JOY REID (HOST): Jeff, and I'm going to you on this first. Really wanted to have you on today just to talk about the sort of nexus between evangelicalism and Republicanism in Washington. Where does Mike Pence fit into that?
JEFF SHARLET: Mike Pence is one of the brokers of that. To understand Mike Pence and to understand that kind of religious conservative politics, you have to not think of social conservatism and fiscal conservatism as separate, but like Mike Pence say, “Our goal, our mission, is to marry fiscal and moral values.” He sees them as one in the same, so when you go back in his record and you look at his speeches about abortion, which are really something. He is probably the most anti-abortion presidential or VP candidate we've had. You see him also bringing in financial. He sees it if we don't stop abortion, our economy will collapse. So he's the guy who sort of stands in the middle between those two factions of the Republican Party.
REID: And just to make that point, just a few sort of bullet points on Mike Pence as far as the issues. On abortion, he signed a law as Indiana governor banning abortions because of genetic anomalies, abortions that were unfortunate anomalies, and he also signed a law mandating, and this is weird, women who have a miscarriage or an abortion had to have a burial for the fetus and must cremate after a miscarriage or abortion. On LGBT rights, he signed a law allowing religious beliefs as a defense against discrimination in lawsuits, and then after a backlash, he's revised the law to exclude LGBT discrimination which got him in trouble with conservatives in Indiana. On prison, he reinstated a ten-year mandatory minimum drug sentencing, and then on Medicaid he actually expanded the Affordable Care Act, he expanded Obamacare, but he supports repealing it all and he did enact those modifications -- he enacted a modified version of the Obamacare expansion, which also got him in trouble with some conservatives. And then lastly, on Planned Parenthood, he cut the funding in half in the state of Indiana, which forced the closure of some clinics in regional districts at the same time there was an HIV outbreak that caused, you know, really a lot of panic, and Jonathan Capehart, with that kind of a record, this isn't expansion sort of pick, right? This is someone who is going to double, triple down on evangelicals because those are some pretty far-right positions.
