Transcripts For MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show 20131115

Look, its in japanese i have seen a lot of spam websites in my day, but i have seen very few spam websites that unexpectedly pop up on your computer, in japanese. I do not read japanese, so i do not know if the Google Translate function is just worse for japanese than it is for other languages, but i got to tell you, at least from googles perspective, the repeal romneycare. Com website now offers i think its like nail art, that you were supposed to use specifically in preparing for your wedding, maybe . It also says the days of the week are fire, water, tree, gold, soil, day, and month. So, theres that, grain of salt, right . Whoever used to be maintaining repealromneycare. Com has obviously really let it go. Back in the day, the repeal romney Care Movement did try to organize a petition drive. They did try to get the repeal of Massachusetts Health reform on to the ballot for a statewide vote. And it works in massachusetts like it does in every state. You need to get your ballot language approved by the state, then you need to get a certain number of signatures, but if you clear that number of signatures and it turns out enough of those signatures are real people, then your repeal thing goes on the ballot and people get to vote on whether or not to repeal that law. The repeal romney care folks never got to the end of that process, because they got distracted. See, the whole effort to repeal Health Reform in massachusetts seems to have actually been kind of a pet project, maybe a side interest, for one single antiabortion group in that state. And even though the group said they really wanted to repeal romney care and they got the repeal romney care url and they got the website up and everything, they ended up losing interest. I think, because massachusetts decided that they were going to consider a doctorassisted suicide measure, and that excited the antiabortion people more than repeal romney care, so all their petition gathers started working on that instead, so it never went on the ballot. And that was the last that was ever heard of the grassroots uprising in massachusetts to repeal Health Reform. Now the only sign of it is japanese spam for wedding prep nail art. By the time Massachusetts Governor mitt romney was leaving office in that state, he was really unpopular there. In the month that massachusetts voters went to the polls to choose his successor, to decide whether or not they would hire mitt romneys Lieutenant Governor to continue his vision or whether they would switch to the guy from the other party, mitt romneys Approval Rating was desperately underwater. Look at that, 34 of the state approved of him, 65 of the state disapproved of him. That was november 2006. And that month when massachusetts voters went to the polls, mr. Romneys Lieutenant Governor lost that election by 21 points. By the time mr. Romney was on his way out of massachusetts and on his way to go badly lose the republican primary for the president ial election that time around, he was being replaced in the statehouse in massachusetts by essentially his polar political opposite, by a proudly progressive democrat who pledged to repeal a lot of things that mitt romney had done. Remember, massachusetts was the first state in the nation to recognize samesex marriage. Mitt romney hated that. And during his time as governor, he banned gay couples from anywhere else in the country from coming into massachusetts in order to get married. Deval patrick reversed that policy of mitt romneys right away. Mitt romney had opposed stem cell research. He tried to ban that in massachusetts. Deval patrick, when he took over, he lifted those restrictions right away and unbanned it. Mitt romney had pulled massachusetts out of a regional effort in the northeast to control greenhouse gases. When Deval Patrick took office, he reversed that decision right away. He put massachusetts back into that agreement. Governor Deval Patrick was sworn in on january 4th. It was only two weeks later, by january 18th, the romney denialism on Climate Change was over, and massachusetts was back in the world of science. Heres the really interesting thing, though. That same month, when mitt romney left office and Deval Patrick got sworn in, and alof those leftover policies the from the romney era got reversed, that same month, the other thing that happened in massachusetts is that romney care started. The month that mitt romney left office, january 2007, thats the same month that massachusetts residents were supposed to start enrolling in the massachusetts version of Health Reform. Which was, after all, mitt romneys signature achievement as governor of massachusetts. Remember his official gubernatorial oil portrait . Shows him with a flag. Also with a picture of his wife, which i think, its clear in retrospect, is obviously supposed to signify not just his marriage, but also marriage, as in, hey Republican Caucus voters in iowa, i tried to stop this gay marriage thing, i tried, i swear. Look at me married to a woman the only other thing in his gubernatorial portrait was a little folder on the desk next to him with the i never know how to say this word cadusis, the little snakey medical system, that signifies his marquee policy achievement as governor. The massachusetts plan to basically get everybody in the state covered by Health Insurance, romney care. And that first month that people were supposed to start