that you are talking about the measure of public opinion, you're looking at public opinion after a speech. think that you're kind of -- it misses the long-term affect of what happens from the top trickle down of the message, whereas the president speaks and he affects people, maybe the dissident in a prison in egypt who is, you know, inspired and says, well, the president of the united states is advocating for me, there's still hope or maybe the surrogates on the team who say this is the president's message, here is how i'm going to support them, influential op ed. >> what do you think, rick? >> i think your piece was great, ezra. >> thank you. >> i appreciate it. >> i think you totally made the case that presidential rhetoric does not get you legislation.
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it doesn't do that kind of lifting, heavy lifting, what you said about the surge, it is backwardser, the success of the surge validates the ret ring. i think we see this in about all presidential rhetoric. presidential rhetoric does little things like inspire dissidents or direct bureaucrats. if only becomes great when history made it great. an example is the gettysburg adprechls complete flop when it was given. >> was that the term at the time, floparoo. >> what i do like about your piece is that so often, you know, in government, people say? a failed communication strategy. >> right. >> maybe is it is a failed policy. so, that really -- >> great rhetoric and lousy policy. i read when i was working in the white house, i read a lot of old
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presidential speeches. some of the best were by warn g. harding. >> a real snoozer, i hear. >> nobody quotes those because they didn't produce the historic change that then retrospectively validates the rhetoric r. >> the other side of it the polar rising effect, talk about speech's effect on foreign policy. part of the piece to karl rove, related story trying to do social security privatization, talked to a senior democrat on house, ways and mean also, we can do this together, wouldn't get pefring you want, i wouldn't get everything i want, we can do it, the policy gap isn't that large but we can't support your president on this, we can't work with him. and rove said to me it was about george w. bush. it was not about the policy. i think you see examples of that in the obama administration, which say the individual mandate in health care, former lay republican party in congress and now zero republicans anywhere support it >> that thank is a part of that frankly worried me more, we want
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the president to come out and give the speech bus the outcome is we are asking to do something that makes it harder to get anything done. >> almost makes it like theater. it is funny, because i was surprised by your piece, i know, i'm a very emotional person, i guess, i watch speeches, any speech and i'm listening to it like it's on orator y'all exercise and i'm crying, and oh, my god it really does affect me, i really do think that it's gonna make change happen and then it doesn't. >> jodi, we are going to pick this up right when we come back here. >> okay. or... we make it pink ! with these 4g lte tablets, you can do business at lightning-fast speeds. we'll take all the strawberries, dave. you got it, kid. we have a winner. we're definitely gonna need another one. small businesses that want to grow use 4g lte technology from verizon. i wonder how she does it. that's why she's the boss. because the small business with the best technology rules. contact the verizon center for customers with disabilities at 1-800-974-6006.
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good morning from new york, i'm ezra klein for the great chris hayes. we were talking about presidential speeches and whether they work to persuade the public and work to persuade
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congress. jody, you wanted to jump n >> when you were writing your story, did you say what is the alternative here?i you wanted t >> when you were writing your story, did you say what is the alternative here? if speeches don't work, where does leave us? i wonder about in the error of talks, more informal, authentic style of communication, is thering? about the form of the presidential speech that needs to be updated? >> i think they could add some grass to it personally. paul begala in the piece, former clinton speechwriter says maybe speeches don't do what you want them to, what is the alternative in the answer is in none. the president hiding in the owe aloff, people didn't hear from him or six months or eight months that would be worse in addition to not getting anything done it would look like he wasn't even trying to. we have taken too much of a west
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wing-like focus on the president. the president so much a prime actor in american politics, when things aren't going well, we ask under every president, republican or democrat, what could they be doing different? why isn't this bill passing? what is wrong with the president's messaging strategy? congress comes first in the constitution, it isn where the power is to change policy but we don't give it the actionable agency. >> think there is something a little bit off about something now, ver ruk ka salt, those of you that don't know, willie wonka, the little girl that wanted it now, the tendency to want fast answers, the president to be the one that solved the problems, so right about the west wing. i feel like people look at these politicians as characters in a play. >> owe? what put the emphasis on speech making himself, i tell a story about my book about an immigration speech he really wanted to give in the early summer of 2010 and advisers did not want him to give it because there was no immigration legislation on the table.
