and your family and the businesses that you had your hand on? and the folks who worked for you? i mean come on, it s just, it s almost to the point where it s farcical, that in all the prep and all the preparation, you cannot figure out a concise answer that puts in the context wealth creation. so as long as he has that problem, he s going to stay a 25%, the base is going to look elsewhere. newt is going to generate momentum or santorum going to generate momentum and this thing could stretch out into the summer and we ll see here in tampa with the convention that will be buck wild. chuck, i m fixated on money this morning and i just want to know, you know as always. it s better than your usual fixations. we can t discuss that. you work for fortune. exactly. so the fact that mitt romney is worth a quarter of a billion dollars and newt gingrich has gotten at least $10 million from sheldon adelson and his wife,
crisis in florida. you see the statewide ads, they re hunl, have you lost something? are you okay? i got a mess over here. i don t know what happened. willie is sitting over here, i don t know what s going on. you ve reported in florida, you can t go anywhere without somebody, all of my friends in pensacola, either they sell houses or they build houses or they are somehow in the food chain affected by it. everybody in my state is devastated by this housing crisis and that points a finger at newt. it s very tough. both these candidates have problems on the economic front. we re going to now see what happens, not because there s anything inappropriate in romney s taxes, they re now out. we re now going to have a couple of days about how rich romney is and how little he pays. in a state where unemployment is over 10%. we re now into states where the economics are bad. in florida, we re going to go to nevada soon, 13, 14% unemployment out there neither one of these candidates are
angry newt, the frankly the newt gingrich that gave what i thought was, was an off-key victory speech from saturday night, where he was channeling this idea of resentment in his victory speech, it s one thing to do it at the debates, to do it when he s trying to set himself up as a front-runner. you almost felt as if the gingrich campaign told him hey, you need to start acting like a front-runner. you need to start acting like a happy warrior. but, chuck, isn t that a mistake? i mean every time newt goes into the lead, he tries, if he tries to act this way, it goes against type, it goes against the very thing that conservatives love about him. i think, i get your point on that. i just think they wanted to see if it would make romney look shrill. if him constantly going on the attack and newt sort of not taking the bait, if it would reflect poor on romney. i think romney delivered his text better than i had seen him
think m.a.s.h. was as good without a laugh track. i don t think newt is as good without the audience. he needs the south carolina people screaming. the point that you ve been making for a while, i thought romney was as i said before, i thought they were both exhausted. i thought that romney, in the past debates has been good at dropping opposition research into his attacks on opponents, i thought it felt a little like an opo-dump on newt. fine, he went on the attack. in the end something you said for a couple of days i think is the problem for romney, he still needs to offer a positive vision, that conservative voters will like. not just attacking gingrich. which he has to do. but he also has to give conservatives a reason to vote for him. because the south carolina result, as again as you pointed out, joe, was as much a rejection of romney as anything else. how does he turn that around? how does he come up with a message that conservatives will john, when you write your book, i
all of the notes. i think you and everybody else, me, everybody is going to realize that this entire campaign has been nothing but a judgment on mitt romney. mitt romney s the front-runner. what about sarah palin? okay, she s not going to do it. what about herman cain? he s not qualified to be a dog catcher. but you know, he s not mitt romney. we re going to move him. then rick perry, and all of these other people. we re at newt gingrich right now. listen, i don t want to upset anybody at home. newt s not going to win this thing. he s just not i know mark halperin, who, i know he s going to be disappointed. but newt, i don t think in the end newt s going to win. but it s a terrible rejection, once again, of mitt romney. and if mitt doesn t give his case, instead of just tearing down newt, boy, he s going to be weak when he goes up against obama. we have one more before we get to other news. an ad being run by the romney campaign in florida right now. it hits newt gingrich for his