i do not agree members of america should pay for social activities. my choice of words were not the best, and he attempted to be humorous. i sincere yes apologize for the insulting word choices. today limbaugh suggested the point he was making was right even though he used the wrong words to make it. >> the apology to her over the weekend was sincere. it was simply for using inappropriate words in a way i never do. and in so doing i became, like the people we oppose. i ended up descending to their level. it's important not to be like them, ever. particularly in fighting them. the old saw, you never descend to the level of your opponent or they win. that was my error. last week. but the apology was heartfelt. the apology was sincere. >> that's of course up to you to decide. keeping hip honest, in his apology limbaugh mischaracterized what the student was saying in her testimony. she wasn't calling on taxpayers to pay for social activities. she was calling on the federal government to require that private health insurance cover birth control pills. furthermore, she wasn't talking about this to allow for sexual activity in her testimony to congressional democrats. she was talking about how important she thinks access to birth control pills are for women with a variety of medical conditions. now, in his original comments mr. limbaugh made it sound like she was talking about promiscuity. he chose to paint her as a sex addict who wants to sleep around at taxpayer expense. >> what does it say about the college coed susan fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. what does that make her? it makes her a slut, right? it makes her a prostitute. she wants to be paid to have sex. having so much second she can't afford the contraception. she wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. >> he said that on wednesday. thursday, he said this. >> so ms. fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. if we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. and i'll tell you what it is. we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch. >> that's rush limbaugh's portrait of sand dra fluke and other women advocating mandated birth control coverage. takes the pill for reasons totally unrelated to birth control. >> after months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn't afford her medication any more. and she had to stop taking it. without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. she had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result. >> the pill she says might have prevented that, and in fact oral contraceptives are prescribed for many other medical conditions, from uterine bleeding to ovarian diseases to disfiguring acne. that's why she said she's for a federal mandate, that institutions offering health insurance must include birth control pills in the coverage. this is something 28 states must do. it's not as mr. limbaugh suggested a taxpayer subsidy to have sex. gop candidates weighing in or trying to avoid the question. on friday and over the weekend democrats taking umbrage and president obama reaching out to her. i talked about it shortly before air time with david axelrod, senior strategist for the obama 2012 campaign. rush limbaugh made the point the president's approval ratings have been sliding among women and he raised this issue to try to score himself some political points. what's your response? >> i guess rush was in collusion with us by being vile and inappropriate in his comments. i mean, no, that's ridiculous. if rush has any concerns about this, he ought to look in the mirror because this was a -- this was an event of his own making. the president sought to comfort a young woman who had been vilified nationally for speaking her mind on a matter of importance to her. rush distorted what he was saying and he called her horrible names. and in so doing he slandered not just her but all the women of america. so i think it was entirely appropriate for the president to offer support for that young woman, even if rush doesn't like it. >> it is unusual though for a president of the united states to reach out to an individual like this. i mean, are you really saying politics had nothing to do with it? >> it's also unusual for someone with a large audience to vilify an american, a young american, speaking out as she did. so there's a lot about this that was unusual. i thought it was unusual that so many leaders on the other side of this debate in terms of the political debate took a pass on this whole thing, a powder on this whole thing. everyone should have stood up and said this was inappropriate, as apparently many of rush's advertisers now have said it was inappropriate. i was kind of shocked, anderson, when governor romney, all he had to say is that isn't language i would have used. what about the spirit of what was said? i thought this was a cowardly answer, it was a test of leadership and one that he failed. >> there are conservatives who said, there are people hot left, satirists, comedians, entertainers on the left who have said extreme things as well, yet there's not a call for politicians on the left to distance themselves from them. >> let me just say there's been a coarsening of our politics from left to right. i don't excuse anybody's inappropriate and intemperate, in this case vile, language. whether it's aimed at someone on the left, right, middle. in this case, it was particularly egregious because it was a young woman who wasn't even in politics, just a kwung lah student expressing herself in a public forum. so i don't excuse any of it. i will say this, there are very few entertainers who swing the weight rush limbaugh does in the republican party. i think one of the reasons why governor romney and others were so timid in speaking out is rush is the de facto leader of the republican party. to take him on would be to risk your own standing wind the party. and so that separates him from the others. >> do you think this is something that does have political benefit for the president, that brings out women to vote, brings