secretary of state antony blinken arriving israel a short while ago. this is his second trip to the middle east in less than a month. blinken is expected to discuss ways to free the remaining hostages, minimize harm to palestinian civilians, and get all who want to leave gaza out. we ve seen americans and their families begin to come out of gaza, and we expect that to continue over the coming days. this has been a very deliberate effort on our part working with other countries to make sure we can get passage out for our citizens and citizens from other countries. blinken s trip comes as israeli ground forces now gaza city, surrounded. and air strikes continue to pound hamas targets inside the strip. the conflict has, according hamas officials, killed more than 9000 people in gaza. more than 1400 israelis have also lost their lives. secretary blinken also says while they re dealing with getting the hostages released and minimizing civilian deaths, now is also the time to come
does not have the experience of being an effective leader. i am in fact the legitimate heir of the reagan movement. not some liberal from massachusetts. well, mitt romney has surged ahead in the race. and a win in florida could be pretty critical. cnn political editor paul stein haweshaus hauser is in tampa. we have four polls out over the past 36 hours, and they all indicate the same thing, that mitt romney is up by double digits over newt gingrich along people likely to vote in that primary tomorrow. take a look at the most recent out about two hours ago. you can see right there mitt romney with about a 14-point lead. 43% are backing him. 29% say they are backing gingrich. you see santorum and paul both further down at 11%. when you break that poll down, it s interesting. among tea party supporters, among social conservatives, these are the base voters for gingrich. but romney has the edge there. one more poll i want to share with you. take a look at this. it came out