"your $$$$$" starts right now. as we count down to new hampshire, the economy is still the driving force in the minds of voters in the united states. but is it the driving force in the republican primary? welcome to "your $$$$$." i'm ali velshi. the latest cnn opinion research corporation poll shows 57% of americans think that the economy is the most important issue facing this country. i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst david gergen. david, the polls say mitt romney has the best chance to beat president obama in the republican field. do conservatives still reluctant to get behind romney feel he lacks what it takes to turn the economy around or is it something else all together? >> he is actually doing well when people asked is your most important issue the economy in iowa. he won a healthy plurality of those voters who thought the economy was number one. he's having some trouble connecting with voters emotionally. they seem stiff, reserved, can't quite understand him, santorum in the case of iowa struck people as i think a little more connected. having said that, i do think it's worth pointing out that if you look at the overall iowa survey, the entrance polls, what you find is ron paul did very well among voters who thought the economy and economic related issues were important. some 42% of voters said the economy was the number one issue and romney won a plurality. another 34% said that the deficits, budget was the most important issue. and there ron paul won a healthy plurality. both voters are appealing on that. you can't discount what rick santorum is doing in new hampshire. that is he's making the argument about manufacturing jobs, white, blue-collar workers. he's trying to appeal to them with a manufacturing strategy. >> let's take this further. will cain is a cnn contributor. the point david is making and a number of people have made, mitt romney is lacking an emotional connection. rick santorum, for instance, was connecting to voters on. there may be a bigger issue here. the inherent definition of what it means to be a conservative in this country. you've got rick santorum, michele bachmann, rick perry, herman cain, all of whom are defining their conservatism differently than mitt romney is. >> it seems that way, right. are we defining at least our priorities within conservatism by economic issues or social conservative issues. let me say this, i'm doubtful it's about the economy, economic issue. i look at stall warts from michele bachmann to newt gingrich. let's focus on the current flavor of the month, rick santorum. set aside his current big government tendencies from the bedroom to the boardroom, focus on rick santorum's policies. he has -- he rejected nafta, rejected free trade agreements. he embraced medicare part d and no child left behind. in the end, just like david gergen just said, he's embraced this economic populism that he is going to, in fact, specifically drop the corporate tax rate for just the manufacturing sector but leave it or reduce it to 17%. this is picking winners and losers in an economy, not economic liberty p, whiches says to me the economy may be important but not principles -- >> economic populism can be handled in a few different ways. one is the way ron paul is handling it saying you're freer to make decisions with your money than the government can do for you. or rick santorum economic populism even liberal economic populism. let's go to the tea party and talk about what influence they are having. mark skoda, founder of the memphis tea party. mark, this is a bit of a redefinition of what the tea party has been doing for the republican party movement. at this point we're at a crossroads. where do guys like you fall on this one? doug the mitt romney road because he stands the best chance at this point of beating president obama and doing things with taxes the tea party would like? do you go down ron paul, less government road or economic populist road with somebody like -- with santorum? >> well, ali, the free market element which we embrace as the tea party movement pushes me towards mitt romney. i think there's a lot of folks that disagree with me. quite honestly the challenge in the tea party is this idea do they trust romney. i think from a business point of view and his practical governance as a businessman i think he would do a terrific job. but the challenge, of course, is convincing the rest of the grassroots movement. i don't think santorum sort of populist manufacturing to taxation doesn't define -- not a free market value. >> as will just pointed out. here is my question, mark. what happens? really michele bachmann was the head of the tea party movement in congress. she was a tea party darling. those candidates who have become tea party darling are not doing what you're talking about. mitt romney wasn't the tea party darling in this thing. >> if you look at what he does, he's about fiscal responsibility, smaller government and free markets. those are valleys of the tea party. the issue is can he kent to the trust issue. the idea which has been in the mainstream media being a liberal leaning governor. he had 800 vetos in his time there. he cleaned up the utah international governance of the olympics. certainly when we look at his platform and what he promises to do in terms of cutting overall tax rates and being able to reduce the size of government, the question is can he connect to the trust issue within the tea party. now for me i think it's very practical. i believe he does. i believe his representations are fair. ultimately the rest of the grassroots are going to have to make that decision coming through new hampshire and of course south carolina and florida. >> let me ask david gergen this then. clearly rick santorum has proved one thing. for a guy who has not been able to raise a lot of money, he has been able to run an effective shoestring campaign where he does connect to individual voters. does that actually matter right now? does this flirtation that the republican party is having with social conservatism matter if the goal is to have a republican in the white house and to beat president obama? >> well, i think social conservatism is a major strand within conservatism. there are many people out there who consider social issues whether it's family, abortion, other social issues as quite important to them. so he does have that and he's appealing to that group. he's not going to win on that alone. he does have to convince people he's got an economic plan that will put the country on a faster