getting downright messy. a third woman has come forward with accusations of sexual harassment. the cain campaign is calling this is a baseless allegation. herman cain said a perry advisor leaked the story. the perry campaign denied that to us but mentioned other ties between the romney campaign and the leak. the come knee cam han has denied that. you get the picture. we asked nut gingrich what he thought about this leaking about herman cain. >> if it turns out that a republican presidential candidate deliberately went out and created this kind of a story about a fellow candidate, that they would pretty rapidly become a pariah and they would fire the people that did it. that's despicable behavior. that's the worst behavior. we need to be unified to beat barack obama. i don't know who did it it. i'm not taking herman's word for it but they better fire all involved in the next 24 hours because that's the kind of behavior i find totally repulsive in this political system. >> the story is developing and we're going to have more later in the hour for you, but now back to speaker gingrich and this issue which really is at the heart of this, how much of these sorts of things are fair game. do you think the question of morality in a presidential candidate is fair and important? >> no, i don't think it's unimportant but i think it's a question of whether you're talking about the totality of his life or you go back and dredge things up. i think there's a desire in the washington press corps to cover gossip over policy as often as possible. just look at the twitter thing a couple months ago with congressman weiner, which was a stupid thing for him to do and a sign he's a stupid person but that covered a lot more time and attention than did all sorts of public policy issues that are vastly more important to the lives of the american people. >> i think it's fair to say everyone should be focusing on the serious issues, but i guess the question is, what is serious and what isn't? time will tell on this one with mr. cain. let me ask you this, the republican field has had some nasty fights, at the last cnn debate, romney and perry almost came to blows. i don't know what you were thinking out there, but i was thinking fight, fight, fight. i'll be honest, i thought they were literally going to come to blows, they looked so angry. >> they weren't coming to blows any more than obama and hillary clinton were about to come to blows at one point in their debates. i didn't think what they, that mitt romney was very clever in putting his hand on perry, but that's, look, that's nothing. we're having a serious legitimate series of discussions. we have good candidates. we have different approaches. i think, frankly, the news media would love and you know this from various leaked stories about planning for the debates, the news media loves covering fights. it doesn't like covering substance which it regards as boring and likely to lose audience. i think that's overdone. i've tried all i could to get our candidates to focus directly on the main competitor, whose name is barack obama. i didn't think what they, that mitt romney was very clever in putting his hand on perry, but that's, look, that's nothing. we're having a serious legitimate series of discussions. we have good candidates. we have different approaches. i think, frankly, the news media would love and you know this from various leaked stories about planning for the debates, the news media loves covering fights. it doesn't like covering substance which it regards as boring and likely to lose audience. i think that's overdone. i've tried all i could to get our candidates to focus directly on the main competitor, whose name is barack obama. it's not perry it's not romney, it's not anybody else. >> let me ask you about barack obama, the past week there's been a big jump. today the poll ratings came out, he jumped 6% or 7%. he beats all the republican candidates, including you in any matchup in the latest polls, and i'm curious, because your own polls you tripled. you were at 3%, now at 10%. you're jumping. he now beats all of you and i think the reason for that is that the market did well in october, the economy grew more than people thought and people were surprised it wasn't as terrible as they expected to be. do you think the economy needs to get worse, we need a really bad economy in order for any of you to win? >> no. no. >> why into the? >> i think if you go back and look at jimmy carter's poll at the same stage he was beating ronald reagan almost 2-1. people look at 9% unemployment, $2 trillion a year deficits, failed government system, radical values, i don't think they're going to want four more years of that kind of policy, and i think he's going to lose badly next year. >> about rick perry, this brought a smile to my face. i'll show the video of rick perry with a postcard in his hand, i think, an idea with which you are very familiar, your economic plan came out in may, you said you wanted a "optional flat tax" that would allow americans the freedom to choose to file their taxes on a postcard. your rate was 15% instead of his 20%. so you think you came in and took that idea from him? it seems the same, optionality and the postcard. >> no. look, let's be fair. i took a lot of my tenth amendment enforcement idea from rick perry, a great governor of texas and i think he has a good idea about enforcing the tenth amendment. it's perfectly fair for him to got in. i think he got the idea from steve forbes. i'm delighted governor perry adopted it. we'll debate my 15% rate versus his 20% but at least we're in the same zone having a good policy discussion. >> i have to say it, you're being the statesman or the gentleman here. let me ask you about the 15%. there's no way you would claim it