Obama Cabinet Shake-up; Jeb Bush Joins the Chorus of Critics
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: She was the poster child of the botched Obamacare rollout.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She's got bumps, I've got bumps -- bruises.</s>KING: But the President insists this farewell is a celebration.</s>OBAMA: And the final score speaks for itself.</s>KING: Will an election year cabinet shakeup repair a damaged brand or just give Republicans another stage for their favorite campaign theme.</s>JEB BUSH, FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: We must repeal Obamacare replace it with a consumer directed, market oriented policy.</s>KING: Conservatives hear that but can Jeb Bush sell what most Tea Party voters call amnesty.</s>BUSH: There is no conflict between enforcing our laws, believing in the rule of law and having some sensitivity to the immigrant experience.</s>KING: Plus finally something Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush can agree on, flying shoes test your reflexes and your sense of humor.</s>HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Thank goodness she didn't play softball like I did.</s>KING: INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King thanks for sharing your Sunday morning and with us to share their reporting and their insights Politico's Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin of "The New York Times", Manu Raju with Politico and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report. You might call this the 2014 version of hope and change. Kathleen Sebelius out as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Obama now hopes changing the person who runs Obamacare on a day-to-day basis will allow for an election year rebranding. So Sebelius heads home to Kansas and Sylvia Mathews Burwell will take her place after -- after the Senate confirmation process that promises to echo and perhaps escalate the intense Obamacare debate taking place all around the country in key races this year. So Maggie Haberman, let's start there. Republicans say this is their number one issue. It's particularly their number one issue with primary voters. Is it smart for the President? Many people thought Sebelius would go after the election. Is it smart to do this now and you get a hearing in the Health Education and Labor Committee, a hearing in the Finance Committee and then a Finance Committee vote and then probably a week of floor debate where Republicans -- I don't think they'll go after Sylvia all that much.</s>MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.</s>KING: But they will go after, what about premiums, what about -- can I keep my doctor and so on and so forth.</s>HABERMAN: I think that the White House is operating from the premise that it can't get much worse for Democrats in terms of Obamacare, we are -- we have hit the bottom it's not going to get terrible. And it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, if you lose Sebelius now, you take the idea that nobody was held accountable off the table, that talking point goes away. And also, as you say, the hearings will focus on Obamacare, but she was confirmed once before, Burwell. So she will likely be confirmed once again. It will provide some messy headlines but how many independent voters are unaware of the Obamacare mess up to this point.</s>KING: Do Democrats feel pressure then Manu as this plays out? We're going to confirm her, she's going to get her votes. We're going to say nice things about Sebelius. Happy she's gone to Maggie's point about turning the page. But does this then increase -- if you're Kay Hagan and you're on that health education and labor and pension committee and you're on the ballot this year in a tough race, do you have to as part of that press for changes?</s>MANU RAJU, POLITICO: You have to sound like you're demanding some changes --</s>JONATHAN MARTIN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Accountability.</s>RAJU: Accountability holding them accountable. Well you're probably going to end up voting for her at the end of the day. For the 2014 Democrats, the key thing here will be the divide within the committee. How does this come out of the finance committee is it a straight party line vote or does she manage to get some Republican votes when -- when she actually comes out of the committee. If there is actually some bipartisan cover that will help people like Kay Hagan on the floor when she has to vote, Mark Begich when he has to vote, Mark Pryor when they have to vote -- but if this becomes straight party line, this became -- this is essentially another endorsement of Obamacare, it's going to be a problem for these guys.</s>AMY WALTER, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: But that's a great opportunity right for Kay Hagan and for all those other Democrats who have been desperate to vote for something that fixes Obamacare, so that they can go on the trail, put an ads, I went to the White House, I went straight to the top and I made sure there were changes. Kay Hagan can now run ads with her questioning the new person who is coming in as HHS Secretary. And probably better things --</s>MARTIN: I'm sure that Harry Reid already thought about this.</s>WALTER: Yes.</s>MARTIN: But there may be some reforms coming to the Affordable Care Act that are a matter of time that now the Kay Hagans of the world can claim credit for based upon a question that she asked or a letter that she sent -- the favorite trick of senators -- letters. It could happen now.</s>WALTER: Yes.</s>KING: So the question is can they pull that off in the sense you still have a Republican House, a very narrowly Democratic Senate. The House has voted what 50 times, 52 times maybe up to a thousand times to repeal Obamacare. The Senate hasn't cast one vote on Obamacare this year because once you open that box, we're going to move a semi- colon, well then the Republicans are going to say let's change everything. So can they -- can they manage that, can the Democrats successfully manage making modest changes to give their candidates something to go home and brag about without setting off God know what?