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there was nothing for him to move from here to here. but he felt so strongly about the subject that he really wanted to speak out about t and it turns out the speech landed a kind of flat and he was very disappointed. >> was he hoping that the speech would then generate the legislation? >> if you look at the alternative of high-level addresses and rick santorum has recently been criticizing president obama for using the teleprompter all the time and let's, you know, should be talking more off the cuff. what happens when rick santorum talks off the cuff, he makes absolutely no sense. >> oh, my god. >> presidential speeches give a necessary order and logic to the most important messenger of america. >> maybe we do need a new forum. the state of the union is sort of the worst possible presidential speech, horrible laundry list, good reasons why it is a laundry list and all that i think obama's best rhetorical performance his administration that was meeting he had with republican leadership on health care. >> oh, that was terrific. >> he just kind of blew them all
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away and if you had seen that, that would dispose of this whole teleprompter nonsense. >> for that reason, that meeting won't happen again, right? nobody wants to come up to be a prop and line them up and knock them down. ask about the state of the union, i feel like the state of the june a speech that speechwriters hate t is formless rhetoric, it doesn't have a narrative arc, not dramatic, a laundry list. doesn't move the needle, the funny thing, people like the state of the union, people liked bill clinton's 85-minute state of the union, mentioned every single thing the government might do i thought obama's spate state of the unions have done well in instant pollingsome there something a judge on the rhetoric of the state of the union, people like the communication, they are interested in knowing what is going on in the government o >> people do like it. it is like a business briefing, but there are very few dwheets stand out from all the state of the unions throughout our history, go back looking at one.
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the gaffes, that's where presidential rhetoric can actually is a big effect if it screws up. >> i thought that the quote, "you lie" that was one quote that stood out. >> a completely different presidential speech that does work, isn't intended to pass legislation but to talk to the nation emotionally. i thought obama's best rhetorical moment was the tucson speech after the gabrielle giffords shooting. part of what was powerful, he wasn't trying to accomplish a clear-cut congressional tax, he was really coming to america, sorrow and grief to talk about this horrible thing that had happened to try to make sense of it. he happened to have fabulous news to share, which is that gifford also honored eyes and the situation was much better but i think part of the power of that speech was that even though of course there is always a political component, there was no explicit political component to trirgt thing you talk about the push back against it.
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>> i think that gets to the points about records and speeches, right? one reason the campaign speeches work better and speeches like the one after gaby giffords or the oklahoma city bombing is they actually -- is there not a follow-up you need to get, a big speech on health care, the bill doesn't pass and things look bad, nobody thinks you are a great communicator. the speech might have been better well delivered, the teleprompter broke and he did a lot off the cuff, rick santorum might have love it had, incredibly well reviewed, health care went nowhere, retrospect, think of communication strategy being a failure which i guess it was. this thing presidents get, george edwards gave to me, they get fooled by campaigning, give speeches for a couple of years, then become the most powerful person in the world, so you are really primed to think your speeches matter quite a bit and you are brought face to face with their limits. >> let's go back to president obama's communication's strategy with afghanistan. he has not given a high-level address on afghanistan really since the december 2009 west point speech.
