[Crowley:] Joining me now, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She is chair of the Democratic National Committee. I want to take you just a little bit off topic at the beginning, because I want to ask you about this interim deal with Iran that the U.S. and other nations have been pushing. So far, it hasn't come together. But you have heard some of the criticism, particularly from Israel, but there are other problems with the Saudis, etc. Looking at this. How comfortable are with you what you've heard about what the U.S. and others are seeking?
[Wasserman Schultz:] Well, I think any time that you are actually at the diplomatic table negotiating on a question that, just a year or so ago, would have been unfathomable the idea that we could actually get Iran to back off its pursuit of nuclear weapons, number one, it demonstrates that the sanctions that we've imposed thus far have been extremely painful and effective and that President Obama's emphasis on trying to do all that we can to make sure that Iran cannot attain those nuclear weapons is working and we're going in the right direction. But, of course, any deal has to be one that makes sense and has to be one that makes sense and has to be one that makes sense for the United States' security interests and also the interests of our allies in the region.
[Crowley:] OK. All right. Let me turn you back to the topic du jour, and that is the elections that we had last week. I want to put up an exit poll from the Virginia elections where the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe won. The question was, what's your opinion of ObamaCare? Forty-six percent of Virginia voters supported it, 53 percent opposed it. I want to add onto that a meeting at the White House Wednesday with a collection of 15 Senate Democrats, most of whom are up for re- election, who rang the alarm bell at the White House and said do something, this is hurting us. Is there a fix that the president could put in place now that would ease the concerns of both those voters in Virginia and those senators having to run for re-election?
[Wasserman Schultz:] Well, Candy, let's take a look at what the election outcome in Virginia means. Terry McAuliffe won Virginia. And he won it with the same percentage, just about, that President Obama won Virginia just a year ago. And what Election Day this past Tuesday in Virginia, a very competitive state, showed you is that when the voters are presented with a candidate who focuses on creating jobs and investing in education and working together, versus a candidate who doubled down on the politics of shutdown, who embraced Tea Party extremism, who was a leader in the war on women, particularly on women's health, they overwhelmingly chose Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, and elected him.
[Crowley:] They did.
[Wasserman Schultz:] And that is what we're going to be...
[Crowley:] But are you...
[Wasserman Schultz:] looking at...
[Crowley:] Right.
[Wasserman Schultz:] just one sec. They're going to be doing they're going to be having the same choices all across the country, with Tea Party governors that were elected in 2010 having to run on similar records against candidates who are going to give them a similar choice.
[Crowley:] But did...
[Wasserman Schultz:] When it comes to ObamaCare specifically, you know, ObamaCare did not have anything to do with Tuesday's outcome. You have
[Crowley:] You don't think it made the election closer? You don't I mean because
[Wasserman Schultz:] No, I really...
[Crowley:] -
[Wasserman Schultz:] I really don't.
[Crowley:] And so more to the point...
[Wasserman Schultz:] Because if you look at the results a year ago and the results now, they were about the same.
[Crowley:] Right. If you look at 2014, if you look at this through the prism of 2014, you don't think that ObamaCare will weigh heavily on Democratic elections?
[Wasserman Schultz:] I think ObamaCare because Americans have been feeling the benefits since 2010, where young adults can stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26, where in on January 1st, if you have a pre-existing condition, like I do, as you know, as a breast cancer survivor, the peace of mind that the that those Americans are going to have knowing that they can never be dropped or denied coverage for that pre-existing condition, the preventative care that's available without a co-pay or a deductible, those are benefits that Americans have already been feeling and will increasingly feel...
[Crowley:] Tell me...
[Wasserman Schultz:] as ObamaCare is fully implemented. I think, actually, Candy, that Democratic candidates will be able to run on ObamaCare as an advantage leading into the 2014 election.
[Crowley:] How many Floridians have lost their health care insurance in the private market?
[Wasserman Schultz:] The situation that Floridians, or any person who's gotten a transition letter from their insurance company, are in is that they will have an opportunity to shop on the exchange and compare plans...
[Crowley:] But they right. But...
[Wasserman Schultz:] And...
[Crowley:] A...
[Wasserman Schultz:] and when they have you could the CEO of Florida Blue was on a Sunday show just a week or so ago talking about how they were they are offering a replacement plan for the plans that they're transitioning. And in most cases, the plan that the person is going to benefit from is actually a lower cost and has more benefits. So, you know, this it is a real significant distortion to say that people are being that hundreds of thousands of people are being canceled. What's actually happening is that they are very likely going to get a better plan for less money.
[Crowley:] Nonetheless...
[Wasserman Schultz:] But there are some...
[Crowley:] 100,000 people have I mean hundreds of thousands of people have had insurance canceled. Some of them, you know, certainly not all of them, but some of them expressed an interest in keeping it. Would you support should the president support any kind of move and there are those in Congress, and some of them are Democrats, who say, yes, people who have insurance they want to keep it in the private market should be allowed to keep it? That's not just Republicans pushing that.
[Wasserman Schultz:] Well, and the president himself said that to the extent that his commitment and our commitment that if you liked your plan you could keep it is not possible for, you know, which is actually about less than 5 percent of the folks in the individual market, then we are going to work toward making sure they can do that. What we're not going to do is we're not going to allow the Republicans, embracing the idea that we should stop people from being able to get access to quality affordable health care, we're not going to let new plans be sold, like the Upton bill would do, to allow insurance companies to drop them or deny them coverage for pre- existing conditions, to charge women double just because we're women. And, you know, to suggest that we have to do that and create two separate tracks that are going to allow people to be discriminated against again and not have good quality health care, that's unacceptable.
[Crowley:] Right.