to be revenue neutral. >> no, not even trying to be revenue neutral. what i'm trying to do -- why would you expect me to accept some washington insider standard that i think is nonsense? my primary goal is to create jobs. if we create enough jobs and 9% plus unemployment, if you get, and by the way if you count underemployment and people dropped out of the workforce, it is 16% or 18% or 19%. if you get back to where reagan was and back to where i was when i left the office as speaker, we were at 4.2% unemployment. when reagan left the office as president, he had cut the unemployment rate by more than half. we created 1,100,000 jobs in september of 1983, that's ten times the number of jobs obama created in october of this year. so -- >> ronald reagan though -- >> fir of all i would argue, go ahead. >> ronald reagan's top tax rate during his time in office was hovering 50%, when he cut it, then it got cut to 38.5%, so still higher than where we are now. >> that's right, but it was at the time a very dramatic and very deep tax cut which virtually every member of the establishment of both parties was' posed to. one of them even called it voodoo economics. he later on became reagan's vice president. the fact is it worked. my argument is we will have more people working, they will use less medicaid, less food stamps, less unemployment, less welfare, less public housing. they will be paying tax, taking care of their families. >> and how much in terms of cuts. i'd done the math on rick perry's plan at the 20% rate, five percentage points above yours and to hit that, he had a spending cap you could only spend 18.5% of the economy if you were our government. his numbers, i would have had to cut $892 billion from the federal budget in one year, just to hit that. so yours would, according to that math be even more. are you going to be able to get all that amount of cut out of government quickly? >> first of all, you have to start with 18.5% of what size gdp? are you talking about the anemic underperforming obama virtually depression level gdp or are you talking about a robust, prosperous 4% unemployment gdp? those are two very big different numbers. it depends on what you get a percentage of. >> in your economic plan as you went through things, you said on entitlement programs, you would have fundamental reform of entitlement programs, that's what it says. i wanted to ask you, would you be willing to say, i am running to be a one-term president because i'm going to slash and i'm going to fix this and stand up to special interests, whether they be banks, whether they be seniors and those aarp ads we've been seeing, where there's been an implicit threat that seniors won't vote for anyone who is going to cut medicare? would you be able to say that i care enough to go one term and fix it. >> why would you assume fixing all the times is anti-democratic, small "d" and that people are going to dislike it? i want to run to be a two-term president because we solved so many of your problems, that you're so happy with full employment, you're so happy with our moves to a balanced budget, you're so happy with a better social security system, a better medicare system, a better federal government, that you're thrilled to -- you know, ronald reagan carried 49 states for re-election because people actually liked economic growth. they liked what he was doing. the trick is to have better solutions leading to a better future and then people reelect you because you provided positive leadership. it's only in washington people think you have to punish people into a better future. >> i have to applaud you for the optimism that you think you can fix it, take the pain, have the growth, make up for it all in time for another election. thank you very much. i appreciate you taking the time this afternoon. >> thank you. >> as you can see the speaker pretty direct, not trying to argue for revenue neutrality. it would be a very different administration under newt gingrich. we'll talk about what he had to say about herman cain and still out front that poll that shows president obama's approval rating up almost six percentage points. what is the reason? you heard my view. our panel weighs in next. a then, four members of a mill labor sha group planning to attack government buildings and kill civilians, they appeared in court today. we take you there. disturbing video of a texas judge whipping his daughter. we'll be back. that is better th. since 1894, ameriprise financial has been working hard for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪ the number tonight five, cinco, that's how many guns tsa airport screeners find at checkpoints on an average day, according to tsa administrator john pistole. seriously? wait, that's another segment. the most common excuse the passenger forgot the gun was in his or her bag. seriously. okay, earlier in the show, newt gingrich was talking tough about the herman cain sexual harassment scandal and claims from herman cain that one of his former advisers who worked for him six, seven years ago on a senate campaign and now is an adviser for rick perry was responsible for the leak. now perry's campaign told us not true. perry's communication instructor said "no one of our campaign was involved in this story in any way. any claim to the contrary is patently false. the first we learned of it was when we read the story in politico." then mitt romney's people were targeted, they said basically gimme a break. john avalon, does it matter? it does matter. you have a third allegation herman cain was dismissing? >> this story is proliferating on three fronts. "the washington post" reporting a third woman worked at the restaurant association in the late 1990s and was harassed as well but did not file suit. second of all the back and