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and i think that there's been so much confusion among the american public what is our mission what are we doing? there is this mission confusion about the strategy and something that hasn't been prevented in the case and you can look at how the deterioration of public support. >> i want to show you guys a graph on the support for the iraq war, we have talk about the iraq war, what you should see here, this goes back to essentially 2001 so before we were talking too much about going into iraq. democrats and republicans and independents, you can see on the beginning of the graph over there, support for taking out saddam hussein was above 70%, republicans above 80% that line there is when the war begins what you see a massive polarization, democratic support goes down into the 20s, republican support remains in the 70s and 80 oz, one thing you have to be careful with when you begin to make -- when you begin to make an issue, a big part of the public debate is you lose the other side's support. one interesting thing preparing for segment, we looked to see if
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there was a large gap of support in afghanistan, while there is a trend downward in general there is not a huge partisan gap, a relatively unpolarized issue. i have no inside information on this but i wonder if it is not part of the strategy. >> well, to turn the war into something the country doesn't support, i don't know. i think it is terrible to have three times the the troops and 99,000 and mission con fuchlgts i thi -- confusion. >> we are trying to figure out.
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>> you make the point this is not a presidential dictatorship, consists of different parts separately elected. the mythology of a presidential campaign contributes to this problem because when you run for president, when obama is running for president, he didn't say, well, we are going to have -- we are going to try to get -- we are going to get a health care program that won't be that good. not going to have republican options, going to be a horrible mess, a little bit better than we have got now, maybe a stimulus, okay, won't be big enough but it will help. that would be the honest thing to say that would be the truth. but you can't do that when you are president, you make these promise and you will inevitably fall short, down the have the power to get your program in place. just doesn't happen. >> former chief speechwriter for jimmy carter and editor at the new yorker, thanks for being here. >> thanks. when we come back, what the gop demo graph ricks problem and don't want you to know about the latest primary exit polls. progresso. it fits!
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spencer ackerman is back with us at the table now. there was a time not too long ago when prominent republicans used to talk about a party that was more inclusive, more diverse, more representative of america than ever before. in fact, they didn't just talk about it they planned it plotted about t karl rove's dream of a "permanent republican majority" was based on attracting latino voters. take, for instance, george w. bush speaking to a crowd in '04. >> there ought to be diversity in political parties in america. that's why i'm going to work hard to tell people my message to tell people what i believe. my cabinet is diverse. the people who walk into the oval office and say, mr. president, you're not looking so good today, they are diverse.
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and i'm better off for it. >> that's good line. >> but it wasn't just a good line there. in the 2000 election, bush's campaign book, "renewing america's purpose" a collection of his speeches on different policy topic, begins, opens with an education speech to the latin business association answered starts that speech by talking about "the latino economic miracle." in the whole book, which goes for hundreds and hundreds of pages, bush never writes a word illegal immigrant or any variant there of. the one speech about immigration in the book about making the immigration and naturalization service a kinder, gentler agency. the problem, bush says is new immigrants are treated as suspects and strangers not welcomed as neighbors. later in bush's presidency, woe attempt to pass an immigration reform bill, a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrant bus that effort was broken by a conservative revolt. the anti-immigrant wing of the party was too strong. now, republican parties is a
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real demographics problem, building a permanent minority. every year, the nonwhite proportion of the electorate grows by half a percentage point, jonathan chait wrote, the minority share increases by 2%. to see what that means, if michael dukakis had within running in '08 with obama's elector rarkt the same people came out to vote, the share of votes he got from the group in 1980 would have been enough to win him the election works have had president dukakis. part of why george w. bush said he wanted his party to be diverse it wasn't just rhetoric it is survival but decidedly not diverse. very smart ronald brown steen pointed out in the national journal, exit polls conducted in 16 states that have held republican primaries or caucuses in all but two, whites have cast at least 90% of the votes. take, for example, tuesday's primary, the population of alabama is 68% white, 26% black.