track than we are right now. he doesn't have much time to do it. he can't do retail in new hampshire he doesn't have time. these debates this weekend are really, really important. for him, ali, what's going on here now, he needs to come in second in new hampshire and see if he can close that gap down with romney, put himself in position where he slowed romney's momentum some and built up his own head of steam in south carolina. he's running second in south carolina now. if romney wins south carolina he's going to be very close to wrapping this thing up because he'll probably then win florida and that could shut this thing down unless there's some mystery candidate who comes in a side door. >> hold on everybody. stay where you are. as of this week there's a new man in charge of protecting consumers. why are republicans so unhappy about that? i'll explain next on "your $$$$$." ♪ anything? no. ♪ how about now? nope. ♪ [ dog barking ] ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] the chevy silverado. ♪ [ male announcer ] with best-in-class 4x4 available v8 fuel economy. finally! ♪ [ male announcer ] from getting there... to getting away from there. chevy runs deep. luck? i don't trade on luck. i trade on fundamentals. analysis. information. i trade on tradearchitect. this is web-based trading, re-visualized. streaming, real-time quotes. earnings analysis. probability analysis: that's what opportunity looks like. it's all visual. intuitive. and it's available free, wherever the web is. this is how trade strategies are built. tradearchitect. only from td ameritrade. welcome to better trade commission free for 60 days when you open an account. i've stated many times on this show that the protests of occupy wall street would be better served picketing lawmakers blocking consumer protection bureau from fully functioning. in case you haven't heard of it consumer financial protection brewer is dedicated to protecting you and me from the banks and financial companies that got us into the financial mess in the first place. this week in a highly controversial move, republicans termed an abuse of executive power, president obama appointed former ohio attorney general richard cordray to be the first director of the consumer financial protection bureau. will cain joins me again. will, boehner termed this an abuse -- a remarkable abuse of presidential power. he said the reasons republicans don't support that is because this consumer financial protection bureau is bad for jobs. what do you have to say for that? >> the argument is going to be made, ali, at least at the surface level the consumer financial protection bureau is a probably structurally. we had fdc, fdic, alphabet soup of government watch dogs that have done a poor job. making this uber agency, it would be with a lot of power you're not going to solve the problem. there is problems at the root. transactions between consumer and bank, consumer and credit card company are voluntary transactions, do not need the government being the arbiter of the transactions. the argument it's too complicated. we all sign credit card agreement, bank card agreements, we know they are 10, 20 pages long. when you skip to the back page without reading it, you know you're doing that bad. by outsourcing that judgment to the government, you're not going to solve your problems. >> i'm not sure if we read the whole thing we would understand it. david, opposition predates the controversy over the recess appointment president obama made. we saw the agency's founder, intellectual heart behind it elizabeth warren get into heated clashes with republicans. both parties say they speak for the middle class. why is protecting consumers, how has this become a republican versus democrat issue? >> well, it's always a question on regulation about how far you go. from my point of of view i'm sympathetic with the need to proeblgt consume protect consumers, the federal government playing a role. what is the securities & exchange commissionish to protect consumers. we all agree, i think, that the s.e.c. has been a by and large a very, very helpful instrument. there's always a question of how far the regulations go. ali, in this case there's an additional question, which is serious. that is that the president is permitted to make recess appointments, that is appointments when the congress is in recess. republicans argue, and they have got a strong case here, that the congress is not officially in recess. so this appointment not only of cordray but national labor relations board members doesn't come during a recess and clearly was done with the political intent. the president wanted to stick it to republicans. he's running against the congress. i happen to think going into this last year of his presidency, running a whole year without getting much achieved here is a mistake for the country. it helps his campaign. i think we need -- we need to get some work done in washington and not just politics. >> mark, let's talk about where the tea party stands on this. the tea party does this pride itself being comprised of the wealthiest 1% of all americans. we've been through a lot in this economy. people have been abused by financial institutions. wouldn't the tea party think that americans would benefit from at least some of the protections that this consumer financial protection board offers? >> i looked at this. so many of us talked about this. there's a couple of fundamental problems. first of all this agency is a secret agency in as as much as it will reside in the federal reserve. won't have congressional oversight. antagonistic to tea party values. we want smaller government. third, the last time we had this big crash was sarbanes oxley which has done nothing to forestall the next big crash. yes, i get those 50-page agreements. i read most of them. the fact of the matter is just because government mandates you write something done doesn't ultimately inform the final buyer. >> sarbanes oxley was meant to stop ceos from saying they didn't know what was going on. now it is the law that a ceo -- i guess there's this issue. david brings it up, you bring it up and will brings it up. there can be overregulation but is the answer to not regulate? >> in this case we have sufficient regulation already. you point out, you do for a home loan. first of all, most loans are granted through fannie and freddie mac. we have extraordinary oversight on those two agencies. why do we have to do more. credit cards are a subset of that. there's a lot of reporting requirements. good gracious, if