[Wasserman Schultz:] And it's unacceptable to Americans. We're not going backwards.
[Crowley:] And just a yes or no, because I've got to run. You believe that Democrats will win running on ObamaCare in 2014?
[Wasserman Schultz:] I think because Americans reject the Tea Party extremism, they want us to focus on creating jobs and working together, and because they will feel...
[Crowley:] That's not exactly a yes.
[Wasserman Schultz:] the benefits of ObamaCare, yes.
[Crowley:] OK. All right. Thank you so much.
[Wasserman Schultz:] There you go.
[Crowley:] I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Chairwoman.
[Wasserman Schultz:] Thanks, Candy.
[Crowley:] Appreciate it. Now to Reince Priebus. He is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Chairman, I talked the other day to Bob Dole, a man some called, in his time, in '96, too moderate to be president. And I asked him about Chris Christie. And here's what he said.
[Dole:] You know. He has some very liberal views. He'll go to Iowa, which, as you know, quite conservative. I think the Republicans are so anxious to win that he the conservatives, if he's the nominee, are going to hold their nose and vote for him. I mean, they're tired of losing.
[Crowley:] So his take at this moment is there's no frontrunner and that Chris Christie is too liberal, but nonetheless, Republicans will accept whoever they get, because they're so anxious to win. Your comment?
[Priebus:] Well, I don't know about that. I certainly respect Senator Dole a whole lot. But quite frankly, you know, for about a month, Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus and John McCain was the nominee before that. So I mean as far as our party not, you know, only looking at conservatives, you know, look, Chris Christie is a conservative. I think he's going to do very well in all of his endeavors. But the fact is, we've got stars all over our party, Candy. I mean we're going to be the party that is fresh and new in 2016. It's the Democrats that are going to be rolling out the same old names that you would expect them to rollout. So I love our chances. I love our bench. And we're going to have a great primary season come a few years from now.
[Crowley:] Well, you know, part of the problem of having so many stars is that it has created certainly what looks like a rift in the Republican Party, certainly a difference of opinion about direction. I want to read to you something that Tim Huelskamp, who is a Tea Party activist, as you know, said about what he perceived to be the lack of support for the Virginia candidate who is a Tea Party-backed candidate. And this was reported in Politico. Tim Huelskamp said Priebus was "running around New Jersey boosting Chris Christie instead of helping the guy that barely lost by a few thousand votes in Virginia, who was the conservative. And that, to me, doesn't bode well for how conservatives will be treated moving forward." In other words, there is suspicion inside the Republican Party, or Republican leaning people, that the party itself, the party mechanism, the RNC, is not friendly to Tea Party types like Cuccinelli, who lost the governorship in Virginia.
[Priebus:] That is just totally ridiculous, Candy. I mean the RGA and the RNC together put $11 million into Virginia. We put
[Crowley:] Sure. Far less than you did the last time around, though.
[Priebus:] around $3 million right. And then four years before that, the RNC put in $1.5 million. Here's the one thing that I think we need to get straight. In 2009, McCainPalin, much to the chagrin of John McCain, had $23 million that they transferred into the RNC. The RGA and RNC sat down I was therePalin and put it onto television into Virginia. The RNC, outside of a presidential election, is never in the business of buying millions and millions of dollars of ads. So what we decided early on is that we would put together the best possible ground game about $3 million worth into Virginia to help Ken out. And obviously the ground game, Obamacare, Ken's campaign came together closed the gap. I'm really proud of the ground game that we put together in Virginia. I know Ken is. I know their campaign manager is as well. So the day that the so-called Republican establishment puts $11 million into a single governor's race is not enough, I think we're living in crazy world. So, look, we have a lot to pay for on the ground across the country coming into 2014. Do I wish the outcome is different? Of course. Obviously, it didn't work that way. And we've got to just keep doing more across the country.
[Crowley:] Let me ask you about a few things that turned up in the exit poll that's point to continued problems for Republicans. And one of them was, let me show you the exit polls and the voting by gender. Cuccinelli took 42 percent of the female vote. McAuliffe, the Democrat took 51 percent. There is a continuing problem in attracting female voters. They played that card very well in that Virginia race. It was part of your autopsy from the last election that Republicans have to do better in attracting women. Certainly didn't happen in Virginia. What do you advice candidates to do?
[Priebus:] Well I mean first of all, you can cherry pick all kinds of numbers. I mean what happened in New Jersey? Chris Christie won the women vote. He won the Hispanic vote. He got 20 percent of the African-American vote. And you know what? Christie is pro-life. Christie is pro traditional marriage. I mean so here you've got two people that are fairly conservative on these same issues and you have two different outcomes. And so, you know, now going back to Virginia, Candy, actually Ken Cuccinelli won married women. He won women over 35.
[Crowley:] Right.
[Priebus:] Can I just one thing that is fundamental to this discussion that no one is talking about is what the president promised the American people. And what he promised them wasn't misspeaking. What he promised them exactly was this he said, and I quote, "any insurance that you currently have would be grandfathered in so you could keep." I could keep my ACME insurance, just a high deductible, catastrophic plan. He went into the specifics of the grandfather clause in the legislation and said, if you want to keep your catastrophic plan, he didn't equivocate like Debbie did in saying that, well, it's a better plan and it might be he said if you want to keep your catastrophic plan, you could. And this issue is going to be toxic for the Democrats and, believe me, we will tattoo it to their foreheads in 2014. We will run on it and they will lose because of it.
[Crowley:] Chairman Priebus, always so many more questions than I have time. Please come back and join us again.
[Priebus:] Sorry.
[Crowley:] That's all right. When we return, signs that the Republican moderates are starting to flex their muscles. Our all star panel is next.