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Produced one of the most ideological rigid parties in history. as the bipartisan political scientists write in their 2012 book "it's even worse than it looks," the republican party has become an insurgent outliar er person politics, dismissive the legitimacy of its political opposition. so peter, isn't this the problem here? it's not the policy, it's the party. it's the republican party and their base. >> yeah, and the problem the republican party has is that tea partiers who are now the activist base of the republican party don't care very much about the fortunes of the republican party. the ...

Wanting. i would expect that leadership would be able to quell some of the impulse. is there a sign there is not enough leadership strength to stop those impulses on the far right? >> reporter: that's definitely true. they've proved that again and again. it would be possible. and some state, it's possible for a republican speaker to make a deal with democrats. but it's very clear that john boehner would have the votes from the democrat side if he funded the government at a lower level. democrats were starting to remind people of this. the cr as it is structured is based on the sequestration sp...

Spending caps which they were opposed to. they were starting to argue this would be a victory for republicans. republicans should take it. really, from the activist base, shepherded by a couple of members of congress and back to the base, herrage action, ted graves in the senate, the conservatives in the party, a third of the party a bit more maybe, made the argument this is a last-ditch chance to repeal obama care. if they didn't do this they were betraying the base. the leadership didn't do anything to push the base away from that position. two years ago, the base was not demanding this. jim...

>> yeah, what was interesting. by the way -- rand paul went on fox tonight i think. and -- and, kind of renounced the -- the strategy. he did it gently. carefully. but did it pretty artfully. you know, what he definitely was separating himself from cruz. but here is -- here is the disturbing reality. if you are worried. look at all the primary candidates running in 2014. all most to a person candidates endorsed what cruz was doing. and i think they did that for the same reason that i think that cruz was happy with his performance. there is an activist base in the republican party. they're over...

Senate is 8% of the united states senate. >> yeah, what was interesting. by the way -- rand paul went on fox tonight i think. and -- and, kind of renounced the -- the strategy. he did it gently. carefully. but did it pretty artfully. you know, what he definitely was separating himself from cruz. but here is -- here is the disturbing reality. if you are worried. look at all the primary candidates running in 2014. all most to a person candidates endorsed what cruz was doing. and i think they did that for the same reason that i think that cruz was happy with his performance. there is an activist ...