bachmann's top staffers. ed rollins, a familiar presence on the show, stepping back to what is called an advisory role citing health concerns and david pulenski is leaving the campaign entirely. the two had, quote, strategic differences on the path forward. politico saying it is unclear who will take either man's place. joining us are james carville and ari fleischer who can be reached on twitte twitter @arifleischer. james, what do you make of the shakeup? >> it's possible ed rollins could have health issues here. that's not outside the realm of possibility. he had some health issues before. sometimes people just say that. also the differences in campaigns happen. it would be early to call this significant. it may be but probably more to find out before i deem it as something significant yet. >> ari, if it is health, that's one thing. if it's not, could this also be the growing pains of a campaign? campaigns start off one way, often evolve into something else. >> yeah. this often does happen in campaigns. anderson, as james knows, campaigns are the most gruelling thing you can do. it's a labor of love and intensity. it's ridiculous hours, low pay, grinding work but ends in joy hopefully if you win. i'm 50 and i'm too old to do a campaign. it's a young person's business on the presidential level. i don't know the facts with ed. he's 68 years old. you have to keep an eye out for these things, especially michele bachmann has a history of not being able to keep a staff at her congressional office. let's see how this plays out. >> john king joins us as well. what do you make of this? >> as james and ari know as veterans of campaigns there are shakeups. this comes at a time when michele bachmann faces the entrance of rick perry in the race which stalled her momentum a bit. she has a lot to prove in south carolina and iowa is the most critical state. also there have been missteps. some of them silly. confusing elvis's birthday with his death day. silly factual misstatements, some not so silly. the management of the campaign saying, hey, staffers must be giving her bad information has come into play. last time i talked to ed rollins was in an e-mail exchange. he was having fun. he has had health issues so i will take them at their word for now. they have had questions about management style and substance within the campaign without a doubt. >> james, you have worked on a lot of campaigns and still work on campaigns overseas. obviously you disagree with her politically but as a campaign. >> she has a lot of energy. one thing we know is michele bachmann, contrary to my pulling for her won't be the republican nominee. it's hard to work on a campaign where you have a chance. but it's really hard to work on a campaign where you know in the end that you are not going to prevail. that could have something to do with this. ari is right. this is strictly when a campaign is a cause as opposed to something that will end in ultimate victory. you have to have energy and perseveran perseverance. i think john pointed out she's had trouble keeping staff. some people are hard to work for. i don't know that much about her. >> to john's point about the entrance of mitt romney changing or maybe stalling some momentum, do you think that's true? if so, how big a problem do you think it is for her? >> you know, i think michele bachmann attracts people working for her because they believe in her and she has a special appeal, charisma and energy. even if you are working on a campaign that's not winning, but, remember, she does have a chance to win this thing. it's too soon to pronounce who will win the republican nomination. that fires up a staff and gets them energized. you have to let this play out. if she does lose staff, at the end of the day it's not the worse thing to happen to candidates. many candidates go through staff changes. it does become a test of who the candidate is, how they persevere and move forward. newt gingrich is being tested on that front now. it's part of the adversity of campaigning that helps prepare people to be president. it's a grinding fact about working on a campaign. we get to measure the candidates over time as they deal with adversity whether personnel or policy. >> james carville is grinning like a cheshire cat. why? >> i didn't say who was going to win, i just said she wasn't. it's hard to work on a campaign that has a chance to win. it's nearly impossible on one that doesn't have a chance. ed is a friend of mine. he's -- he worked for christine todd whitman. and whitman and bachmann are on a different planet if you ask me. he's a political professional. >> obviously worked for reagan for a long time. michele bachmann and four other republicans were at a forum today at a forum hosted by senator jim demint. who do you think made the best impression for the crowd? >> i think making an important impression was romney whose decision to come was a surprise. because senator demint is a tea party guy, a conservative. senator demint supported governor romney in 2008 when the massachusetts health care reform plan was passed. now he says it's an issue for him. he said it's because it is a different presidential field. governor romney, with governor perry in the race, with michele bachmann's tea party supporters, with the potential entry of sarah palin, needs to reach out beyond the center of the republican party, the moderate conservatives. he needs to get some votes. maybe not a lot, but some votes from the tea party movement. some votes from evangelicals. this is important that romney realizes he needs to broetd broaden the strategy a bit. he comes and instead of sharing the stage with governor perry, a lot of people would have liked the