</s>HABERMAN: It's a tricky line to walk. But you have to remember the flip side Republicans are also concerned about just the scream for repeal without explaining what's worth going towards. So there has to be some fix people know that this is the law. People know that this is going to sort of stay the same. And this is why you have critics of the law say -- and opponents of it have said for a very long time that once you have an entitlement program, it's very hard to take it away. So Republicans are concerned in terms of the messaging front on what are we replacing this with? And there are concerns there, too. They don't have a clear straight shot here.</s>KING: To that point we just had Jeb Bush, a potential candidate in 2016. He's looking at it in the open saying repeal it. But then he was very careful to say replace it with a consumer driven market orient. Is there anybody who believes, that let's say a Republican wins in 2016 and even if that Republican has a Republican Congress, but even have a pretty narrow majority in the Senate if that is the case, can you repeal something that at that point would have been on the book for what six, eight years.</s>WALTER: And not have a good replacement for it that deals with you know the very popular items, especially the pre-existing conditions and all those other things? I mean for as unpopular as it is, it's still 50 -- it's 50 percent of folks who say that they disapprove of it. But you've still got 45, 46 percent of the electorate that likes it.</s>RAJU: Well the problem with the Republicans -- I mean if you're a Republican candidate, it's not viable in the Republican primary to say I want to fix Obamacare. You have to say I'm going to full out repeal it, root and branch, otherwise you'll only get whacked and we're seeing that happen to some extent.</s>HABERMAN: That is true.</s>MARTIN: And the question is when will Democrats if ever this year feel comfortable in saying to Republicans, ok, you want to repeal it. What would you repeal? Would you repeal the issue of what Amy just mentioned? Would you repeal the issue of having your kids on your plan until they're 26 years old? Do Democrats dare go down that lane? Which open themselves up to risk but also it raises the question about what do you want to repeal for Republicans. Because you never hear that second question of what do you want to repeal.</s>KING: And so we'll see. The Republicans think this helps them to get a national platform. But as you can see at the table, maybe the Democrats can turn this to their advantage. So we've showed a little of Jeb Bush on healthcare. My question to you, Maggie Haberman, you spent some time with the governor, is was he talking about health care and being so conservative, it's not repeal, using the world repeal even though he had the replace part, but was he talking about repeal with gusto because conservatives are mad at this, his comment about immigration saying, look, you know we need to think of a path to legal status, maybe even citizenship.</s>BUSH: The way I look at this and this is not you know, I'm going to say this and it will be on tape. And so be it. Yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony. It's kind of -- it's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family.</s>KING: Can he sell that if he runs in 2016? That is to Tea Party voters, grassroots conservatives, even a path to status, never mind citizenship is amnesty.</s>HABERMAN: When Karl Rove is saying in the wake of those comments that this is not ideal, that sort of tells you where this is headed. He defended what he had said last night but he also did not repeat what he said. I think the short answer is no, this is very, very hard to sell in the Republicans right now.</s>JONATHAN: And John I think the fact that he clarified the statement in Connecticut in that speech last week is the best indication that we've had so far that he's at least thinking about the possibility of running.</s>WALTER: Right.</s>MARTIN: That to me is one of the big reveals, perhaps the big reveal, the fact that he would clarify what he said. If he didn't care about it, he would just let it go.</s>KING: And yet also proof if he's needing to fix things, he's been off the bike for a while. He hasn't actually run for office in a long time.</s>RAJU: Absolutely.</s>WALTER: Although there are -- and there are a lot of Republicans, especially those who want to see some immigration reform. They get that the party needs to move forward on this, especially if they're going to win in 2016 that say this issue is going to be much more complicated than it looks on paper for anti-immigration Republicans, that by the time we get to 2016, almost every single one of those people sitting on the stage will have taken a position on immigration that's different from the ones we saw in 2008 or 2012. We're not going to hear about self-deportation and those sort of things.</s>RAJU: Right and you are looking at how -- it will be interesting to see also what Marco Rubio does in the next Congress too.</s>WALTER: Yes.</s>RAJU: I mean he -- after the bill passed the Senate, he distanced himself from it. He said this is an issue for the House. What he's going to do when this comes back up?</s>MARTIN: And real fast -- I've always wondered about 2015 if Republicans do get the majority back and John Boehner keeps the House gavel, will McConnell and Boehner get an immigration bill off the docs signed up by President Obama to help their nominee the following year?</s>KING: Do it in to 2015 so you don't have to do it in 2016.</s>MARTIN: They know they need to get that.</s>WALTER: Yes.</s>KING: Well keep an eye on that. Everybody stay by -- stand by. Up next, our puzzle explains why Democrats think an April loss in the fight over equal pay could be part of the winning strategy come November. But first our weekly installment of "Politicians say the Darnedest things" this week colorful language as our first African- American President pays tribute to Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act President Johnson signed into law 50 years ago.</s>OBAMA: He believed that their plight was his plight, too, that his freedom ultimately was wrapped up in theirs and then making their lives better was what the hell the presidency was for.