I don't know who Chuck Todd thought he was kidding on MSNBC's Morning Joe this Thursday, but it seems it might be himself. He started out this segment pretending that if President Obama just reached out to Republicans and gave them more of what they want on this so-called "fiscal cliff" deal to try to get a "grand bargain," then maybe they'd get around to working with him on immigration or gun control.

TODD: There is incentive I think for the President to do whatever it takes, even if it means maybe going further than he ever anticipated in trying to get a big deal, because if he's got to spend all of 2013 dealing with budget impasse after budget impasse, so he can't get it done here in this lame duck. Then it takes January. He's got to use his inaugural and the State of the Union to argue about fiscal and deficit issues and tax issues. Then you have the debt ceiling.

I mean, if that's how the first three or four months play out, when does immigration get done Mike? I'm still trying to figure that out. When does he get to the gun issue which they seem intent on trying to do? When does he start dealing with energy? There's a whole domestic – and by the way, let's remember second term – domestically they don't last four years. You've got about a year, maybe a little bit more before the mid-term election when you can get something done through Congress.

So, if this is – and by the way, the bitterness that is setting in, in the personal relationships between the President and Mitch McConnell, the President and Speaker Boehner – I think make it that much worse.

He turned right around just a little bit later and contradicted himself, saying that the Republican base is never going to allow any compromise with the President and that their voters won't reward it. And he called them "playing with political fire" because the one group of their constituents they do care about, the business community, might finally get sick of them holding the debt ceiling hostage and putting our economy at risk.

I'm not sure where Chuck Todd has been for the last four years, but I've seen absolutely no evidence that any Republicans plan on compromising with the President, ever on any issues. I don't know why he believes if he just caves in on these negotiations and of course throws his base under the bus, which is what you know Todd is talking about here, that he'd get a year out of them to work on anything. If they come forth with any legislation on either immigration or gun control, you know it's going to be something awful that no one on the left will want to vote for, like turning immigrants into some sort of underclass that never has a chance for citizenship or to unionize, or putting more guns in our schools.