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however, the voting turnout in the gop primary in alabama was 94% white and just 2% black. it was even starker in mississippi, where 59.5% of the population is white and 37% is black. the voting turnout there was 97% white and 2% black. to compare, we can take a look back at the democratic primaries both mississippi and alabama in '08. the voting turnout for the testimonies in alabama was 45% white white and 52% black and the voting turnout in mississippi was 48% white and 49% black. and a recent fox news poll shows the problem this year's republican candidates are having with latino voters as well, likely latino voters favor obama 6-1. none of the gop candidates would garner more than 14% of latino vote come november. elise, not to make you answer for the republican presidential candidate bus am i wrong? this looks to me like a serious long-term problem for the republican party. >> i absolutely think it is a problem. not just restricted along race lines, i think you look at the
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republican problem with women. >> right. >> and, you know, with women specifically, i think obama won -- i think it was 56% of the female vote in '08 and that was -- that comp prized, i think, 54% of his total votes, he knows and making a concerted effort toward capturing women. this is a -- the republican party -- i support what president bush was doing, that's the kind of inclusive republican party that we need. otherwise, it's just not -- it isn't moving in the right direction, very disturbing. >> i have been shocked by watching the primaries and i keep thinking how are these candidates going to pivot in the general election when they are just being so mean and horrible to latinos, to blacks, to women? and i'm beginning to feel like they are not going to pivot, which means they don't want to win. i don't understand how they can keep doing the same kind of rhetoric and expect to attract these different kinds of voters. it doesn't make sense. the numbers aren't even there to
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support them getting elected. >> i think it's part of the greater conversation that was sort of supposed to happen about republicanism after obama's victory and never really did. after the 2008 election, we were all sitting around saying, okay, what's gonna happen next is the republican party is going to have a kind of reckoning about what it wants to be and where it's gonna go in the future and that never really happened. instead, there was this oppositional attitude towards the president, there was a swing toward the right and yet these problems have not gone away. >> i'm out of my league here, so i'm curious -- >> we have to talk with you about afghanistan. what do you think? >> do you think had the conversation didn't happen on the party decided they would adopt a white man's grievance politics? >> how will they win elections, purely by numbers, how will they win if it is just a white man's senator that is the part i don't get. >> there were marked shifts, you know, lee it rise of creeping
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sharia, that wasn't part of the discourse during president bush's era. >> bush fought hard to make sure it wasn't. >> which is always something very admirable and worth pointing out, too that republicans elected george w. bush or nominated and elected george w. bush in 2000, 2004 and their next nominee was john mccain, essentially every republican innocent senate most associated with comprehensive immigration reform, his candidacy, too was something of an attempt to reach out. >> the surprise here i think is romney because there has been a harshness in tone and comments toward illegal immigrants that surprised a lot of people, he is a moderate former governor of a northeastern state. even if you look at his church, he was a leader in very diverse church, really large immigrant population. >> i absolutely agree the church has been very welcoming toward immigrants and also toward women so it baffles me a little way in the romney isn't doing more to establish that, hey, i -- you know, i'm not -- i'm for more inclusive --
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>> the mormon church did have its issues with african-americans. >> of course. >> just throwing that n. >> something to be fair that romney has been consistent on n 2008, he ran quite far to john mccain's right on immigration. you remember that was a big theme in the debate, romney consistently attacking him for being pro-amnesty n massachusetts, romney very aggressive if i'm remembering the story correctly, pushing english-only education in massachusetts schools. many thing romney has a moderate history on, there isn't a whole lot of history being pro-comprehensive immigration reform. he attacked rick perry, his comments on immigration, run for the right on the dream act which mean latinos support. so, i don't -- not only i do not think he can shift on this very well but doesn't appear to me that he actually is containing a shift within him. >> i can't ever tell with romney. no offense, i don't see the guy having a core. i just -- i mean, from a sentence to the next sentence, he changes his mind. he just does. >> that was his problem specifically with mississippi
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which i will talk about since i'm from mississippi. and he could have really, i feel, gotten support by presenting himself as a man of faith and not hiding from his mormonism. certainly, i do think it hurt him with evangelicals but look at joe lieb herman was hugely popular in the sow, he was seen as a man of faith. i thank you is a mistake. if he doesn't -- if he would show himself more, it would yield a positive result. and lots of republican strategists have felt the same way because the truth is that faith is such a big part of who he aught then theically is that if you take it off the table there is kind of a vacuum there. >> one place that puts you as well is that you look at -- there is a steady wish we haven't got to the number because steady decline in support of hispanic voters for republican politician. george w. bush got 40% of hispanic voters in 2004. john mccain got 31% f that now goes down to 14% as current polls do i think that is probably unlikely, but that's quite a bit less.
