do you think we can trust them that osa and jim messina are not selling access to our president?nization is as independent as the super pacs or romney and obama during the last campaign. if you believe that those independent super pacs were completely independent, then i think you'll probably say, well, maybe this is independent. it's hard to believe michelle obama came out and endorsed it and announcing this great n initiative and then the new york times, the los angeles times discovered that people who give a lot of money for access, it sounds very much like a perpetual campaign as opposed to something that would be positive for our nation. and i've got to say again, in you in your intro called us liberal, left leaning organization. >> megyn: i stole that from the new york times. >> common cause was founded by moderate republicans and those moderate republicans in 1970, john gardner. >> megyn: i've got to run, we're coming up against a hard brake, were you described as a leading liberal group by the new york times, and where i got it and thank you, bob, both sides to this issue

gina messina-dysert. deeply engaged in the ongoing debate about the future of catholicism in america. professor, good to have you on this program. >> thank you so much. tavis: let me start with the obvious. many of us, even those of us who are not catholic, this has not happened in 600 years, so it has not happened in our lifetimes, that we have had an ex-pope. >> certainly, this is a significant historical event. this is the first pope to step down in 600 years and one of only 10 in the entire history of the catholic church. people are really curious what this means. will it is ring be smashed. will he continue to be in fallible. catholics are figuring this out as they go along. i think the most recent reports are that they are going to smash his ring and that the pope will no longer be in fallible once he steps down on february 28. i think the vatican itself is really trying to figure this out because this really is unprecedented. tavis: so for the catholic church, he is like the voice of god, but he is

jim messina comes to you, it may be different from an outside group that has no connection to the white, i'm telling you $500,000 gets you four meetings with the president you believe him. >> no, absolutely. again, i'm not questioning that there is some questionable behavior and things that need to be looked into, i think there are, but what i am saying, it's not very different, now, even from an optics standpoint. brad i totally respect you and appreciate what you're saying, i don't think it's entirely true to say this is not something that happens on both sides of the aisle and if-- >> it didn't happen while i was there. >> megyn: to brad's point not in-- you know what we've got a lot ever work to do in washington. and let's get at it. thank you very much. nascar fans injured by the fiery crash in daytona are trying to file suit. are they likely to succeed? that's in kelly's next. hold on, prilosec isn't for fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. ♪ oh what a relief it is! >> kelly's court is in session. today. the nascar crash fallout. the new level of safety you c

now former campaign manager messina has a group, transformed, organizing for action.ey are bringing in donors to bring in $500,000 and they have quarterly meetings with the president. big donors. they also meet with president obama at the white house. unlimited personal and corporate donations. there are critics of this. especially about the influence of money and campaigns. back with the panel. steve, what about this? the white house putting back saying that ofa is separate and still committed to reducing the role of money in politics. >> right. >> jay carney has a difficult job to defend them on these points but he responded with a statement. reading it with a series of non-sequitur of how the president believes broadly in campaign reform but he didn't answer in a convincing way the charges about pay for play. are people going to pay $500,000 and get regular meetings at the white house? he didn't answer that very convincingly. this is not i'd say enough for the president to favor abstract way. the campaign policy reform. there was a statement from seven where they l

join me next time for a provocative conversation with gina messina-dysert. that is next time. see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more.

way i understand this, gem messina helped run the national campaign in 2012. a lobbying group based on what is stating if you give $500,000 to this organization, once a quarter, which could mean, four times a year, you could then gain access to a meeting where the president could appear, correct? >> right. you know the good government groups are furious about it for obvious reasons. organizing for action is the obama campaign. it is the presidential campaign, that kept the same initials, part, keep the same bathroom towels i guess. but, you know, people use to talk about the permanent campaign in washington or in the white house and in sort of literary way. now it is literal. you have the campaign manager from the campaign going over to run this. what amounts to sort of private political army for the president. and the way you can get access to the white house is simply to cut a check for half a million dollars, to obama's private political campaign, and then you get to sit in on the national summits they have every quarter or something where the president wil

whether they have any direct relation to what jim messina is doing. look, i don't want to besmirch these guys either. they haven't done anything wrong. what i want to say is president obama is a hypocrite. because he said four years, many, many years that he would not do this. and now he is, and that's really the issue, this guy will do and say anything to get elected and now do and say anything necessary to get his left wing, radical agenda passed and if that takes raising hundreds of millions of dollars through this new c-4, he's going to do it because he knows it helps his legacy and helps his legislative agenda and that's what this is all about. >> megyn: it's interesting to hear some of his, the groups on the left call this huge potential for government corruption, a scandal, they want him to reverse himself. we shall see, dave, thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> megyn: coming up, a medal designed for military heroes, medal is. should pilots of drone be given for line of fire on the ground. and ever had a song stuck in your head?