enrolling on the states website, that first month, the entire first month of enrollment, after the ad campaign by the red sox trying to get everybody to sign up, after walltowall press coverage, not just in the state, but nationwide about this landmark, first in the nation new thing, after all that publicity, all the billboards, after the tv ads, and when it finally came time to sign up, did not go well. In the first month, look at this, terrible terrible a grand total of 123 people signed up. Oh, thats awful. But they kept plugging away. And the 123 enrollees in the first month became 2,000 people by the end of the second month. By the end of the third month, they were up to 5,000 people. And it kept going. There were definitely glitches along the way. The website didnt work very well at first. They had to keep tweaking the law. They changed certain rules about what benefits had to be covered. At one point, they even had to change the way that massachusetts businesses were allowed to count their number of employees. The legislature went back and did a really big fix, pretty widereaching, about medical billing and other stuff related to costs and standardization across the state. There were a bunch of different fixes they had to do in order to make it work. But they kept making those fixes and they kept plugging away and kept making improvements where they found problems. And those terrible, terrible initial enrollment numbers rose over time. And the law is now essentially considered to be fully implemented and it is a success. 97 of people in the state of massachusetts have Health Insurance. Massachusetts did not lose lots of businesses because of more people having Health Insurance, the overall cost of health care in the state stopped rising as fast as it had been rising. And not incidentally, a group of people across the state that is larger than entire population of the city of boston, which used to not have insurance, that group now has insurance. It worked in massachusetts. Even though it started off terribly, it worked. And heres the fascinating thing. Now that we nationally are implementing, essentially, exactly the same policy for the country, that massachusetts already piloted, people have understandably been looking back to the massachusetts example to see how it went for them in the early days. To try to get some context as to whether or not the troubles that are happening right now in the National Rollout have any parallel with this state program that we know now ended up working out all right. The Washington Post recently did a fact check of some of the comparisons people are making of the new national law to what happened in massachusetts, and when they went back to look at those early enrollment numbers in massachusetts, they found, yeah, those early enrollment numbers were terrible, they were really, really low. But the most amazing thing, they were unable to find any News Coverage of those terrible numbers. Yes, you can, now go back and document it and figure it out, that it went terribly. That only 123 people signed up in the whole first month of romney care. But in order to do that, in order to document it, you have to, like, interview the statisticians who have access to those old news stories. And that was because nobody was trying to make political hay out of the numbers being bad at that time. Yeah, mitt romney was really unpopular and he was gone. And Deval Patrick came in and started reversing a lot of things that mitt romney had done. Mitt romneys chosen successor got beat by more than 20 points. But you know what, nobody was trying to kill Health Reform. Nobody was trying to make a political point about the terribleness of this new law and how awful it was going to be and how it had to be stopped and how any early sign of trouble in the implementation proved that there was no way that it was going to work. So there were no stories, no news stories about, at least no news stories that we can find now about how bad the early enrollment numbers. Nobody was writing about these numbers as as if they were an important thing in massachusetts. Even as mitt romney left office with these terrible numbers. Even after he spent his last year in office, traveling the country and telling the rest of the country how terrible massachusetts is, and thats why he should be president , because hed been governor in this terrible, horrible place, and hed made the best of it, but, boy, what an awful place massachusetts was. Massachusetts really hated him by the time he left. Again, they rejected his Lieutenant Governorship by 20 points. There was never any serious question that massachusetts was rooting for Health Reform to fail. That anybody in the state, anybody was going to try to make political hay by hoping that people wouldnt get Health Insurance, by hoping for failure. Yes, there was a repeal romney care effort. I found it today. It is now a japanese nail art kind of vaguely pornyseeming spam website associated with an allbutdefunct antiabortion group that tried for a hot second to run a campaign against it before they got oh, squirrel they got distracted oh, squirrel they couldnt even keep it together to try to get the petitions done in order to get it on the ballot, let alone get it on the ballot. Grr, squirrel it wasnt a really serious effort. Massachusetts experience with Health Reform, romney care, is the blueprint for what we are now doing at the national level. And dont take my word for it. Ask the people who are