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looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. welcome back, talk bgtgop and minority support. i want to play you something rick santorum said in advance of the puerto rico primary this week. >> it felt unnecessary to me and more to the point, felt like an odd thing to do when you are trying to went puerto rico primary, maybe there is a deeper
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game here that i don't understand. if there is -- >> some secret weird strategy. >> at this stage in the game, i'm wondering how wounded romney really is if he, you know, you will get the nomination, but i'mii' am wondering how it is. maybe they need santorum to get the nomination, run it off the cliff, show the horrible stereo times of republicans, plain out him having the nomination and then maybe republicans will learn a lesson and in 2016 have a great candidate like chris christie. >> maybe it is like aa go to the bottom, bottom, bottom, dry out and rebuild themselves. i have been shocked the past few years how the tea party could somehow infect and using that word on purr portion the republican party and take it -- hijack it.
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i don't get the numbers see,will build consensus, separate them more and more and more from mainstream. >> you have to go back george w. bush. talk radio killed that. there was a republican president pushing a republican president largely trusted, before the tea party. strangled that. >> he will lease mentioned that earlier, also bush's embrace of islam -- you see why i don't do -- >> conversion to islam. but after 9/11, making clear that muslim americans were fully american and that there was not to be a backlash even if you were to prosecute the war on terror with a kind of bell doesity that americans can't like. there was an undercurrent pinned up finding that hard to swallow.
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>> faith-based initiatives, he could have a policy like that inclusive of all religion buys n -- religions by not singling out any religion. i don't think there should-government-mandated insurance covering contra accept bugs to i don't like the tenor of the debate u. it is horrible. >> ends up, very hard to defend the -- you know, first amendment on those grounds. >> you know, i know the democrats, you know, kind of look at the chaos in the republican field and root it on. which think something does get lost when off series of weaker candidates, we just saw on the tape, the ideas don't necessarily seem that serious or mainstream or address to a growing latino population because ultimately, obama should be challenged on his ideas in a sear juice waned at entire country benefits from debate
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between two strong candidates. >> it shuts down is a serious conversation on things. we talked about obama given a immigration speech, most people didn't hear, we have almost never heard discussion of immigration again in terms of sheer economics, but a lot of reason to believe, worried about entitlements in the long term, an aging society, one way to make the entitlement picture brighter is to have workers come in, aren't going to pay taxes, aren't going to be on medicare, social security, quite some time. proposals in congress, many economists, gave green cards to people that wanted to buy a house in michigan, arizona, nevada, very good for the housing market, not only not have the basic conversation over things like immigration but can't get over to the sort of more complex discussion about you know, ways to use it and ways to -- ways to leverage t i will say one other thing on this they had interview recently with the prime minister of denmark and one of the things she said to me, which was really interesting, she said to me the difference between us and you,
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you guys can have immigration if that gives you an ability to manage our labor force we don't have we just have to change our labor rules, you have this great gift and it just occurred to me how little we look like it. to europe, for them this is huge us to, how lucky is america? >> i'm just shaking my head just think bug it and also the fact that by listening to all the stuff today, i realize that bush actually was progressive in ways that i had forgotten. >> thank you. thank you. >> like jody said, shouldn't be so cut and dried because you're pro-democrat, you're anti-republican it does make the country stronger but just goes to show you how extreme the republican party has got. you are right about immigration. it shouldn't be looked at so horribly. >> you look at just this week the violence against women act is being debated and this is an act that helps women who are suffering the most extreme forms of domestic violence. why is it -- and chuck schumer, for political reason, wants to fast track it. understandably this is very much playing to the democrat strength to paint the republicans as at
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war with women. >> they kind of are though. >> exactly. you can't -- it makes it a very hard argument when republicans are -- some republicans are saying not lisa murkowski on the right side of this issue. >> she is alone. >> republicans saying because there is this clause in there about the u visa gives a visa to undocumented women suffering this form of abuse, we need to slow it down, we have to look into this i'm sorry, anything that slows down a visa for women who are -- >> being abused? ridiculous. that should rise above politics. >> not a good message for republicans. >> we are going to continue talking about this when we come back. [ artis brown ] america is facing some tough challenges right now. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands.
