head stops spinning and what revelations and what other things will we learn? part of this centers on the center. and what the center is. if you characterize the center and a piece of it the center is reagan democrats, i see the point. the moderates and independents are moderate and independent people, sort of more moderate in disposition, i think newt scares the heck out of them. i don t know how those numbers break down, but maybe i just don t want to go through all of the surprises, the roller coaster. well, you re talking about the roller coaster, you can talk about mitt s transformation from moderate to conservative. my problem with newt is you never know what you re going to get tomorrow. a box of chocolates. you never know what you re going to get. exactly. a few days ago he was channelling as the wall street journal said yesterday paul krugman with his comments of bain capital. this past summer, just this past summer, he was calling paul ryan a right-wing social enginee
erick erickson said he s unfit to be president. this is hard for any conservative to survive this. the establishment is pushing back hard. and we ve talked about this before, the guys like you who served with him in 1994 are not coming out publicly supporting him. you ve had guys like tom coburn come out and say publicly, i could not support a newt gingrich candidacy, which says a lot. you are right, i have not publicly come out in support of newt gingrich. and i have decided to this point, at least, and it s a tough decision, mika, and we need to talk about this off-air. i know. when i start expressing my opinion about newt. because i did work with him for a while. and i i ve got some strong opinions. i try not to keep it personal. i don t want to tip my hand. you ve done a good job of playing it down the middle, joe. i m a journalist, it s what i do. i love gingrich s strategy in iowa, a mix of nonchalants and high road confidence. he s got a lot of both. jim,
not manly. not manly. the only one that is tim allen and the show is called last man standing, which may be the truth. one hopes not the end of civilization. you know, meacham, when you get authors writing for you, they need to be as driven about selling books as bill bennett. he talks christmas, plus, look at that tie. yeah. it s a message. it s a message. bill bennett christmas, buy books. i m going to buy the book. thanks, rudy. his book is really excellent. you re a terrific writer, terrific thinker. we d love for you to talk more about newt, mayor. you re right, there are a lot of people knocking him around. too much we didn t ask you the hard questions. couple of other candidates you haven t talked about, santorum. good man, i can t understand why huntsman, i know why he s not moving. i know you ask it every morning. foreign policy. republicans are national security hawks. i became a republican for that
conversation to be about this summer and fall? and, you know, newt s a great source of ideas, i ve learned a lot from him, but i m worried the conversation will be about him, rather than about barack obama we haven t even talked about let s turn the conversation to your book. because you came on here yeah. to talk about your book, and we for 30 minutes have hijacked you. it s called the book of man with all of these men around, what can rudy and meacham and i learn from the book of man? there s no problem at this table, let me stipulate that, but there s a problem with men. whether you look at employment levels, men looking for jobs, look at marriage, commitment to family, and so on. we said to the women, you know, you go girl, and they went. and now we have the first generation of women who are outperforming men in almost everything in terms of achievement, education, ambition, and so on. this book is an encouragement to men to be men and to remember