implementing this law at the national level, see . Massachusetts is the blueprint for the Affordable Care act. The policies are almost identical. Whats different is the politics. The one thing that massachusetts did not have that we do have nationally is onehalf of the political spectrum openly rooting for failure, rooting for people to not get Health Insurance. People scouring every detail of the laws initial implementation, looking the for every glitch, every difficulty, every bump as an occasion to insist that this law obviously is a failure and can never work and should be done away with it. And you know what, objectively speaking, it is true that the republican plan does work better. What a debacle, mine works just fine. Anytime your plan is nothing, anytime your plan is no plan, your plan is to do nothing, that is always a much easier thing to do than anybody planning to do something. For the record, if you do want to compare what were going through right now nationally with what massachusetts went through back in 2007, National Enrollment is actually going much faster than it did in massachusetts. In both cases, the first month numbers were really low, but in terms of the percentage of the total number of people that they enrolled in their first year or that are expected to enroll in the first year nationally, the National Enrollment pace is five times what it was in massachusetts at this point. And who knows if that will prove to be significant . I mean, massachusetts is a helpful example in that it is a statewide Pilot Project for this exact policy that we are pursuing at the national level. So it is helpful to look at that, helpful to compare how it worked for them versus how it is working for us now as a nation. Massachusetts seven years down the road from putting this policy in place has found that it is working. It took work to make it work. It took tweaks and fixes. But its working. It is a successful policy. And if we are able to follow that same path, there is no reason to think that this couldnt be successful nationally either. But are we able to follow that same path . While massachusetts had nobody but the utterly irrelevant and incompetent farright fringe rooting for failure at the state level, nationally now, it is the whole reason for the republican partys existence to root for the failure of this plan. Today, president obama announced a fix in the implementation of national Health Reform. He announced that because of criticism, he would change the law to grandfather in peoples old plans that do not meet the new standards of what a health plan is supposed to offer. On a very small proportion of people will be affected by this rule change. But the criticism on that aspect of Health Reform has just been deafening. Todays change in empirical terms will not have a significant effect on Health Reform overall. But because of the megaphone that republicans, and it has to be said, the media, have put on any and all criticism of any aspect of this law, this policy tweet today was treated as earthshattering news in washington. And now republicans have to decide if they are happy with this fix that was announced today, this fix to what theyve been complaining about so loudly. Or whether they will demand that the law not be fixed. Because then, heaven forbid, the law might work. Joining us now is jonathan gruber. Hes a professor of economics at m. I. T. , who was a key architect of the Massachusetts Health reform effort and also served as an adviser to the white house and to congress on the Affordable Care act. Professor gruber, thanks for being us. Good to be here, rachel. Last week in boston, president obama said he is confident that national Health Reform will work, because massachusetts has shown that this model of policy works. Do you see it that way . After the initial implementation glitches are fixed and tweaks are made and the website is fixed, do you think the national law should be expected to work like the one in massachusetts . Rachel, i can think of no other major law in our nations history, where weve piloted it first in this way. And we piloted it in massachusetts, and it worked. And its the same basic structure. And i think it will work and be successful. It wont be exactly the same, but its going to follow the same basic successful pattern as in massachusetts. We just have to be patient and recognize it takes time. It took about a year for us to ramp up enrollment. Really, it was about three years until enrollment was at its full, steady state level. We have to be patient and not measure the outcome in days and minutes, but rather, months and years. The were talking about ramping up enrollment, again, ton the massachusetts model of one to three years, as you just described it, i think about one to three years in political time, as a very long time. When the massachusetts plan went into effect, if there had been a powerful, concerted effort by state legislatures and, say, mayors around the state, to rye to make the law fail, could they have interfered with it. Could they have screwed up their chances for success if they were really determined to do so . I think its possible. Its hard to know. As you said, we really didnt have that kind of opposition. We had to make these implementation decisions that you mentioned. But its hard to say, because as i say, we didnt face that opposition. To be honest, i was on the board. I was as involved with Massachusetts Health care reform as anyone in the state, and i did