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welcome back, talking about the gop and minority vote and women vote. one thing i wanted to bring in this conversation, a flip side to the strategy people talk about you get more support among white males you get more support among noncollege educated white
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males who used to vote for the democratic party, now vote for the republican party. people look at these as zero sum, the democratic party to one side, republican party on the other, a new poll from the national journey says not true the amount of white males that white noncollege educated males who mitt romney is capturing is 3 or 4% lower than what john mccain captured in 2008 and it sort of make mess wonder if that assumption is true. i think there is a lot of people who look at this, look at what they are saying about women or puerto rico or immigration saying that doesn't describe the people i know at all t turns them off, too. >> well, i also wonder if part of that population has gotten to know obama better in the last couple of years, whether's more familiar figure and also what's kind of funny about romney's numbers among white working class males is that this was always a group that obama had so much trouble with. looks like romney may have more trouble with them. these two kind of harvard guys.
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say what you will, both harvard guys there is, in my opinion, a quality that president obama has, his whole life story, raised by a single mom, that was a struggle, not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, say what you want about romney, he was born rich, he got richer and he doesn't seem to connect with regular people. he just doesn't. >> i wonder how much the poll numbers are connected to the general lack of enthusiasm for the republicans for the candidates they have to choose from. because i think voting turnout at these primaries, really depressed. my mom worked the polls in mississippi last week for the primary. 200 people showed up the entire day and it wasn't diverse at all. i wonder if we are having -- look at how santorum won mississippi you can wasn't sbektsed to win mississippi. he won the born again christian vote. he energized a certain base that came out and support him on
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election day. >> this isn't something people talk about in elections, polls, 52% support this guy, 48% support the opponent, but in fact -- a lot of what matters is the supply of voters, not just how they break down but what they choose in 2010, if you had the same leak tore rat you had in 2008, would you have seen a very, very different result. there is a poll this week republican voters less excited about voting for mitt romney than john mccain, whichic think is a warning portent. >> i think it is pretty hard to move a demographic group a very loyal to one party or another across the lines. i look at the news romney campaign made about attracting jewish voters. election after election we see
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this republican fantasy, that jews will embrace the republican party in really large numbers. it just never happens. >> is it a bank shot toward evangelical voters israel is -- there aren't enough of us jews in the united states to make a difference. >> voting republican in large numbers. might change new york. >> florida. jewish fund refresh big in american politics, see it in different ways for the obama campaign and mitt romney campaign that heaters in the politics. >> i think what republicans have really neglected mel lynn yas. that is a pool only going to keep expanding in terms of actually going out to the polls and voting as they age. voting patterns are set after three leeks and very likely the third election that many millennials vote democrat,
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because i don't think the republican party has been doing much to bring millennials in, even though there is a lot of i would say disgust and disdain for how they are not as excited the hope and change they vote for didn't play out. >> you have got somebody like rick santorum saying if you want to go to college or be educated, you are a snob. why would they be drawn to that? >> rick santorum has a ba, mba and jd that is one more postgraduate degree than barack obama has, not shying is a snob or not. >> out of his mouth i thought how -- i watched to see if his nose was going to grow >> romney had tough talk recently on student debt there is no more emotional issue for people in their 20s across political parties than student debt. it is such a heavy burden. i was very surprised his rhetoric was so harsh. >> one thing, people assume that there is always this young/old split with young going to the
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democrats and older voters going to republicans. it is not true. reagan, younger voters broke for republicans, they became a genx. >> reagan, the 1980 election, age myself but that was my first presidential election and i was in college and i remember having -- being shocked to have friends that were voting republican because until that point, i thought all young people were democrats. >> what was reagan's message? a message of liberty. wasn't being a cultural warrior, he was talking about the notions of individual responsibility and liberty. that resonates with young people as seen by the huge support for >> ron: paul among youth. as the republican party, we tried -- this election cycle, really divisive over sow social issues, need to shift the conversation and talk about liberty. >> any of this stuff with santorum and romney viewing college education a harsh way
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that explain the numbers you pointed up earlier? i imagine even noncollege educated voters hold the idea of their own advance n a great deal of esteem and not look kindly on someone sort of telling you that dream indicates a character? >> that is an excellent topic for a future "up with chris hayes". what we do know now that we did not know last week. my answers are coming. ok, guys-- what's next ? chocolate lemonade ? susie's lemonade... the movie.