think is a great idea to build a bridge from calabria to sicily so you'd be going over the straits of messina with the bridge. as no part of the cheese comes from where the opera comes from great place they need a modern subway says no so it's no no no every one of those tens of thousands of jobs so he's basically wrecking the economy and how does agenda twenty one fit into this good concept if you can imagine an italian working class family they've been attacked by monti and the i.m.f. and the european central bank and you know taxes have gone up they're unemployed and they're looking for an alternative and they look at google and google or says energy austerity he says what they call dig deep growth i mean the word for that in english is atrophy or. atrophy they don't like to call that atrophy because a living organism is the predator you don't want to but that's that's exactly what it is so it comes from some french professors there is left to us. and there are some others but above all it's this agenda twenty one right left over from the rio conference at the beginning of the ninety's al

jim messina quickly rose to prominence across the country. he became the obama deputy chief of staff for 2009 and went on to become the manager of the obama reelection campaign in 2012. she worked with governor romney where she then served as his chief of staff and was a top adviser for the romney campaign. ms. myers is one of the inaugural fellows. in 2008, she served as a battleground state erector for the obama campaign. matt rhoades has been a lead strategist for the republican national committee. he was a research analyst in the 2000 elections. he was the director of research for the 2004 bush campaign. he was the campaign manager for romney. stuart stephens has gone on to elect more governors than any other current republican media consultant. he has also worked on campaigns overseas. he was involved in that media image for romney in 2008 and was a senior strategist for the presidential campaign in 2012. finally, our moderator for tonight is mr. chuck todd. he has experience as an editor and is an on-air political analyst. he is the cur

is that obama campaign manager jim messina has a new gig.pening private consulting firm and also serving as chairman of the organizing for action. the non-profit successor to the campaign committee obama for america. as you imagine, some see a conflict in this arrangement. jonah goldberg, fox news contributor and at-large editor of national review online says, "it's difficult to imagine the outrage if in 2005 karl rove had decided to cash in by going pro with the bush re-election campaign in this manner." the bubbly call nashing of teeth and claw by the scandalized editors of the "new york times" and the "washington post" alone would drive the mainstream media in frenzy of outrage. >>> first lady michelle obama cameo as oscar presenter raised eyebrows and had some fuming. but in iran they were up in arms about the first lady's arms. in a story about "argo" winning best picture, they did a little oler the ration to the first lady's $9,000 evening gown to cover up some skin. the guardian reports iranian women shown on state tv are required to

it didn't hurt his poll numbers though according to jim messina.st debate apparently didn't register heavily in the polling. let's take a look. >> it changed the structure of the race. and we saw that our polling. people who may have closed their mind to governor romney suddenly reopened it. and it made for a much better october than september. because in september we were dealing with the fallout. from the 47% video. >> what we saw in our internal numbers was they got back what they lost from the 47%. we never went behind. we never went down less than -- never went -- our lead never shrunk less than two and a half points. we were pretty sure we were okay the entire time. >> joan and michael, it's a key question. i didn't know this. i thought obama had dropped below after that bad performance. is that your reading? he never really lost the lead even though he had a bomb of a night in denver? >> i'm not going to call john a liar. the polls i looked at it in the swing states, he did fall behind. when you're within the margin of error, you have a lot

kind of had to tap dance a little bit and i think if i were he, i would have said, you know, jim messina, you guys think you're so smart putting this together. you go and brief the press. >> sean: i was thinking this week when robert gibbs admitted he was applying for the press secretary job which is the job you held under president bush, that he was told never to refer to the drone program that we have going on. would you have taken the job. well, that was-- i don't know all of the details so i don't know how the whole conversation went. the question that was put to him was about transparency in the white house and about drones and as a press secretary there's one of two ways that it can work. you can either be kept in the dark about things and then not get yourself in trouble by lying because you simply don't know, i don't think theys a really good way to work. i think it's good for press secretaries to nochknow. i think it's a stretch to ask press secretaries to not acknowledge things they have knowledge about. even though you have to tell the press, i understand you're asking and i d

axelrod, fernstrom, messina, all those guys.e'll talk about how they reform the 2016 presidential campaign. >>> coming up next, chris jansing. bye-bye. >>> here's a look at your business travel forecast. i'm meteorologist bill karins. as far as travel trouble goes today, we had some early morning snow in areas of new york city through southern new england. i don't think it's going to cause many problems at the airports. chicago, same for you and some snow showers. but there's some great weather out there. considering this is still the heart of winter, we'll be very warm through the rockies. west coast looks great. light rain along the gulf coast. [ male announcer ] i've seen incredible things. otherworldly things. but there are some things i've never seen before. this ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. which is good for business. because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. suddenly, faraway places don't seem so...far away. ♪ [ bop ] [ bop ] [ bop ] you can do tha