not know the 123 number until i went back to look it up. We just werent paying attention to that. We figured it would take a year or so and we are taking that perspective on it. What do you make of the change that the president announced today . People whose plans that are going away because of the new law, will be allowed to keep them for another year if they want to. I think its a shame that we have to be discussing this. Look, everyone in america, or this broad agreement in america, that we need to move to a nondiscriminatory Health Insurance market, where people are not excluded for preexisting condition and the sick and the healthy alike pay the same rate, the obama care plan is the minimally disruptive way to get to that goal. If you agree with that goal, there is no way to get there that has less disruption than the obama care plan. And yet there is still a little disruption. Some people have bad plans or who are benefiting from existing discrimination in the market will have to pay more. I think that is a small price to pay for the tens of millions of americans who will finally be able to have access to Health Insurance. But apparently its too big a price to pay for the political system, so president obama had to make this adjustment. I dont think its fundamental. I do think its a shame that were even having this conversation and not focusing on the benefits this law will deliver. Undoubtedly, there will need to be more fixes over time for the national law, just as there were in massachusetts. Do you foresee an evolution of this law, where most of those fixes can happen in the way that we saw today, as sort of an executive branch decisions, or is a constructive Congress Going to be necessary in order to adjust and grow and tweak this law, so it works as time goes on . I think theres no way you can do it eventually without a constructive congress. Take a look at medicare. The largest single going to be the largest single social Insurance Program we have in our nation before this plan. The biggest change to that program ever actually happened 38 years after the program was introduced in 2003, when president obama introduced a drug benefit into the plan. But that took legislative approval. I dont see any way that we can fix this law, fix the things that are wrong with it, until Congress Finally gets away until the republicans get away from a position of just trying to defeat it to actually trying to fix it. Jonathan gruber, economics proffer at m. I. T. , former adviser to the white house, that was an intensely clarifying discussion for me tonight. Thanks for being here. Lots to come tonight, including a crash course on how to be really, really bad at the job of former president of the United States. Its a job not that many people have it, but now we know what it looks like to stink at that job. Stay with us. The secret is out. Hydration is in. [ female announcer ] only aveeno daily moisturizing lotion has an active naturals oat formula that creates a moisture reserve so skin can replenish itself. Aveeno® naturally beautiful results. So i cant afford to have germy surfaces. But after one days use, dishcloths can redeposit millions of germs. So ditch your dishcloth and switch to a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel. Look a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel leaves this surface cleaner than a germy dishcloth, as this black light reveals. Its durable, clothlike and its 3 times cleaner. So ditch your dishcloth and switch to bounty duratowel. The durable, clothlike pickerupper. The tornado that hit moore, oklahoma, on may 20th of this year caused the kind of destruction that your mind has trouble processing, even after all this time. It was total devastation. The tornado that day hit at 2 56 p. M. It leveled entire neighborhoods, including two Elementary Schools that were still in session for the day. 24 people, including nine children, died in that storm. The damage that that tornado did to moore, oklahoma, was beyond what most of us can imagine. Both in terms of its force and in terms of its breadth. The storm was on the ground for approximately 40 minutes. It traveled along a 17mile path of densely populated oklahoma in the suburbs of oklahoma city. But beyond the metrics of its power and its duration and its course, what was really unusual about the moore tornado, almost shocking at the time, even in oklahoma, where tornadoes happen a lot, what was most amazing about that storm and unusual about it was how wide it was. We think of tornadoes as twisters, right . As narrow columns of swirling wind that, sure, pack a punch, but that pack a very, very, very narrowly targeted punch. We think of tornadoes as the pinpoint strike of the storm world. But that tornado in moore, oklahoma, was huge. It was 1. 3 miles wide on the ground. It was not a pinpoint strike. It was as wide as 23 football fields laid end to end, while it was on the ground. Tornadoforce winds more than a mile across. That was moore, oklahoma, may 20th. And then less than two weeks later, that storm in moore was dwarfed by an even bigger tornado, which hit el reno, oklahoma. El reno wasnt 1. 3 miles across, like moore was. El reno was double that. 2. 6 miles across, on the ground the el reno storm is less remembered now, because it struck a less populated area and therefore did less damage than moore, but that el reno tornado was the largest storm of that kind ever recorded on earth. Before el reno, there had never before been a tornado that was more than 2. 