MSNBC "Morning Joe" Interview - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "MORNING JOE" INTERVIEW WITH REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA); REP. LORETTA SANCHEZ (D-CA)

SUBJECT: SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER'S CHANGE OF PARTY INTERVIEWERS: JOE SCARBOROUGH, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, ANDREA MITCHELL

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MS. BRZEZINSKI: Here with us now, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent and the host of MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Andrea Mitchell.

MS. MITCHELL: Well, good morning.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Also with us, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, and from Capitol Hill, Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Maxine! She likes me a lot.

(Cross talk.)

REP. WATERS: Good morning. Good morning.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: She won't admit in California, but Maxine likes me.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Maxine, you like Joe, right?

REP. WATERS: Mika, I love Joe.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Aw, good. That's nice.

REP. WATERS: We've settled that.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Okay. She knows everybody's asleep in California; that's why she can say it. (Laughter.)

Let's go around and get everybody's reaction to Arlen Specter. First, Andrea, you were reporting this yesterday when the news broke. What's it mean?

MS. MITCHELL: Well, it means that the Republican Party is in deep trouble, not only in the Northeast, but around the country. This is a national story.

Mitch McConnell tried to say it's not a national story; this is a Pennsylvania story. Yes, Arlen Specter saw that he wasn't going to win. Yes, the Republican Party shrunk, as we know, last year, because 200,000 voters moved over, registered as Democrats, to vote either for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Exciting Democratic primary.

But the fact is, it's -- the Republican Party had abandoned Arlen Specter a long time earlier, going all the way back to the Judge Bork fight.

And they'd never really re-accommodated. Even after Clarence Thomas, when he took the other side and won the election in 1992, they'd never come back to him. And he was always a misfit.

I first met him when he was a Democrat back in the '60s, before he became a --

MS. BRZEZINSKI: He was the first --

MS. MITCHELL: He became a Republican to run for district attorney, but initially he was a Democrat. He was always more comfortable as a Democrat.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And Loretta, he fits the Democratic Party more tightly than the Republican Party, doesn't he?

REP. SARBANES: I believe so. I do believe, Joe, that -- and you know this as a politician -- that you have to know what's going on. And the policies that have been coming out of the Republicans, unfortunately, have alienated a large majority. That's why we had such an opening, especially after President Bush.

And I think it's so difficult to switch parties. It really is a difficult thing. You have the infrastructure; you have the history. So to make a move like that really means you guys just aren't on the same page that I am on.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Right. Right.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Well, no better time than now, actually, to do that.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Well, no better time than now. And Maxine, it is tough switching parties, but I suspect if I were running in a Republican primary and it was down by 20 percentage points but Democrats loved me, I might switch too. This is survival.

REP. WATERS: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Has the Republican Party become too conservative to win on the coasts?

REP. WATERS: Well, obviously, they're just out of step with the majority of the people in this country. It's all about public policy. They have shown that they cannot embrace a policy that connects with most of the people in this country.

Someone said it earlier, there's a growing minority population all over this country, and they are just not in step. They have never understood how to deal with that growing minority. They've never reassessed their direction and their vision, and so it's coming home to roost.

And you see Arlen Specter, who's now going to give Obama the opportunity to get his platform passed here in the Congress of the United States. He's going to get his health care. He's going to get education. We're going to get energy. And that's what the people are demanding.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Well, and the question that you asked her, I'll turn it around on you, Joe. Because though damaging, it's not completely surprising, the Specter switch.

The Republican Party, you could argue, is not conservative enough and doesn't have a voice that's consistent and credible.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Well, it's just not consistent.

Loretta, over the past eight years, you sat as the same Republicans who were preaching fiscal responsibility ran up the biggest deficits and the biggest debts in U.S. history.

I hear all this talk about how the Republican Party is too conservative. It seems to me, in the areas that matter most to bedrock conservatives like myself, fiscal restraint, low spending, less regulation, this Republican Party has been anything but conservative over the past eight years.

REP. SANCHEZ: Well, as you know, Joe, I represent Orange County, California --

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Right.

REP. SANCHEZ: -- considered to be one of the prime areas for Republicans. And I was very surprised in the last election that so many Republicans would come up to me and say, you know, I've dropped out of the Party; or, I'm just not in tune with them; I've gone to decline-to-state.