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his work air. chris will have this response when he returns next week. i will tell you what i didn't know when the week began but right now, a preview of melissa maris perry. good to see you. >> hey, he is remark doing a great job this morning, having fun watching you. we have got a fresh face on presidential politics today, everybody is trying to predict winners, wither going to talk about losers. and how the art form of losing is actually critical part of the american democratic process. also talk about the obama administration's new guidelines on how the big contraception compromise is going to work. i have got sandra fluke here to talk about that. he is remark you know, some people can't get a majority of voters think the best answer is to actually stop people from voting. we will talk about that finally, just because chris is off today and i know the uppers in the nerd land like it, i will have a little gold standard line in his honor. >> i can't believe we didn't do the gold standard today. making me feel terrible.
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melissa harris-perry is coming up next. what do we know now we didn't know next week, jake stewart, a man with bad timing, head of global communication at goldman sachs, handling the latest pr disaster, greg smith's searing very public res resignation op ed in the "new york times," stewart has not been there long. he joined goldman sachs on tuesday you smith's resignation op ed came out on wednesday, sorry, jake. also know that stewarts aprevious job was at the treasury department, which was intimately involved in the bailouts that kept goldman sachs and the rest of the financial industry alive through the crisis they helped to cause. so we also know that under president obama, the revolving door continues to spin. thanks to an important story by jeremy stay hill of the nation, we now know why a represented journalist whose work with relied upon by numerous western media outlets remains in a yemeni prison despite an outcry of human rights groups that criticize his trial and that yemen's president prepared and about to sign a pardon for his
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release. the reason he is still in jail, a phone call last month from president obama asking president saleh not to pardon shea. president obama based his request on shea's alleged association with al qaeda al qaeda in the arabian peninsula but neither nation presented evidence other than interviews. shea's reporting included disproving u.s. involvement of an air strike that killed 14 women and 21 children in yemen. when stay hill asked state department spokesman beth gosselin whether the should produce evidence of shea's crimes, gosselin said "that is all we have to say about this case." so now we note u.s. is keeping him in prison what we don't snow y thanks to "up" viewers, we know the arizona senate judiciary committee signed off on a bill that charts new territory in republican efforts to control women's sex lives. laut will let employers refuse to cover contra accepts in their health plans unless the employee can prove she is using birth control as part of a treatment of a medical condition but we
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knew plenty of state were considering laws like that, this law, according to the aclu, may make it easier for employers to fire any woman who uses birth control for preventing pregnancy. until now we didn't know anyone was considering that. and texas governor rick perry run afoul of the voting rights act, the law requires those to get approval from the justice department before changing election procedures. texas was informed of the own data showing voter i.d. law among the strictest in the nation would disproportionately prohibit spanish voters from voting. we know from the department of justice that the state of texas could not produce any evidence of this voter fraud actually happening. the chorus warning of a voice of military strikes against iran include steven hadly, bush security adviser played role in the false warning about iraq pursuing yellow cake uranium. hadley told a panel at the
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university of maryland that if something needs to be done it is not military action. we know that hadley's jim has been off in the past but if even he is warning against military action in iran we know just how far outside the mainstream those confidently urging it truly r you can submit your own now we knows at up msnbc.com and we will find out what our guests know now that they did not know went week began right after this. ok! who gets occasional constipation,