5 miles wide on the ground. And its wind speed was almost the fastest ever recorded on earth as well. The el reno tornado had wind speeds of up to 296 miles per hour. The fastest wind speeds ever recorded on earth are only 5 miles an hour faster than that, and they did not come in a storm that gigantic. These storms this year would have been terrifying and incredibly destructive, even at a fraction of their size. But it seems important to know that with all of our experience of tornadoes in this country, we have never before faced storm as big as what hit us this year. And globally speaking, the same goes for hurricanes. Up to now, the strongest hurricane ever recorded on earth was camille, which hit mississippi in the gulf coast in 1969. Camille had wind speeds of 190 miles per hour, fastest ever recorded for a hurricane, until now. The storm that hit the philippines late last week shattered that record. Camille was 190 miles an hour. The wind speeds for typhoon haiyan are estimated to have been 220, 225. The fastest hurricane speeds ever recorded on earth. Haiyan is called a typhoon, not a hurricane, but typhoon is just a word used for a hurricanetype storm when it hits in a different part of the world. So in one year, we have had the largest tornado ever recorded on earth and we have had the fastest hurricane ever recorded on earth. And theyve hit within six months of each other. In climate science, in the insurance business, in public policy, they always stipulate that you cannot one storm to Climate Change. So stipulated. It is also, however, willful blindness to not just observe that we are now experiencing more storms of record intensity. And that is the global calamity adjunct to the National Calamity that has befallen the philippines, where haiyan came ashore. This is what the aftermath looks like, still, nearly a week later in the city that took the brunt of haiyans destructive force. And aid is getting into some places in the philippines, but it is not enough and it is not to enough places yet. The head of humanitarian efforts for the u. N. Today said so very bluntly. She said, quote, we have let people down, because we have not been able to get in more quickly. We are all extremely distressed that we have not managed to reach everyone. But the effort to reach everyone now is mammoth and well underway. The u. S. Navy Aircraft Carrier George Washington and four other ships are at the scene of the storm now. A u. S. Navy cargo ship as transported food and water to tacloban, with more to follow there. The sister ship to the usns comfort, remember, the comfort was the u. S. Hospital ship that was deployed to haiti after the earthquake there, the comforts sister ship is called the mercy and theyve been called to active duty and starting to prepare for a mission in the philippines if death toll has reached almost 4,500 people. Its still not known what the final toll in human life will be. But one major task in the efforts to preserve life now is the collection and burial of dead bodies. Yesterday, the mayor of tacloban told his citys residents to get out if possible, to just flee if they could. To try to find shelter and food with relatives, to do anything they could to leave. There have also been reports of looting. One fatal stampede at an aid station today. Crowds trying to obtain food and supplies that are coming in too slowly and not enough yet. Mitigating a calamity of this scale right now in the central philippines is a task almost beyond description. Experts who study huge storms say that the supertyphoon that hit there essentially set a new standard. Quote, it is as strong a typhoon as you can get, basically. Quote, it is about as strong as tropical cyclones can get on earth. By warming the planet, we have raised the speed limit. We have raised the thermodynamic speed limit that we thought defined the upper reaches of how big and how fast storms can get. And of course, the immediate need is to help the people who survived this latest, biggest ever storm in the world. While at the same time, acclimating ourselves to the fact that this, too, is probably just a momentary, terrible record that itself is waiting to be broken. [ male announcer ] eligible for medicare . Thats a good thing, but it doesnt cover everything. Only about 80 of your part b medical expenses. The rest is up to you. So consider an aarp Medicare Supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. Like all standardized Medicare Supplement insurance plans, they pick up some of what medicare doesnt pay and could save you in outofpocket medical costs. Call today to request a free decision guide to help you better understand what medicare is all about and which aarp Medicare Supplement plan works best for you. With these types of plans, youll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. Plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. Theres a range of plans to choose from, too, and they all travel with you anywhere in the country. Join the millions who have already enrolled in the only Medicare Supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. An Organization Serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations. And provided by unitedhealthcare insurance company, which has over 30 years of experience behind it. Call today. Remember, Medicare Supplement insurance helps cover some of what medicare doesnt pay. Expenses that could really add up. These kinds of plans could save you in