they change anything on your requirements us a stack of paper in the mail every senile time. it is not a problem of fundamental regulation, it's a problem of informed consent as david suggested. you're making a voluntary agreement with the bank or lending institution. be informed. let's stop taking everything to the government -- >> you big anti-regulation bunch. anybody that has a credit card statement open it up and remember the little thing that tells you how much you will pay if you make minimum payment during the term of your credit card is a government regulation. that's the single biggest improvement in the world of credit cards since i've had hair. >> what we need, we do need -- i think consumers deserve something which goes along with the 20 pages which gives it to you in one page. every executive who runs a big company they get the long memo, also the short form they can understand it very simply. that is not too much to ask from credit card companies. if the government needs to do that, let's do it. consumers ought to be protected against these 20-page agreements thank you can't understand. >> can i just -- we have a constant problem of confusing regulations and rules. we had 200 regulators that existed inside fannie and freddie. they did not do their jobs. we're now layering regulations on top of banks completely complicated. make simple rules. break up banks. too big to fail, too big to exist. that's the example of a rule versus regulation. we can do this throughout regulatory bodies. >> it may be semantics. >> not semantics, it's important. >> good to see you as always. thank you very much. david gergen, cnn political analyst. mark skoda, founder and chairman of the memphis tea party. does a better than expected jobs reports for december mean we can finally expect the big economic recovery we've been waiting for? 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[ slap! slap! ] [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums the stock market matters, home prices matter, nothing matters as much as jobs. every month we get the jobs report. this the one for december. look at that, 200,000 new jobs created in december. that's a net number, the number of jobs created minus the number of jobs lost. it also combines the private and public sector. we want our jobs created in the private sector. we had 212,000 private sector jobs created. we lost 12,000 jobs in the public sector. the unemployment rate is down. it's 8.5% now. there have been at least 100,000 jobs added in the last six months. that's the first six-month period we've seen that happen since 2006. i want to show you bar charts again. what's important here on job creation is not what happens in a month, it's the trend. you can see we had a trend june through september and pulled back in october. then we've seen this trend october, november, december. more job growth. show you how this breaks down. total population 8.5%, adult men have an unemployment rate of 8%. that is now lower than the national average for many, many months it's been above the national average. adult women have an unemployment raft 7.9%. teenagers, that's a tough group. teenager who are working, the unemployment rate is almost 23%. whites in general have an unemployment rate of 7.5%, lower than the national average. blacks, it is much, much higher. it's been that way for a while, 15.8%. hispanics have a higher than average unemployment rate as well. we'll talk about why this is happening and whether these are good signs these numbers are going down. alexis glick ceo of youth foundation, has tons of experience working on wall street. 1.6 million jobs gained for all of 2011. that is better than the 940,000 jobs that were gained the year before in 2010. it's the right direction. do you think that continues in 2012? >> absolutely. right now the predictions are we could see north of 2 million jobs created in 2012. frankly as you move into this election cycle for president obama, right now the trend is his friend. you know better than anybody, when you look specifically into these numbers, you want to see the workweek continue to improve, average hourly earnings improve. we're starting to see both of those show very positive signs. six consecutive months, ali, you cannot ignore the trend is moving in the right direction. >> that's something we all share, think is important. it's hardly a surprise but republican presidential candidate rick santorum was in no mood to give president obama any credit for this is job numbers. listen. >> i'm very gratified to see in spite of president obama's policies that the job market is beginning to pick up a little bit. i think there might be some optimism that maybe republicans are going to take the white house. maybe that's spurring people to start taking some risks. >> stephen moore, an editorial writer for "the wall street journal." listen to that. he says in spite of president obama's policies, jobs have been created. republicans have consistently blamed president obama for the job losses during his time in office. is it fair for rick santorum or others to say the gains are in spite of president obama's policies? >> first thing rick santorum has to do, ali is lose that sweater vest. i hate that thing. look, i've been a grouse on this show for a year and a half in terms of the jobs numbers. i just read through the entire report. it's a very bullish report. it's hard to find any kernel of bad news in there. as alexis said one good news the workweek expanded. also alexis a rise in numbers. i might disagree a little with the 2012 forecast. it's a little dicey to say we're going to continue to see those kinds of robust job numbers. >> what makes it dicey? what are the head winds. we still have europe. we have low interests going on. we just saw auto sales coin. trucks are being bought again. indicates contractors in this country by pickup trucks. what's the headwind in 2012. >> you're right about everything you just said. these numbers on jobs are consistent 3.5 to 4% growth for the fourth quarter, which is a good number. what worries me is one of the head winds is political. i do think if there's this perception you're going to get the tax increase in 2013, that's one of the big issues in the campaign, i think that does have a negative effect starting in 2012 of employers going out and hiring more workers. >> let me tell you, though, one of the things, i've been looking through the report to see if there are problems. one of the things, chronically high black unemployment rate. >> right. >> we hav