way, way, way back in september obama campaign manager jim messina wrote to supporters, "we recentlyl rove is rounding up the most powerful republican donors to give all they've got to beat barack obama." fast forward to the present, and karl rove is the evil architect trying to take down fellow republicans. in a new campaign pitch, iowa tea party favorite and senate wannebe steve king, friend, i'm under attack and i urgently need your help to fight back. karl rove and his army have launch aid crusade against me." the backlash on the right sent rove skamperring back for a tea party apology tour. >> what crossroads has been doing is spending a lot of money on behalf of tea party candidates. we've spent over $30 million on behalf of tea party senate candidates and over $25 million for tea party house candidates. >> but the intra-party purge seems far from over. one high profile republican strategist, who refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the party he wants so silence, says there is a deliberate effort by party leaders to lib marginalize the cranks, haters, and bigots. the

jim messina start his career as a college senior and quickly rose to prominence in campaigns across the country. he became president obama's deputy chief of staff or operations in 2009 and went on to become the manager of obama's reelection campaign in 2012. beth myers started with the reagan camp in 1980 and has been in politics ever since. she worked with governor romney census 2010 campaigned for the governorship when she served as his chief of staff and was most recently a top adviser for the romney campaign, for the presidency. she's this weeks one of the inaugural fellows for the institute of politics. jen o'malley-dillon was quickly from being an advocate in college to career working on several democratic campaigns over the years. in 2008 she served as the battleground states director for the obama campaign, and was a deputy campaign manager for his successful bid. matthew rhoades has been a lead strategist for the republican national committee and was a research analyst for the rnc in the 2000 election. he was director of opposition research for the 2004 bush campaign and was go

jim messina started his career as a college senior and rose to prominence in campaigns across the country. he became the chief of staff of operations in 2009 and went on to become the manager of obama's reelection campaign in 2012. jimbeth myers started with the reagan campaign in 1989 and has been in politics ever since. she has worked with governor romney since the 2002 campaign for the governorship. she was most recently a top adviser for the romney campaign. she is one of the inaugural fellows to the institute of politics. jen o'malley-dillon rose to a career working on several democratic issues over the years. in 2008, she served as a director of speech for the obama campaign, and was the deputy campaign manager for his successful 2012 bid. matt rhoades has been a lead strategist for the republican national committee and he worked on the 2000 election. he was the director of opposition research for the bush campaign in 2000 and was the governor romney campaign manager for the 2012 election. he has also worked on campaigns overseas. stuart stevens was involved in the media in 2008 and

and jim messina will head up the new group and raising eyebrows because it sounds an awful like the superpacsh time denigrating during the last election. >> toward democracy and the only way to fight it, the only way to match their millions of dollars is with millions of voices who are raised-- who are ready to finish what we started in 2008. >> reporter: the goal was to raise 15 million dollars in order to push for things like tougher new gun control laws and immigration reform. the organization will be able to do so free of federal contribution limits and other election reporting requirements. a large portion of the group's funding will reportedly come from donors who bring in half a million dollars and get a chance to meet with the president among other perks and bob edgar has the nonpartisan watch dog group common cause says, quote, it just smells. the president is setting a very bad model setting up an organization like this. just minutes ago, our own ed henry at the white house press briefing room and asked jay carney about this and allegations it sounds to some people like they will be

the accord to keep being a close eye on this as it develops, we want to commend you on the ground messinall different levels, a county and state and federal partners to create these great partnerships to allow sharing of resources so great job to those on the ground. has thus through point for so much traffic in with your office responsible for customs and agricultural expansion, i met with folks on the ground all of us are concerned about continued shortages of power and labor and what that does to a fact us as an island state in particular with but we are th

jim messina quickly rose to prominence across the country. he became the obama deputy chief of staff for 2009 and went on to become the manager of the obama reelection campaign in 2012 d. she work with governor romney where she then served as his chief of staff and was a top adviser for the romney campaign. ms. myers is one of the inaugural fellows. in 2008, she served as a battleground state erector for the obama campaign. matt rhoades has been a lead strategist for the republican national committee. he was a research analyst in the 2000 elections. he was the director of research for the 2004 bush campaign. he was the campaign manager for romney. stuart stephens has gone on to elect more governors than any other current republican media consultant. he has also worked on campaigns overseas. he was involved in that media image for romney in 2008 and was a senior strategist for the presidential campaign in 2012. finally, our moderator for tonight is mr. chuck todd. he has experience as an editor and is an on-air political analyst. he is the cur