that expert is charlie cook along with john feehery.there a win direction right now, charlie, that will effect elections coming out of this fight over the debt ceiling and, of course, the shutdown? >> chris, you know, these kinds of things nobody wins. everybody loses to a center extent. one side always loses more than another. republicans are suffering from an enormous amount of self-inflicted damage. they're hurting their brand. and this is damage that can go for a long time. you know, and i would look at it just so much as the 2014 election. but i would look beyond it as well. 2016. for example, you've got 20 up in the senate in 2016 and only 10 democrats. and seven of those are in states that barack obama carried. so they're doing some long-term damage that's going to hurt them far beyond 2014. >> let me stay with you for a minute. i want to follow the thinking of charlie. this thing about cruz. i don't think cruz could ever be president. he doesn't seem to have the personality or the manner of a candidate. he's too hot for a presid

but i was listening to john feehery a little earlier.he president needs to get a little bit off his high horse. he voted against raising the debt limit when he was in the senate. and there are some things, specific things that he could give up, wouldn't cost him anything, that would allow boehner to save face so we can get this thing done. >> give me some examples. can you think of them? >> yeah, sure i can. the medical device tax. 76 senators voted to repeal the medical device tax. the keystone pipeline, which everybody in town knows the president's going to give up on eventually. the president laid out chain cpi on the entitlements. those are three things that john boehner can go -- that's a big win if you couple that with the fact that under sequester spending we're already spending much less, about half a trillion less than was projected. so you know, republicans need to take the win and go home and the president needs to do what president reagan did -- i mean, you were there, and you know president reagan presided over the biggest t

john favreau was the speech writer, and john feehery is a republican strategy. want to start with you in the republican party because you really know it. it's your home turf. it's made of the party we grew up with. moderate to conservative. now it has a new wing. who's winning? >> well, i think the establishment wing, if you want to say it, is not winning. they are taking on some more water. they've got to fight back in the primaries. they've got to be able to make these members honest so they don't keep on going to the right. the most important thing -- >> why is everybody afraid to challenge the hard right in the weeks of the government shutdown? so much they stayed in line until they got the permission slip from the speaker it's now okay to vote the way you think. >> they were worried about a primary. most members are risk adverse. and they worry about there is a populism going on in the country. not just the republicans but also the democrats. there's a disgust with washington. there's a disgust with new york. and i understand that and republicans -- >> what

john feehery, i think that's true, but i do think there's more likelihood come january.t there could be a shutdown of some length, but i do think your party and the whole country got a wakeup call about screwing around with the debt ceiling. i think the people that read the financial pages, people with 401(k)s, retired people. once you're 75 years old and the people know this, you can't get another job and make a ton of money. this is it. so what you've been able to save and build with compound interest, you don't want to screwed with. >> john boehner and mitch mcconnell had worked this out. there was never going to be a default. we said months ago there wouldn't be. >> why didn't he tell us? he said it but nobody believed him. >> he told 30 members of the moderate caucus he wasn't going to let it happen. it got out. >> my problem with him, the only big problem -- i have a lot of problems with boehner. but my big problem is at the end he knew he'd pull the plug. and for all those days the economy was getting hurt. and all the shakiness we showed to the world was not good

. >> john boehner, still speaker of the house, does he survivor, john feehery? how does he survive to have this lack of control over his own caucus and still continue to be the speaker. >> he's the best speaker at the moment. there is not going to be a traditional. traditional----challenge. it's not the rank and file, it's the 30 members who would vote against anybody and anything because that's what they believe in. this is not a problem with with competence like with newt gingrich. that was a competence problem. we don't have that with john boehner. he does not make foolish mistakes. this is an ideological problem, and it's not an ideological problem with the bulk of the party but with the smaller part. >> you don't have the votes in the chamber. you don't have the votes in the senate. you can't override the president with what you want to do and the country has been consumed on the dysfunction of washington as opposed to something that could have helped speaking ber disastf obamacare. >> everyone knows this is not his strategy. he ultimately had to play it ou