the candidates are hardly talking about it or offering detailed solutions. john harwood is here to talk about it. john, it is remarkable with the very rare exception of at a debate in las vegas in october, we really haven t heard them talk much about this at all. what gives? well, chris, some problems are so difficult and expensive to solve that nobody feels like talking about them. we re talking about american homeowners are trillions of dollars under water. what do you do about that? this is why mitt romney s solution, which is not the kind of thing that sounds good on the campaign trail so he doesn t say it very often, is don t have the government interfere with the foreclosure process, let the market hit bottom, and then it will come up helped you would hope or we all would hope by a stronger economy. that s not a very satisfying answer because what are the alternatives? how do you make people who have invested in mortgages except lower returns in order to
in the spring to january third, mitt romney has to get past skepticism among social conservatives. russ is in charge of helping mitt romney answer this question, he s senior adviser to the romney campaign. russ, i want to start on iowa because that s where everybody is at the moment. the democratic national committee, they put out a memo raising the stakes for romney in iowa. i want to read it. they note, in the month of debumber alone, mitt romney s campaign in the super pac xoring his candidacy spent $4 million in iowa. clearly, romney is now all in to win in iowa. do you dispute that chs characterization? chris, and you know this, we re not going to be taking sort of anything that the democratic national committee is putting out about what our strategy may or may not be really seriously. we have been very clear all
we think our strength has always been mitt romney is the best person when it comes to the biggest issue facing this country, and that s jobs and the economy. and he s the best position to take on president obama when it comes to the big issues that are facing us in this election. that s why i think we re going to be the nominee. we re going to find out if voters agree in just six days. russ, i m excited. thanks for joining us. thanks, chris. by the time the republican party has a nominee to face president obama, there is concern that the party s brand will have suffered some real damage. some people are blaming the tea party s influence on the candidates and on republican lawmakers. matt kibby is the president of freedom works and he joins us now. matt, my colleague dan balz at the washington post wrote a piece that suggested some republicans believe the tea party has pushed the republican party too far to the right. that the two-month extension on the payroll tax cut being an
along that we d like to win everywhere. you know, governor romney from the beginning said he was going to participate in the iowa process, going to participate in the caucuses, would debate in iowa, and now it s the last week and we are on our bus tour and we hope to do well. we re not going to get into any kind of expectations game. i don t disagree you want to win everywhere, i m sure you do. but at the same time my home state of connecticut is a lot further along in the process than iowa. iowa tends to matter more and if past is prologue, suggesting it is an indicator of what s to come next. i have heard talk you would be fine if you finished in the top three in iowa. can you at least set the expectation that is a win, place, or show is necessary for the national front-runner in the first state? here chris, our expectation is this. that we re going to get to 1143 delegates by the end of this process. and be the nominee.
this week may be mitt romney s week in iowa. what s your sense from being on the ground there? is the energy real? yeah. look, i think romney has the best chance he s had to win iowa here in some months. chris, everything that he needed to go his way has really gone his way, and, look, i think the fact is that his chief rival now, 76-year-old libertarian candidate for president who even his own supporters don t see as a possible commander in chief. chris, if governor romney can t beat ron paul, what does that say about the strength of his broader campaign? i think he s poised to do very well here, if not win the caucuses outright. if you talk to some of his folks privately especially, they will tell you that he s in a very, very strong place. publicly, of course, they re consumed with this expectation