gingrich. and one of president obama's staunchest supporters, movie mogul harvey weinstein, on why he thinks it's plain sailing for the democrats. >> i think the republicans every time they talk, it just doesn't seem to go too well for them. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening. just three weeks to go until the iowa caucuses, the nation's first contest of the 2012 presidential campaign. and two new surveys put newt gingrich firmly in the lead in that state. american research group gives him 22%. while the university of iowa hawkeye poll gives him 30%. so is the gingrich surge for real? joining me now is gingrich senior adviser kellyanne conway and gingrich senior adviser jim talent. let's start with you, kelly, you're new to the gingrich machine. in fact, he didn't have a machine until recently. so can we take the mere fact that you are on board as a sign that he's getting serious? >> well, this campaign is much more consequential than any couple of hires. but the reason he's risen in the polls is very simple. what ended up exciting primary caucus voters across the country, piers, are ideas. and he's been very solutions focused, very specific, very positive and cheerful even given the newly minted onslaught of very vicious personal attacks that are happening including, unfortunately, from some of the romney surrogates. but it turns out that people are very engaged in what he has to say on the debate stage. so for months, piers, people were saying, oh, newt was the smartest guy in the room but, he's the best performer in the debates but. and the buts have melted away when people realize that he makes sense and that he reflects a lot of what's happening around our kitchen tables all across this country. >> well, jim talent, she has a point, hasn't she? your man was the runaway front-runner for a long time now he's getting skewed all over the place. >> well, piers, we like the contrast between governor romney and indeed all the other candidates including speaker gingrich. in governor romney we have a person that we can have confidence can beat barack obama by the biggest possible margin, bring in as many conservative votes as possible and will actually and reliably as a proven leader accomplish the conservative agenda. and then the contrast with speaker gingrich. and look, this is not something i like doing. i served with speaker gingrich. but the fact of the matter is he's not a reliable conservative leader. and all you've got to do is look, example number one, what he said about the ryan budget, the ryan medicare plan, which was the heart of the ryan budget, which is the heart of what conservatives want to do to turn the budget situation around. and speaker gingrich just attacked it. it was outrageous. he said it was radical right-wing social engineering, exactly the kind of thing barack obama would have said about it and will say about it if speaker gingrich is the nominee. every republican candidate who voted for that is going to hear about speaker gingrich's comments if he's the nominee. it's the kind of thing he's done through his career. it's the reason that in the '90s -- and i was there -- we had to remove him as speaker. >> are we really going to have the debate about who's the more reliable conservative if you're representing governor romney, senator talent? this is a machine who's changed his position on core issues time and again. it's why for governor romney, who has effectively been running for president for five years, you can put a piece of tissue paper between the floor and the ceiling in his polls. they've hardly budged. and the reason is people want consistency. they want to know they can trust you to be who they are. not only has your campaign now violated and decimated reagan's 11th commandment of not speaking ill of other republican candidates, but he, romney himself, insulted reagan when he was running for office against teddy kennedy. >> hang on a sec. kellyanne -- >> can i answer that -- >> whoa, whoa. wait. you can in a moment. let me jump in and play a little clip of saint gingrich, as i'm now having to call him for the purposes of this little exchange, because he's been dishing it out, too. let's watch this. >> i would just say that if governor romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at bain then i would be glad to then listen to him. and i'll bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won't take the offer. >> and that was in response to a very specific question -- >> piers, this is not about -- >> he was asked a question about what governor romney said, which is you should give back -- >> i understand. but the point is -- to the casual observer it's clear the gloves have come off. and it's obvious why. with three weeks away from the iowa election, it's going to be a massive moment for this race because mitt romney's been the clear favorite from the start and suddenly out of nowhere has come newt gingrich. now, let me turn back to you, senator. >> thank you. >> you respond to what kellyanne said, by all means, but also what are you going to do about the fact that all the momentum is now with your rival? >> well, look, this is a debate that we need to have. and it's not about what the campaign tactics are. it's about the records of the two candidates. he attacked the surge three years ago. we nominated john mccain largely because he was aggressive and effective in supporting the surge. that's what we wanted in iraq. newt opposed it. when i was there in the house he said an outrageous thing when the government shut down. he said the government shut down because president clinton had made him get off the back of air force one. that had nothing to do with it. but it completely undermined our efforts. this is a debate we need to have. in terms of governor romney -- in terms of governor romney and where he is in iowa and the rest of it, we think we have an excellent contrast because in romney we have a candidate who has advanced the conservative agenda, far more conservative and far more aggressive than anything we've seen in the last 20 years. we know he can beat barack obama. we know he can bring in a lot of votes. and we know that if he's the nominee the election is going to be about barack obama, the economy, and obama's failed policies. if newt gingrich is the nominee, the election is going to be about the republican nominee, which is exactly what the democrats want. >> there's just no evidence of that, sir, with all due respect. and let me just say, because i watch piers morgan and i see other people come on his show and want to talk about