outofpocket medical costs. Youll be able to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. And there are virtually no referrals needed. So dont wait. With all the good years ahead, look for the experience and commitment to go the distance with you. Call now to request your free decision guide. This easytounderstand guide will answer some of your questions and help you find the aarp Medicare Supplement plan thats right for you. According to the public polling, and ultimately the election that took place in our country at the end of 2008, americans decided that they were really over george w. Bush. The signature flavor of his failure as a president was, of course, his inclination to make decisions without necessarily understanding all of the consequences, and then to doggedly stick with those decisions, even when it was clear they were terribly, terribly wrong. Do you remember that . Do you remember those eight years . The absence of contrition, the refusal to change course, no matter how obviously wrong the course . Well, in the 4 years and 10 months of george w. Bushs postpresidency, including and especially tonight, it appears that what you remember about the guy really has not changed. Now to a whole new effect. And that story is ahead. [ female announcer ] just about anywhere you use sugar, you can use splenda® no calorie sweetener. Splenda® lets you experience the joy of sugar without all the calories. Think sugar, say splenda™ for those nights when its more than a bad dream, be ready. For the times you need to doublecheck the temperature on the thermometer, be ready. For high fever, nothing works faster or lasts longer. Be ready with childrens motrin. In 2009, hundreds of thousands of people filled the at t center in san antonio, texas, for this just a city girl, born and raised in south detroit he took the midnight train, going anywhere all right, ladies and gentlemen, that person sitting next to you, with you, were about to do our beach party. Were about to take this day, your life, your week, your year to the next level. If you think youre ready to do that, i cant wait to hear the san antonio scream. One, two, three make some noise make some noise i never got the beach party part of it . Also, its a song about detroit. Anyway. Its exciting, though hah that was the get motivated business seminar in san antonio, texas. That year, the seminar hosted quite a lineup of motivators, including terry bradshaw, tony parker, famous megachurch minister who i dont recognize, also, zig zigler, who is americas selfproclaimed number one motivational speaker. And also, this guy. I want to share some lessons about what i learned as president by describing the rest of the oval office to you. Now, at the oval office, obviously, theres no corners to hide in. So when you come into the oval office and youre there to brief the president , you better know what youre talking about. And the president has a team of people around him who are willing to tell so this is not the best video quality you will ever see, but you recognize the voice, right, and the whole oval office bit, right . That was the 43rd president of the United States, of course, george w. Bush, about a year after he left the white house. Think about the timing there. That means the American Economy was still a burning wreckage. But there he is, appearing at a get motivated seminar, to get people motivated in texas. Last year, right before the president ial election, with president obama facing a republican challenge from private equity zillionary, mitt romney, who was facing lots of criticism for offshoring he has personal wealth in places like the Cayman Islands to avoid paying u. S. Taxes, right before the president ial election last year, in early november 2012, president bush decided to speak at another conference. This one he had to fly to. It was the Cayman Islands alternative investment summit. The most recent republican president of the United States headlining an invest your money in the Cayman Islands conference at the exact time that the new president ial nominee of his own party was enduring 24houraday speculation about stuffing his personal money in Cayman Islands tax shelters. There is no Job Description for how an expresident is supposed to behave, or for how an expresident is supposed to make a living. But our most recent expresident , george w. Bush, has decided to make his living, at least in part, for giving speeches for money, even when it is hugely political awkward like in the Cayman Islands, and even when it is fairly embarrassing, like the get rich quick motivated seminars. Well, in that spirit, former president george w. Bush tonight is the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for something called the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute. This was first reported in mother jones on thursday night of last week. If you want to go to this event at the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, youre too late. Its on right now. Mr. Bush has spoken to lots of groups since he was president , including lots of different types of religious assemblages. What makes this Group Different is that the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute is a jews for jesus group. Theyre trying to make jewish people accept jesus as the messiah, because they think if they convert enough jews to that belief, that will bring about the Second Coming and the end of the world. The bible predicted the day would come, declared the