out people to president obama's side? >> you know, i don't know the answer to that, anderson. and we're a long way from an election. i think more than anything else, what it did was underscore, a, that our politics is too coarse and that we ought to be thoughtful about the language that we use in the public square. but it also creates a -- an environment in which public policy debates go into a completely inappropriate realm. i think we ought to push back on that. we'll see. i mean, i think the one political dimension of this is that some folks are willing to stand up and say, this was wrong, just flat-out wrong, and i applaud those who did on both -- in both parties. then there are some who were timid and walk ad way and i think that was a little window into what kind of leaders they would be. >> i want to ask you about what mitt romney said today. >> mr. president, one more thing. why didn't you call me when you were working on this thing? why didn't you pick up the phone and say, is what you're doing in massachusetts a good model for the nation? i would have said, no, no, what you're doing is wrong, it's going to make a mess. >> there was a recent "usa today"/gallup poll that found a clear majority of voters from battleground states called the health care passage a bad thing. how does the president overcome that between now and november? >> now that you mention "usa today," in 2009 governor romney wrote an op said in "usa today" publicly recommending that the president pattern his health care plan on the plan in massachusetts, including the mandate that is the subject of some controversy. that was his proposal. he made it publicly. the president didn't need to call him because he made his opinion known in the public square. we also used many of the same advisers who helped fashion that program in massachusetts, which by the way governor romney should feel proud about. i don't know why he runs away from that. that was probably his singular achievement as governor of massachusetts, in terms of the polling, i must say that same "usa today" poll was the one poll out of perhaps 20 in that period of time that suggested governor romney was in the lead. so i think -- i'm hesitant to comment on numbers within that poll. the president always knew that health care reform was a difficult political issue. here's the reality of it. today, 2.5 million young people up to ages 26 are covered on their parents' insurance because of this health care plan. 105 million americans now don't have a lifetime cap on their insurance. so that if they get sick, they won't get thrown off of their insurance. 17 million kids no longer can be excluded simply because they have a pre-existing condition. and these are just some of the benefits that have already accrued to the american people because of this health care plan. if the republican nominee wants to argue that we should take those away, we say let's have that debate right now. >> appreciate your time, david, thank you. one last note, for fairness we invited rush limbaugh to come on the program, give us his side of the birth control issue, we didn't hear back. let us hear what you think. the highest stakes yet for the four republicans. a super tuesday preview. we have new polling tonight. will there be any surprises? we'll get our panel's prediction. john mccain calling for u.s. air strikes against syria. what the syrian regime is saying now, trying to discredit the activists. they have called me lots of things. a zionist, mossad, uk intelligence, now cnn journalist. i mean, let me explain something. our syrian government and the syrian tv is untrustable. >> we'll show you what syrian state tv is saying about him and his explanation. the latest tonight from the tornado zone. new video coming in taken by people staring death in the face. a little girl's story being told. story of a miracle that sadly almost was. ...] >> announcer: with nothing but his computer, an identity thief is able to use your information to open a bank account in order to make your money his money. 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[ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ ten states, one day, at least two presidential campaigns on the line. perhaps one last chance for another. tomorrow is super tuesday. tonight, new cnn/orc polling shows a romney/santorum tie in the state of ohio which is crucial for senator santorum, certainly. georgia is gingrich country. he's outpolling governor romney by nearly 2-1. hoping his old home state will reignite his candidacy. >> anderson, we enter super tuesday with governor romney starting to fill in the map with romney red. these ten states what that are not filled in, those are the battle grounds on super tuesday. let's use red to circle the states romney expects to win, vermont and massachusetts. he expects to win virginia. he expects to quinn out in idaho. there's one, two, three, four. those are the ones they expect to win. here are the ones they think they might win. north dakota, ron paul the main competition there. they think they have a chance in tennessee. that was a surprise. this is the biggest battleground, the contested prize of ohio. imagine if ramny could do that, win six out of ten. they think five out of ten is a very good possibility. the question is what would an impact like that, a big super tuesday impact for governor romney have on the race? you need 1144 to clinch the nomination. romney as not close at a little over 200 but well ahead of everybody else. senator santorum the closest one. bang. i gave him north dakota here. gave him ohio here. santorum gets tennessee. if that's the scenario, gingrich wins only georgia, ron paul wins alaska. here's roughly where you'd be in the delegate projection. romney over 400, well ahead of any rival. again a long way to go but what a convincing lead that would be. what if this happened, for example? say ron paul picked up north dakota. switch that over there. let's say romney came back and took tennessee. switch that here. then you'd have a race that looked something like