electability. electability is a fiction. ask president hillary clinton or president rudy giuliani what it means to have everybody, all the king's horses, all the king's men supporting you and saying you can win, you can win. can win. barack obama himself defied people telling him, you can't win, wait your turn, who are you? he's president of the united states. electability is a fiction. and i've seen this for years. when campaigns are losing in the polls and losing attributes in the polls, like who do you trust to fix the economy? newt is now beating mitt on that. the cbs poll has newt leading mitt on who do you trust in foreign policy by more than two to one. campaigns get desperate and say but we're the ones who can win, we can beat barack obama. there's simply no proof of that. it's a fiction. just -- >> let me just mp in, kelly, and talk to senator talent again. let me put it to you, to your man's advantage, he already has support from eight u.s. senators, 45 house members and 3 governors. he also has by common agreement a much more sophisticated and experienced machine behind him. and there is a feeling that this campaign may last a long time. it could go well through the spring and into early summer because of the way that california and new york and so on have been put back. so this could be a long haul. is newt gingrich really geared up, do you think, as the opponent, for the long haul? >> well, we are. i mean, no, i don't think he's put the campaign together. he's never run in anything bigger than a house seat. we haven't nominated anybody who hasn't run in a larger constituency i guess since general eisenhower, and he won world war ii. look, again, this is about a contrast between two candidates, one who has advanced a strong conservative record who is a disciplined candidate who can win this election and more important can turn the government around and move us back from the brinks. the stakes are huge. >> senator, i will let the lady have the last word. >> fair enough. >> and i want the last word to be in response to this. newt gingrich has made one of the great comebacks. he was absolutely on his knees last summer. and now we look at where he is. however, to become the president he's got to avoid what many of his critics say is his big achilles' heel and that's his ability to self-destruct. do you think he can do that? >> he can and he has. you're looking at the 68-year-old church-going grandfather of two who is calm, rested and positive. i think you see that. he was under attack from every side on saturday night in that debate, piers. and he emerged, to everybody's -- according to everybody's account as the winner. and that's the kind of temperament you need in the white house, not somebody who when flustered being asked by governor perry about something that's in his own book, you know, says, let me make a $10,000 bet. all he had to do is say let me set up ten $1,000 scholarships, governor perry, for ten inner city children in houston. let me donate a month's worth of sonograms, now that i'm pro-life romney, let me donate a month of sonograms to a crisis pregnancy center in austin. it's not even the capacity to think that way. newt is surging in the early states because the people there are paying attention to substance, not electability. >> i have to leave it there. i said the last word, not the last thousand words, i'm afraid. but i get your point. one thing is for sure, it is definitely getting very exciting. i look forward to talking to you both again. and indeed your bosses. kellyanne conway and jim talent, thank you both very much. so who is more likely to unite the gop, newt gingrich or mitt romney? joining me now is the chairman of the republican national committee, and that's reince priebus. mr. priebus, we heard there the spokespeople for either party, both gearing up the rhetoric, getting stuck into each other. so it's clearly gloves off time. from your perspective, obviously, you have to remain fairly neutral at the moment, but how are you viewing the race as it's progressing? >> well, i don't know if the gloves are off. i mean, i think it's a pretty typical primary battle. i really think primaries are good for our party, piers. if you look at what happened with hillary clinton, barack obama four years ago, they nearly took a fork to each other's eyeballs through the end of june before the national convention. and you know, the president won pretty easily and took a supermajority of congress and 60 votes in the senate with him. so i know people love to talk about this stuff, but i think in primaries you're going to get a few punches in the nose here and there, but in the end i really feel great about our chances which is borne out in all of the polling that you're seeing across america. not one of these polls shows the president not in the toilet. that's where he's at. that's where his numbers are at. that's not good for him. >> well, he may be doing not that great in the polling, approval ratings, but what he is seeing is definitely a bounce back involving the jobs. unemployment was a much better performance than people expected in the last numbers that came out. you're seeing the iraq war has now been brought to an end. you're seeing big foreign policy hits with bin laden -- >> well, you're seeing -- >> yeah, but there are a few ticks in the box now which from an election nearing point of view i think are actually -- >> but actually, people -- things -- but wait a minute. on the jobs number, clearly it's not better. it's worse. i mean, there are more people unemployed this month than there were last month. more people threw their arms up in the air and said i don't even want to file a paper with the department of labor. twice as many people did that than actually received a job, which created the illusion that the jobs number got better when in reality any person studying the numbers knows that there are fewer people working today than there were working in january of 2009 when the president took office. i mean, quite frankly, he hasn't fulfilled a single one of his promises, piers. and whether a number or percent goes up and down, somebody in kenosha, wisconsin, or roanoke, virginia, they're not doing better today than they were when the president made these grand promises three or four years ago. i mean, everything is worse. everything he touched got worse. >> well, it may be not great but it certainly wasn't great when he took over either. so it's a debate that will go on raging -- >> that's not a very good -- >> thank you very much. >> -- bumper sticker. thank you, piers. >> thank you for your