day would come, when the blindness would come off of the eyes of the people that it all began with. As the blindness comes off of the eyes of the jewish people in the days were living in, our job will get bigger and bigger and bigger until all israel shall be saved. Help us to raise up an army, an end time army, that will bring about gods promised redemption of israel. The greatest blessing you can give a jewish person is the gospel and then disciple them into an abundant life in the lord. Every contribution matters. If its a dollar, 100, 1,000, 1 million. It takes resources. It takes resources to expand this. It is everybodys prerogative to believe whatever they believe and to have their own theology and to pursue their own religion, whatever they want to pursue. But if the greatest blessing that you can give to a jewish person is the gospel of another religion, to move them out of their religion, to a new one, jewish people will have an opinion about that. George w. Bush raising money tonight for a group that is trying to convert jewish people to the christian gospel, has a lot of jewish people and jewish leaders miffed at the former president. Why is he doing this . It may be that george w. Bush always believed in trying to convert the jews in order to bring christ back to earth and start the rapture. Maybe he always wanted that. And he only maintained good relations with the jewish people through his presidency by hiding that belief. And now that hes not president , he doesnt have to hide it anymore. Maybe. Or maybe he didnt know what he was getting himself into here. If so, hes got to know now, now that so many prominent jewish groups and leaders are up in arms that he is doing it, including the Jewish Community of dallas. If he didnt realize what he was getting himself into, and thats how he got himself into this mess, why hasnt he backed out . Once he realized his mistake . Joining us now is wayne slater, senior Political Writer for the dallas morning news. Hes also the author of bushs brain. Wayne, great to see you. Great to be with you, rachel, as always. What are you hearing from political circles in texas about the president s speech tonight . Are people in texas surprised that hes doing this . You know, clearly, there are a group of people, and the Jewish Community and elsewhere among many christians who are asking the question, what was he thinking . scratching their heads and really saying, this is does he understand how deeply offensive what this group is preaching and advancing is to a lot of people. But to be honest with you, rachel, there is a very long, very large Christian Evangelical Community in texas who may not understand the fundamentals of this, but see the idea of proselytizing, group thats just proselytizing and converting nonbelievers to christianity, as part of the message of christianity. Part of the great commission. When you go out and make disciples of all nations. Theres also, i think another subset, and thats a group of evangelicals, and im not saying that george bush is with this group, ive never talked to him directly about this, but another group of evangelicals who know exactly what this group is doing, who understand that the end times escatology thats being preached here is one of the last chapter, for the jews anyway, is convert or die. Thats why its offensive to many jews. They lose their religion in this process. But many christians, and i think george bush is one of those, at the beginning didnt realize what this was all about. Well, people who usually are all right with him represent leaders from the Jewish Community who worked with him during his administration. Even if they disagreed with him on some political matters, who always felt Mutual Respect from him, people who like him are really mad at him about this. How do you think hes going to respond to this . Does he just brush this off and pretend that nobody minds . His comments from his spokesperson and from unnamed people close to him, so far, have been defiant, almost willfully disbelieving that anybodys got a problem with it. Do you think he just doesnt address the controversy at all . George bush doesnt do reverse very well. Never has. And my sense is at the very beginning, he did not really recognize the deep sensitivity of what this group is all about. I think there was a he, like many evangelical christians, saw it as a proselytizing mechanism. It was a place that was probably going to pay him a lot of money. We dont know that. But i think your lead in and the implications we get here is this is probably a pretty good paycheck for the speech tonight. But fundamentally, when george bush made decisions as president and theres no reason to believe he changes, when hes made a decision, thats his decision, come hell or high water. And i think thats probably what happened here. Hes dug in his heels, said, im not going to change, i see no reason to change. Although im wondering if he probably will never address this group again in the future, because of the controversy that its caused. Wayne, we do not know if hes being paid for this. That theyre offering him so much money that he cant afford to turn it down. Is there any reason to believe that hes broke . There isnt, rachel. In fact, if we look at his finances, when he went to the white house, much of his stuff is in bonds. Much of his stuff is in very safe treasury notes and so forth. And theres no reason to think that he doesnt have a lot of money or certainly is not