this. romney pulls up even more. gingrich at that point would be in second place because of his georgia win on super tuesday. either way you shake it up the possibility heads that we end super tuesday with romney above 400 and no one else even close to 200. that is the big romney super tuesday strategy. they hope to come out, they know they'll be far from the finish line. they think they can be prohibitible ahead of everybody else. >> john, thanks very much. let's check in with the raw politics. cornell, rich galen, and gloria boreger. ohio the big surprise. in terms of a general election bellwether how critical is it for mitt romney to pull off a win there? >> i think he needs to pull off a win-win there and he needs to pull off a win there. the problem is he's not able to pull off a big win in any of those states. when you get inside the cnn polling the same story we've been seeing state to state is also we're seeing it in a critical state like ohio where he's doing better with upscale voters, santorum with blue collar voters, and santorum is doing much better with evangelical and very conservative voters. which makes you understand why, you know, the mitt romney campaign won't allow an ounce or inch of light between santorum or gingrich and the issues because it opens them up to a contrast, a very conservative contrast, which will hurt him. which makes for ugly politics because it looks like he's flip-flopping. in this case, flip-flopping is the lesser of evils than being opened up to a conservative contrast that could hurt him in the primary. >> rich, i mean, used to be super tuesday, afterward that was sort of a defining night. do you see anybody dropping out after this super tuesday? >> i don't think so. for starters it's a semi super tuesday. last cycle on the republican side, there were 21 states on super tuesday. on the democratic side, 23. and it's interesting to note that mccain only won nine of those 21 states on the republican side. he won the lion's share of delegates, though. no, i don't think anybody will drop out. i do think though, first of all, i think if you look at the arc of the polling, although the cnn/orc poll showed a tie today, if you look at kind of the tracking amongst all the polling this is really pretty significant romney movement from last tuesday or wednesday till today. so i'm not convinced it's going to be this nail-biter that we're trying to sell. >> gloria? >> well, i don't know that it's going to be a nate-biter but i think what we could say by tomorrow night is that we're seeing the beginning of the end. of the process. i don't think there's a lot of incentive for people to drop out. so long as they've got these super pacs who are willing to find them. by the way who ever thought that the true beneficiary of super pacs would be barack obama. but he is. and i don't think, you know -- i don't think you're going to see somebody rush to drop out, but i would argue that even if newt gingrich does win georgia, if mitt romney wins over half the delegates tomorrow night, and you've already seen a bunch of prominent conservatives starting to endorse him, that you're going to see that sort of mood of inevitability take over. and that the romney bandwagon will get a lot of steam. >> can i a little contrarian? this whole long process, i'm not sure that it matters -- i mean, romney's as good a candidate as he's going to be. he's been at this another 5 1/2 years, another two or three months isn't going to make. >> i hope you're right. >> here's what i do think. if romney had won south carolina, then florida, and it was over by nevada, let's say, then i think the conservative wing of the republican party would have felt cheated that they didn't have a fair shot, that he was so well-funded, so well-organized, that they never really got their say. this thing going on through super tuesday and maybe on for another three or four weeks, everybody gets to say, okay, we didn't get there, but we had our shot, now let's get in behind. >> everybody has certainly had their say, debate after debate. it's been fascinating. cornell, rich, gloria, thanks very much. just ahead, senator john mccain calling for air strikes in syria. also the syrian regime's new attack against an activist who's been making videos on youtube saying he is manipulating reality. >> we never manipulate. we've got thousands of youtube films out on youtube. why would we have to manipulate anything? you can see all the rockets landing. you can see all the murders going on. why would we have to manipulate anything? >> keeping them honest. more from the activist danny ahead. investigation of a murder in texas taking a surprising turn. why police say the iranian regime might be involved in the killing of this young woman. 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[ male announcer ] new glucerna hunger smart. a smart way to help manage hunger and diabetes. at least 19 people were killed today in syria, including a 14-year-old child gunned down by sniper fire. that's according to an opposition group which also said the syrian regime has arrested hundreds of civilians in the last two days. obviously we can't independently confirm the report because they won't allow us into the country. today senator john mccain called for the united states to lead air strikes to stop the killing in syria. >> the time is running out. assad's forces or the march. providing military assistance to the free syrian army and other opposition groups is necessary. but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. the only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power. >> mccain wants to create safe havens for the opposition and delivery of weapons and humanitarian aid. syria's leaders have told the world they're targeting armed terrorists. it's a story we've challenged with facts over and over in the last year. tonight syria continues to lie to the world. this time it's claiming an activist, this man there, who we've had on this program many types, secretly works for cnn, that we're paying him. keeping them honest, he doe