contrast, perry had to go to texas because of wildfires. three debates in the next few weeks for the romney/perry showdown. think romney made an important statement by saying, i will compete outside of what many of you may have thought was my box of voters. >> rick perry seemed to take a swipe at mitt romney's jobs credentials though many of the jobs he takes credit for are in low wage jobs. who has the edge -- romney or perry? >> it's a fair fight. it's who makes their case stronger? governor romney has a case that he has private sector experience. knows how to create jobs. knows the dine mimpl where jobs get lost, created, net job creation. governor perry has the experience of being part of the fastest growth of jobs in america in the last couple of years. in which economy it is a significant accomplishment. then there is a tendency in republican primaries for voters to choose sitting governors because of executive experience. you have what i think is a fair fight. if the issue is the economy, these are the ones who can make the best campaign. the best message to the public. >> james? >> i think it's a fascinating race. from everything i hear and feel those guys don't care much for each other. that makes for an interesting primary. i know that primaries can be more intense than general elections. i think this will be a very intense fight. romney and perry are different people and that will be apparent. there was a good excuse. the wildfires were devastating in texas. no question. they have three debates coming up. one right on cnn. >> that's correct. >> anderson? >> go ahead, ari. >> i was going to say, i'm in the minority among republican observers. i don't believe there is a republican front runner. every candidate has sufficient strengths and weaknesses. nobody is in first by enough to call them a front runner. it could be governor perry for a moment. for a moment it could be romney. i don't count out michele bachmann. there is too much of a rubik's cube nature and nobody has sufficient strength to be what i would call a front runner. >> you see those three as the front runners? ron paul is polling highly but you didn't name him. >> no. that's right. he doesn't have the strength to go beyond his vociferous narrow base. there is a top tier. in it i would put michele bachmann, mitt romney and governor perry. i think there is a way for governor huntsman of utah to prevail because of his appeal to moderates in new hampshire if he runs a smart campaign and if defensives divide possibly he can conquer. there are way too many dynamics at play in the campaign. >> i want to show you something michele bachmann said about how the federal government could save some money. >> areas of government would include -- for instance, i believe the department of education because the constitution does not specifically enumerate, nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education. that's historically been held by the parents and by local communities and by state government. >> not surprising. that's been a long held position getting rid of the department of education. what else jumped out at you down there? >> well, look. social issues are important to primary voters, especially evangelical voters. 54% of voters in the republican presidential primary in 2008 describe themselves as evangelicals. you will have debate, questions about eliminating the department of education, about whether you should have a federal constitutional amendment or leave it up to the states whether to outlaw abortion, allow same-sex marriage. those issues will be discussed in a republican primary. there is no way to avoid it and republican voters want to hear the differences laid out. there is a question, anderson, when republicans see the president of the united states, the democratic incumbent as so vulnerable. there are those who worry if they get too much national attention the president can say, these guys are too far right or are talking about issues not relevant to the number one, two, three, four challenges in the country which is the economy. important issues to republicans aren't necessarily today. those aren't necessarily the issues. and certainly won't be issues we'll talk about headed into the final stretch. >> stick around. after the break we want to talk about president obama's upcoming jobs proposal. what it may look like and whether republicans will support it. we'll get the angles on that. let us know what you think. we are on facebook. we'll look at mitt romney -- a lot of talk on the trail about his record of job creation when he was in the private sector. how real was that? we have an honest report on that and then to texas where wildfires are burning out of control. 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>> anderson, i have been doing this three, four months now. i'm 64 -- 68 years old. you know, i had a stroke a year and a half ago. so, you know, i worked 12, 14-hour days. it's wearing. i have great affection for michele. it was my plan to build a team, get through the straw poll. we won that, and make a transition when we got to the fall when she was coming back to congress. that's what we are today. i have great affection for her. still very much the team i put in place. i just don't have the endurance to go 12, 14 hours a day, seven days a week anymore. >> i think you have more endurance than me. you have been a fighter for a long time. >> as long as you have been on this earth i have been doing campaigns. it's tough. it's a young person's game. >> the deputy campaign manager is also stepping down. do you have a comment on why? >> you know, david and i have been a team for a long time. we worked on the huckabee campaign together. his