forth of the cain and perry campaign. herman cain accusing curt anderson who now works for perry, he felt anderson is the source of the leak. perry denying it. a third person, chris wilson, our own gloria borger spoke to on the phone, an oklahoma based pollster who witnessed of cain harassing a woman or acting inappropriately at a crystal city restaurant in the late 1990s as well, he doing work for a political action work supporting perry. it's real time and getting uglier. >> it is getting uglier and perhaps unfairly, who knows, right, we'll see. interesting abc news is reporting tonight they looked into the women saying that herman cain had suggested at least one of the women was a poor worker, but their investigation found both women that we know about from the national restaurant association have gone on to successful careers in and around government. >> what we have is everyone is entitled to presumption of innocence. we have what appears to be a pattern and not corresponding with mr. cain's initial version of events and that's how this has gotten out of control. he keeps changing his story and now it's a clash between the campaigns. the real problem is that cain denied this outright and now it appears he was discussing it with one of his close campaign advisers back in 2004 when he was running for the senate in georgia. >> the man he's now accusing. we bring in jamal simmons, democratic strategist and gop strategist carey ann ready. karen, what is your bottom line? this isn't going away any time soon. >> nope. >> anyone who thought this would blow over quickly t hasn't. could this dramatically change the field in your view? >> sure, and there's additional developments. you've gone through a lot of process which i'm not sure is terribly relevant about who leaked what when but you've got an attorney for one of the women who is meeting with the restaurant association attorney tomorrow, and asking if they will lift the gag order. if women start talking we're going to have a he said/she said and probably going to drag on through the weekend. this is not good for herman cain and not good for a lot of the people who have been defending herman cain saying this say witch hunt and just race-baiting by the media and liberals and all of the other. they're saying it makes everyone look bad. it's making all of the gop candidates look bad now. >> it would be interesting, though, if what newt gingrich said actually happened, we find out who did the leak, john avalon, and rick perry or mitt romney, if it came from their campaigns, big if, said you know what, you're fired. >> if that's accountability, i will be shocked because the likelihood is the candidate themselves probably doesn't know about this research. it's usually done at the level below the candidate. >> right, which is that fair point. jamal, in the backdrop here is that six percentage point jump in approval ratings for president barack obama. that is big. it's a dramatic jump. it's a quick jump. >> i think the economic news has something to do it but i think we're seeing a very different president obama over the last few weeks than we've seen over the last couple of years. the president has been out very consistently every day, every week, talking about his jobs plan, passing individual executive orders, to actually improve people's lives on a variety of fronts and americans more than anything else, they really respond to strong leadership and i think over the last few weeks he's been displaying a very strong form of leadership that people are responding to and we can see that develop going further, i think you'll see the poll numbers stay up. >> interesting, john, what we have seen for the republicans, we've seen fund-raising up. newt gingrich you'll hear, broke some news on "outfront" in his fund-raising but he and cain and others jumped in the past few days. and there is chaos in the republican field. when there is mudslinging and between republicans, two people benefit. first obama by comparison and probably mitt romney who stays above the fray. >> we talked about herman cain. one more thing. >> yep. >> it's time to show a little bit of leadership. he's showing liberal on race issues. he's blaming perry for having leaked it. blaming politico. he has known about it for years. he's got to accept responsibility for his own behavior. >> appreciate you taking the time. >> thank you. >> four men appeared in a georgia courtroom charged with plotting to attack. they are 65 to 70 years old. they were going to use explosives in a highly explosive agent to attack people. >> these men hated the government and had a plan to kill a lot of people and that included buying ammunition and purchasing a deadly toxin and spreading it on highways in newark, new jersey, atlanta, and georgia. >> that would indicate a lot of casualties. one of the men charged in the plot said, the first ones that need to die is the ones in the government buildings. do you know what government offices were actually threatened or their feeling about casualties, given what you said about highways in new jersey? >> their plan was to target the atf building in atlanta >> wow, that's just shocking. so how was the plot allegedly finally cracked? >> reporter: you know, all along, confidential informants were following the actions of these men, tipping off investigators and when it got to a point when the men were ready to purchase the ammunition, to purchase the explosives, that is when we're told investigators stepped in. >> george, thank you very much. we'll keep following this for us. thanks again. okay, "outfront" next, 100 members of congress calling on the super committee to not be eunochs. a french magazine purchased a picture of the prophet mohammed. 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