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we have not done such a great job. inform i have. >> nancy has been a hero. i've gone around the morning bun. i want to find out what my guests know now they didn't know at the beginning of the week. >> we might have a little acne and fatigue we talked about it. it got me fired up about afghan women visiting the prison in
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kabul are subject to an invasive search similar to the probes talked about in the -- >> you're kidding. >> no. this has been happening the last two or three months reported. men of course do not have to go through the same invasive search, but women visiting their husbands, you know, one woman said she had been 20 times and it had -- it's just absolutely horrible, and you look at how when these fundamental rights of women are disrespected just society as a whole, we have to do something. >> how horrible that now that's something we now have in common. >> it's very bizarre. i will call it out in afghan society and call it out in american society. >> you go girl. >> nan city? >> well, this is kind of old and a little bit embarrassing because i love documentaries. instead of using netflix or something like that to just rent them, i buy them. but sometimes i don't open them right away. i just want to own them. finally i opened up a documentary called "mr. conservative" about barry
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goldwater, which was really interesting and i realized that these days the republican party is practically -- they're socialists. no. i'm sorry. barry goldwater is a socialist compared to republicans now. he was pro gays in the military and had progressive views in some ways that this batch of republicans would just run away from. i was shocked by that. >> you know, i was really struck by something in this morning's paper by my colleague kit sealy. we do this series called "the long run" about the lives of the presidential candidates. there's something that happened that just a few years ago i had completely forgotten. rick santorum lost his race in pennsylvania by 17.4 percentage points. that is the largest margin -- i'm reading here -- at least since the civil war. you know, it's not an unknown fact, but it was so startling to me that i just wanted to bring it up this morning.
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>> i heard it was since 1980 or something. but, yes, he lost huge. i mean, it's a funny thing it that rick santorum, he was not a dominant republican politician. he also was not liked in the senate by his colleagues. he was quite disliked, considered prickly. one other thing, if you go look at elizabeth drew's piece from the new york review of books in 2005, rick santorum was a key player for the k street projects, one of their enforc enforcers. >> some have named him scamtorum because he had basically kind of a fake address in pennsylvania and a huge mansion in mcclain. it just goes against -- you know, it's this big government republicanism. >> are people's memories that short? >> you have to wonder. it's a great story. >> spencer? >> at "wired" we write a lot about how technology transformed our everyday life. one of the biggest aspects of that is how new technologies get
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into our homes. we learned this week that cia director david petraeus is trying to figure out how to spy on us through these new emerging smart home technologies. there's a lot of ambient geolocation data that goes out and that presents quite a great deal of surveillance opportunities. >> wow. i actually want to bring up something else from "wired." i now know the pentagon has a laser dispersion ray because we have video of spencer getting shot by it. ♪ >> okay! >> it's hot. a little hot. >> i want more detail. like, what did it feel like twh hit you? how hot? how painful? >> from about here to there i'm getting blasted with a millimeter wave technology, a version of microwave tech it na
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doesn't cook me. because there's no flash, no sound, no round or anything like that, you get no warning but suddenly you heat up really, really quickly. your body takes over and makes you jump away. >> and we appreciate you going through that in the name of news. that does it for us here today. my thanks to my guests. thank you for getting up with us on "up with chris." i'm ezra kline. coming up next is melissa harris-perry. join us tomorrow sunday morning at 8:00 when jared bernstein economic adviser to vice president joe biden. until then, you can follow us on twitter. see you tomorrow. thank you for getting "up."
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