family has recently moved back to houston. i think to a certain extent, you know, he's got two young children. he lived in new york before. just a good time to make a change. once again, how she wants to structure it and who she structures it with will be out of the players who are players but i think david decided because we worked well together that he's worn out, too. >> i don't know if you can say, but how do you think the entrance of rick perry into the race has affected michele bachmann's campaign? has it changed anything? >> oh, sure it has. rick perry is a very serious candidate who steps in. we have two serious money people in the sense of mitt romney and him. they do a little cross over. the debates will play a big role. a majority of people don't know who rick perry is outside of texas. we are sort of going after the same voter base. i think to a certain extent it slowed our money down. it took a lot of the momentum we would have gotten out of the straw poll victory. you know, to win the straw poll after eight weeks in the race is unheard of. normally that would have given you a big boost. he steps in the race the same day so there is a lot of attention ton him. this makes it harder, but at the end of the day he's got to prove himself in a tough arena with debates and all the rest of it. she's a good debater. she'll do well over the next six, seven weeks. my sense is, you know, i think legitimately it's a romney, perry race with the leaders in the poll leading the money. she's the third candidate at this point in time, i think, which is different and better than we thought when we started this thing. she's very much in this thing. i think the key is to think of it as a marathon. it's a long time before voters cast their votes. she's still strong in iowa. >> there are reports tonight of strategic differences between the deputy campaign manager and michele bachmann which led to him stepping down. true? >> you know, there are always differences in a campaign. david did a superb job. he ran the straw poll. you know, it comes down to time. it comes down to where do you put somebody? iowa, florida, south carolina? there are no strategic differences in terms of what we should be doing or saying. it's how you use your time and resources. nothing any different than any other campaign. >> john king wants to ask a question or two. john? >> anderson, ed is an old friend to all of us at cnn. i respect ed's decision. you said it's the right time to do this. many people will say, no, it's the wrong time to do this. you just conceded governor perry changed the dynamic, creates momentum. there is criticism of michele bachmann for silly factual mistakes, confusing elvis's death with his birthday, confusing concord, new hampshire, with concord, massachusetts in the american revolution. but for someone with a new competitor and a history of letting her tongue get ahead of her brain people will see now a campaign staff shake-up, perception can become reality. people will say, another misstep or problem for michele bachmann. will they not? >> they will, but it doesn't matter. i'm not going away. i will be there giving her advice and council. i talked with her today after she did well in your forum you had in south carolina. you know, i'm still going to give her counsel. there is a difference between starting at 6:00 a.m. and going to midnight and making every decision in a campaign which may have been my skill set 20 years ago but today my value is giving her advice and counsel. we are going to structure the campaign both from the fund-raising and the political side. but the key thing over the next couple of weeks is how she fights effectively as she has in the past, the whole debt ceiling, budget, those things and how well she does in the debates. >> how much -- >> i will participate in that. >> i'm sorry to interrupt, ed. how much more difficult and how different is a conversation with a republican fund-raiser now as opposed to right after our cnn republican debate or the straw poll where people were saying, hmm, let's give her another look. she had juice and momentum. how much more difficult is it now a couple weeks later to raise money when the perception among republican activists is that she stalled a bit? >> as you know, polls go up and down. i have heard you say it and no one understands the game better than you do. at the end of the day here each has their own donor base. governor perry, having raised enormous sums of money has to -- he's a viable candidate. we'll see in the debates whether people like him outside of texas. we don't know that yet. to a certain extent can mrs. bochmann sustain the good debate she's had and over time like mr. huckabee's campaign i chaired. he was barely known and went on to win the iowa caucus. the key is where do you win? we won the straw poll, put a strong organization there in eight weeks. the organization is still there. we won the caucuses. we get a ticket out. he has to win somewhere. either against romney in new hampshire or in south carolina. obviously we are going to compete for those places, too, particularly south carolina. >> ed, good to talk to you. i'm sure it's been a busy day for you. let's bring back in ari fleischer and james carville. james, you have been hearing from our friend there. what do you make of it? >> let's give ed credit. he's an honest guy. in politics, people try to make excuses, oh, no, we are doing fine in spite of governor perry getting in. i tend to believe him. he's 68 years old. said he had a stroke a year and a half ago. i think ari can believe that, too. given the pace of the presidential campaign our gut was right. at least health issues contributed to his decision. you