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Senator patty murray said to "washington post" to greg sergeant, the plum line blog there earlier today. she said "with this vote the era of economic hostage taking and ransom demands should finally be behind us." do you agree with her? is this era now officially over? >> well, i agree with her that it should be behind us. it remains to be seen. this has been a pretty unpredictable republican conference. what today shows is that even speaker boehner, when push came to shove, you got to give him credit, he knew where to go to get the votes to do the right thing. it was 28 republicans and all th...

>> you know, one of the problems is this is no longer jon huntsman's republican party. it is not a party of where -- which is dominated by problem solvers. i'm concerned about it. you know, greg sergeant at "the washington post" had a really interesting post today. looking at public opinion data that shows that the party's positions now are dominated by tea party republicans but these are not positions that are shared by the rest of the republican party. so what we have is an insurgent radical force that's driving a party away from problem solving conservatism. and how we get back to something...

For large numbers of people and opening things up but let's face it, we are also going to have states including those where they are actively undermining it where it isn't going to be working so well. >> on that point, then, because today was sort of a day where you have this confluence in washington about the political damage for democrats from the rollout problems they have had so far. in the headline from this cnn poll that came out, in the generic ballot, republicans have recovered. if you dig a little bit deeper and you ask the question, do you think that the problems right now with obama...

Raise for themselves, and they vote against the minimum wage, that's a pretty hard one to defend, as you can guess. >> i know you've also been talking, you did a great interview with greg sergeant at "the washington post" the last couple of days about the prospect of expanding social security, the sort of beltway common wisdom about social security is the only way to go is for it to be shrunk and attacked. you're talking about expanding social security and recalibrating the whole debate around that. how does that work? >> when you consider, when you hear some far-right colleagues say, we need ...

Republicans, particularly those on the ballot, or those who will be on the ballot, especially when you link a number of republicans who voted for a pay raise for themselves, and they vote against the minimum wage, that's a pretty hard one to defend, as you can guess. >> i know you've also been talking, you did a great interview with greg sergeant at "the washington post" the last couple of days about the prospect of expanding social security, the sort of beltway common wisdom about social security is the only way to go is for it to be shrunk and attacked. you're talking about expanding social ...