terry mcauliffe's -- and in part by painting his views on women's issues as too extreme. i want to bring in our company, nick, is political reporter for "new york times," joy ann reed, msnbc contributor. good having you both here. clearly both sides think the war on women is a winning issue for them. >> it's interesting. if you think of the republican party as a three-legged stool, the business part, religious right and what you might call the archie bunker wing, the two that are not the business wing have been the ascendant parts. i think now there's sort of a free for all much the vacuum in the party has left the business wing of the party out and they're reasserting themselves. there have been abortion planks putting forward laws to put on the floor of the house of representatives. the religious right believes this is a winning issue. >> well, they believe, but the problem has been messaging, not the issue itself. rick santorum talked about this. i'm going to quote from him. he said they've had sort of trouble communicating their views, a la todd akin and richard murdoch. let's quit running from these issues and start teaching our candidates how to talk about them. i d