people are wise to what is happening. they get it. and yet i wonder because i think they say they are making a mess of this, this is worse than drawing those red lines arnold syria and chemical weapons, right, cruz putting baper in a hole. but the digger out of the hole, never underestimate the gop on this, they can say president obama doesn t like kids with cancer because the senate is not willing to pass this sort of piecemeal you ve got newt gingrich who s said he will personally pay to restore the electricity for panda cam so that we can have panda cam back. right? president obama hates kids with cancer, but, you know, newt gingrich loves pandas and will bring them back to you. right. it s now a pr campaign. but at the end of the day, boehner he s put himself in a pickle, right. he doesn t have an exit strategy. he needs and his other problem is that those insurrectionists, the tea party, we now have a 2 1/2-party system.
that extend s government funding, re-opens the government and extend s the debt limit. that s a hard thing for speak er boehner to do. but the president is determined. he ll stick to it. given the fact that the democrats are far more united than the republicans are, he s likely to get what he wants. john harwood brings up the democrats are more united. yesterday a remarkable scene in the senate. you have been around a long time. they have a private meeting, stand up and said to cruz, okay, what s your plan. you got us here. you ran the commercial for months. what s your exit strategy? they all came out and couldn t wait to tell reporters uh how clueless he was on how to save the party from this mess. this could go on weeks. the president knows it will end up with the debt ceiling.
again what we thought at the time, or somebody who was trying to do harm, is for us to be secure in our building. that s a different protocol than there would be for an evacuation or a bomb threat. so there are different safety protocols for different kinds of threats. we have chemical hoods available for ourselves and our staff. breathing masks. again, clearly our institutions of government are always a target for this sort of thing. there is a lot of security. but depending on what the threat is there s different protocols. thank you so much for joining us. congressman jared polis. by the way, a current member of congress who understands the administration of the capitol called me just about an hour ago and said this whole exercise showed him how dangerous it is on the other end, getting the young staffers out of the building if we have to. anyway, thank you, congressman jared polis of colorado. coming up, back to the big story this week, it s pretty messy too. the government shutd
800,000 people out of work, service being denied, national security is at risk. really again the difference is the cruiz republicans don t car what anybody thinks about them. moderates are reluctant to take that step. i understand that they feel it s too quick. if the government s shut down we can t wait any longer. i m urging that we take quicker action. others think it s getter to wait a few days. whatever it is, it s a matter of time before the government reopens. if that s the case, let s do it now, let s not allow cruz people to have this stranglehold over the republican party and over the country. i never thought i d be hearing this infighting between you and another republican well the senator. at this point, we re hearing word of a meeting yesterday where ted cruz was reamed by fellow republicans who are angry with him for pushing this while there s no exit strategy. is that also perhaps giving some momentum to the members you say
not only are they laughing, it shows real concern. to chris s point their biggest and only fear is the debt ceiling. we find ourselves in unknown territory. we can talk about shutdown. we have never been close to where we are talking about going on october 17. in the closed door lunch with ted cruz they said he has no evident exit strategy. that s scary. grover norquist chimed in saying republicans were obviously united in wanting to repeal obama care. but senator cruz was wrong in attacking legislators who didn t follow his strategy. he accused cruz of, quote, pushing house republicans into traffic and wandering away.