comfortable. But hes the son of a president who went out and made money. Bill clinton made money. And i can remember that george bush, remember in the final weeks and months of his presidency, kind of looked at clinton and said, gee, that guy is going out and making a lot of money. Some people interpreted that as criticism. Others said, gee, i think george bush sees an opportunity here. Its not that hes broke, i believe, its just that, you know what, in texas and in a lot of places, whats wrong with making a little bit more . Wow. Wayne slater, senior Political Writer for the dallas morning news, the author of bushs brain, wayne, thanks for helping us understand the this tonight. Really appreciate it. Sure. In conservative politics, theres right, theres farright, and theres mississippi neoconfederate right. What the last one on that list can never do if he wants to get elected in mississippi. Stay tuned. [ male announcer ] they say it was during an arm wrestling match that mr. Clean realized the way to handle bigger, tougher messes was better leverage. Thats why he created his new magic eraser handy grip. It has a handle that firmly attaches to the eraser so you get better leverage and more oomph with less effort. Its the perfect magic eraser for making stuff thats big and tough not so tough, after all. Mr. Cleans handy grip the newest member of the magic eraser family. In all purpose and bath. [ engine revs ] out here, flying at a height of up to 1,400 feet, the clouds are puffy light and brilliantly lighted but cast dark shadows on a wave capped water below. Ooh, i want to go there. I want to see the puffy white clouds. Its been a long time since we made a faik ad out of bps press releases out of the. This guy has been done wrong by the lamestream media. We are here to help him, straight ahead. The secret is out. Hydration is in. [ female announcer ] only aveeno daily moisturizing lotion has an active naturals oat formula that creates a moisture reserve so skin can replenish itself. Aveeno® naturally beautiful results. Aveeno® [ female announcer ] some people like to pretend a flood could never happen to them. And that their Homeowners Insurance protects them. [ thunder crashes ] it doesnt. Stop pretending. Only Flood Insurance covers floods. Visit floodsmart. Gov pretend to learn your risk. Among the highest profile inkunl bent republicans, who is in big trouble right now with his right flank is conservative mississippi senator cochran. The man to mr. Cochrans right, who has seen enough of his lily livered conservatism is this guy, Chris Mcdaniel, who wants to launch a tea party. He picked up the Senate Conservatives fund and the club for growth. But then, interesting Political Science conundrum. Last month, after Chris Mcdaniel picked up those bigtime National Group endorsements, after they already endorsed him, mother jones reported Chris Mcdaniels history with prosecession groups, neo confederate groups and that brings up the whole question of will the south rise again with a sharp bayonette thing. Is that okay now . Would anyone maintain their endorsement with Chris Mcdaniel . Would he get any New Washington endorsements after his affiliation with neo confederate groups came to light . Interesting question. Turns out the answer is no problem. Its totally okay. Its totally fine to be down with the confederacy. Now, in 2013. Even after Chris Mcdaniels neo confederate lifestyle became known, he got another big National Conservative group to endorse him. He got a big endorsement from freedom works. Today, the Senate Conservatives fund, which had endorsed him before went ahead and released a new Chris Mcdaniel for senate. This is an interesting test case. It turns out that neo confederate is on the things that are totally okay to be if you are running for u. S. Senate as a republican. As far as mainstream groups in washington are concerned thats not a problem. Believing that the south shall secede from the union again is not across the line. We learned that this week again. Thank you. We have also learned something else. We have also learned, in this instance, was across the line. Neo confederacy, no problem this side of the line. But do you know what is across the line . Whats a bridge too far . Voting once, ever, as a democrat. The whole treason against the United States thing, no problem. If you ever had a democratic vote in your life, get out of here he once may have voted as a democratic in a primary ten years ago. He decide to not stand for this new reporting and called the charge about him voting democratic desperate and tacky. Surely, the Chris Mcdaniels campaign will have to respond in a way that reaches voters. One clip in a newspaper will not be enough. So the Rachel Maddow show fake ad got a head start for him. How low will people go and when is enough enough . Take the Smear Campaign against conservative republican hopeful Chris Mcdaniel. Here is the leftwing medias inflammatory headline about mcdaniel. Leave it to the leftwing lame stream media to tell you half the story. Turns out he missed the august neo confederate conference, but he gave the keynote speech to the neo confederate conference in june. Somehow they left that out. He is, too, a neo confederate sesseinist. He is, too. Try this smear on for size, Mississippi Tea Party challenger voted as a democrat in 2003. Voted as a democrat . Voted as a democrat . Its one thing to say a man missed a speech at the neo confederates. But voting as a democrat . Thats just low