joining me now are dana milbank and maria teresa kumar. thank you for coming on the show. is titled, quote, the cruz afiction of the gop. you write the standoff has been a political blood bath for republicans and maybe that's exactly what was needed to right the political system. what do you mean by that? >> well, look. ted cruz did something very good for ted cruz and very bad for the republican party. and for that matter, for the conservative movement now you showed him being under water with that negative 14, the reason it's not much lower than that is not enough people know him yet. the more he's getting known to the american public, the more negative his numbers become. so he became the de facto leader of this shutdown, this -- and it was chiropractor clear from the beginning that it would be a disaster for his party. he took them in that direction anyway. they were intimidated into doing it. ted cruz isn't at this moment scaring the democrats to death. he's scaring his fellow republicans to death. >> maria, is ted cruz like other states rights defenders who oppose pro

dana milbank, political columnist for "the washington post." msnbc analyst and former are rnc chair, michael steele. and in san francisco, msnbc contributor and president of voter latino, maria teresa kumare troubles with the affordable care act website go beyond being parroted on "saturday night live." health sites woes could dissuade vital enrollee, the young and healthy. they write in its worst iteration, it could lead to a death spiral on falling enrollment and climbing prices. the president, dana, is sending his cabinet on the road. about you how much time is there to turn the tide before what have been glitches on the website become a real enrollment problem, do you think? >> well, nobody knows for sure. the administration has set itself a target of the end of next month. i mean, people generally tend to say it's within a four to eight-week period. you know, it's way too early to be talking about a death spiral. but if you don't get the young and the healthy signing up, and already they've had to postpone the penalties for not signing up. if you don't get those people signing up, all you're going to get is the older and the sicker signing up. and then it's just not going to be econ