time. appreciate it. when we come back, the man who was a republican front-runner almost exactly four years ago and then lost. rudy giuliani. who would he endorse? you're going to be surprised how many people show up. >> exactly. >> newt gingrich today is riding high right now, but four years ago that rudy giuliani was the republican front-runner. and we all know how that turned out. seven weeks later he dropped out after a poor showing in the florida primary. joining me now is former new york city mayor rudy giuliani. how are you? >> how are you, piers? >> here we go then. we're exactly where you were when you were 12 points ahead and dreaming of becoming the nominee and president, then as i said, we all know what happened. if you're newt gingrich, fairly ominous, i would imagine, these parallels. >> being a front-run ser always homennous. we have seen what happened to michele bachmann, rick perry, herman cain, we saw what happened to hillary clinton. she was in roughly the same position i was in, maybe even further ahead of barack obama. so being a front-runner is always perilous. it doesn't mean you're not going to win. newt has a few advantages i never had. i knew i didn't have a chance in iowa. newt can win iowa. then really i lost in florida because i lost in new hampshire. and by that time i was out of it. so two primaries pretty much reduced my chance in florida to almost nothing. so now if newt can win in iowa, if he can come close in new hampshire because i think everyone expects that governor romney, being governor of massachusetts and living in new hampshire, governor romney has to do real well in new hampshire. then if newt can win south carolina, he'll go into florida with a head of steam and right now he's at 50% in florida. so nothing is certain. somebody else could come along, you know. i go back four years before my election and right before iowa, about four weeks before howard dean was ahead by 15 points, then john kerry won. so you know, there's going to be an interesting four weeks. >> turning into a good old scrap between, it would appear now, newt gingrich and mitt romney. would you anticipate that is now going to be the face-off? can you see any of the other candidates really making much of a push at this stage? >> i watched the debates on saturday night. i tend to believe that this is now a two-person race between mitt and newt, although i was surprised at how feisty the other candidates were. i mean -- and they weren't just going after gingrich. they were going after romney as much, maybe more than gingrich, which surprised me because gingrich is the front-runner and you think they'd be trying to knock him off the pedestal. but for some reason rick perry leveled some pretty good strong attacks on romney. michele bachmann lumped romney and gingrich together and hit them both pretty hard. i think that the two of them are going to end up being the candidate that take it down to the wire. >> what's interesting, rudy, is that you look at mitt romney and newt gingrich and they're very different characters. you have newt gingrich, a kind of washington bruiser who has been around the block and has a lot of baggage, professionally and personally. then you have mitt romney who has no baggage at all personally. a bit of flip-flop hell in his cv, but also somebody who is seen to be just not very exciting. what's your expert assessment of the two candidates? >> i think that's a pretty good assessment. newt is brilliant. newt is where he is because he's excelled in each one of these debates including the last one where he was -- that's one of the best debate performances i've seen because they were all coming after him. he dealt with it with humor. he dealt with it with ek wa nim itty and didn't get himself off track. he did a pretty good job of explaining some of the things that will become controversial, like palestine, gave a good historical explanation of it and ended up having the other candidates agree with him. we can't ignore his debating ability which is far and away better than anyone else. on the other hand, governor romney has almost a perfect record for a person to be running right now. experience in government, experience in business. understands the economy. but there is something missing. you're absolutely right. there's some kind of personal connection that doesn't get made that the other candidates probably do a better job at. >> yeah, i thought it was interesting the big furor that blew up over his big $10,000 bet offer. the reason it blew up was it kind of illustrated his problem that there is a disconnect between this extravagantly rich man and the ordinary punter on the street. and he just exacerbated that, didn't he? >> that's one of the things that you fear going into a debate. i did about 11 debates when i was running for president. and i can tell you and have participated in debate preparation for other candidates. the thing you fear the most is making that one statement that's going to live after the debate. and that was -- that was a big mistake. in this day and age with people suffering, people out of work, people worried about being out of work, it does, i think, illustrate one of the problems of governor romney's candidacy, both as the republican candidate and then should he ever be, you know, the nominee of the party against barack obama. because obama, who appears to want to conduct a class warfare campaign, having a guy, you know, in that top 1% and maybe even in the 1% of the 1%, that's going to be a heck of a target for obama. >> a good point. let's take a little break, rudy, and come back and discuss that point about obama's apparent declaration of class war and what you think of obama because he's clearly gearing up himself for the election battle and his supporters are feeling pretty confident. >> after the debate was over ann came up and gave me a kiss and said i was great, and she said a lot of things you do well. betting isn't one of them. military families across america are being reunited for military families across america are being reunited for the holidays. in the coming days, the last american soldiers will cross the border out of iraq with honor and with their heads held high. after nearly nine years, our war in iraq ends this month. >> that's president obama today on the end of the war in iraq. i'm back now with rudy giuliani. rudy, we'll come to that in a moment about his position on iraq, but let's talk about president obama generally because he's clearly got his dander up now. he's into election mode. he's a very good electioneer, we know that, he's a good d