Lots of decline-to-state in Orange County now. Many of them even signed up as Democrats for the primary issue. But we really saw a move away from the Republican Party.

And -- (cross talk) -- had to do with Bush and the Republican control of the House and the Senate that pushed through this incredible spending.

They cut taxes on people, didn't take in any revenue.

The continued to increase spending, and so we now have the debt, in fact, that we have on our hands. And people are very worried about that.

But what happened for Democrats, I believe, is that it gave us an opportunity to put Obama in and it gave us an opportunity to have majorities in the House and in the Senate.

But now, we have to go on the issues. We have to prove ourselves, and I think we are.

I think when you look at climate change, most Republicans are still saying, hey, this thing isn't happening. But if you see our young people, our young people are very concerned.

This is the first galvanizing issue I've seen for even kids in elementary school.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Well, and -- a couple of nights ago we were at an event with leaders, a lot of thought leaders in Washington, D.C.

And I heard Lindsey Graham, a friend of mine, asked a question about the environment and global warming.

REP. SANCHEZ (?): That's so telling.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And he was still sort of down the middle -- is there really global warming, and --

That, as we say in the South, that horse has left the barn, and Republicans are still debating what 80 percent of Americans believe to be the case.

(Cross talk.)

REP. WATERS: Joe, you talk about being a bedrock conservative, but look how you handle the issues.

Number one, you're fair, and you have the ability to evaluate an issue not based on whether or not it's a Democrat or a Republican that's advancing that issue, but you have a philosophy that issues fairly.

And so I think, just as you're able to converse with me, even though we differ greatly on the issues, we're able to talk. We're able to get along. And that's what you don't see in some of the so- called bedrock conservatives, and that's what they're missing.

(Cross talk.)

MS. MITCHELL: Actually, what I was going to say about Lindsey Graham --

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And Maxine talks about temperament here. I think Republicans love to talk about Ronald Reagan. They get the ideology right, but they forget the temperament.

Reagan didn't hate anybody. Reagan wasn't a screamer.

MS. MITCHELL: Well, two things about that. My take on Lindsey Graham -- and we can check later -- is that he was saying that he gets global warming.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: He gets it, okay.

MS. MITCHELL: He believes it, and that he's frustrated that many of his colleagues don't. So we can clarify that later, but --

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Okay, but if the Republicans don't get it, that's a problem.

(Cross talk.)

MS. MITCHELL: Well, Loretta is exactly right about that. But one really important thing that came out, one of the many things that came out of the NBC-Wall Street Journal Poll is the likeability, the Reaganesque qualities of Barack Obama.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: When you talk about 81 percent of the people liking him, 30 percent more than like his policies, that is a powerful weapon.

Now, that can evaporate if there's a lot of controversy over his policies coming up.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: But this is the biggest fact of Specter's switch, is that health care now has a real shot, and a shot to do it with more than the 51 votes, that they can it without using these parliamentary maneuvers of reconciliation.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Exactly. And Mika, I will guarantee you that -- you have three people that have run for office here. I will guarantee you that Loretta and Maxine, like me, have had people in every race come up to me saying I don't agree with you, but I like you. I'm going to vote for you.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: I've seen this even now. But that's what --

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And that's what President Obama has on a much larger scale.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Absolutely.

MS. MITCHELL: It's not that different from hosting a TV show. (Laughter.)

MR. SCARBOROUGH: No, it's not!

REP. SANCHEZ: The likeability factor is a big factor.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: It is critical.

REP. SANCHEZ: The candidate, the person, makes a big difference.

And how you sell, whether you go out and you listen to people, even if they differ with you.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Right.

REP. SANCHEZ: And how you talk to them. And how -- they feel that they have a shot to convince you or persuade you to change.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Yes. Accessible.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And Mika, you know who I like? No, who I love?

(Cross talk.)

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Maxine Waters. I love her.

(Laughter.)

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Congresswoman Maxine Waters, thank you.

REP. WATERS: Mika, love you. Love you, Joe. I'll help to support you when you run for office again.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Okay! That'll help. I appreciate it.

(Cross talk, laughter.)

MS. BRZEZINSKI: (Inaudible) -- Sanchez, thank you very much.

(Cross talk.)

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