online for that. so you re asking why didn t they bring this out years ago. i think that s what they re interested in. money. yeah. it s interesting. he was powerful before but where was she? where was she? at the friar s club. she is accepting no money for interviews or anything else but gloria allred is involved so we ll leave that. she ll get paid. right? the whole thing is a pathetic side show. all right. so now that we ve cleared that up, let s go to the latest nbc news/ wall street journal poll. it s interesting. it finds that herman cain is still within the margin of error of front runner mitt romney. the poll was conducted after politico s initial report of sexual harassment allegations against cain but before yesterday s public accusations made by a fourth woman. see, republicans agree with you. the poll shows cain unchanged from a month ago with 27% trailing the former governor of massachusetts by just one point.
which is with anybody but romney. chuck, you have headlines coming out of this poll on the republican side. i think the biggest headline, rick perry s complete, complete, total collapse. let s talk about that. i m not saying that facetiously. no. he s got from the 30s to 10%. how does he recover? consider this. in the last month, you know, only one candidate lost support. it wasn t herman cain. it was rick perry lost six points. newt gained. i don t know. it s almost as if this is baked in. you know, what happened in the last month? well rick perry actually turned in his most competent debate performance. i don t know if anybody would call it great but it wasn t in the words of brit hume, it wasn t vomit inducing. you know, but what was the other big event last week? well, it was that odd new hampshire speech that went viral even in the midst of the cain feeding frenzy. there is a good you don t
out in protest of mitt romney? i think they will. this is, what is interesting is let s face it. one of the things that was attractive about cain was his personal narrative. none of these guys has a narrative that anybody can get jazzed about. at least the guy was a self-made businessman who was soon to come out of nowhere and there was a narrative there that was kind of very attractive. the problem with huntsman as with romney is the personal narrative is just so okay. governor, ambassador to china, businessman. not a good narrative for this country? i don t get it. it doesn t seem to be. it ought to be. i m confused. but it isn t ragz to riches or, you know? huntsman made a fundamentalal mistake when he first started. he introduced himself to the republican party effectively nationally by doing an announcement where he refused to call himself a conservative. you can t win the republican nomination by posturing from the very beginning as a moderate. especially when
hear good, positive news a conservative candidate needs coming out of the rick perry campaign. you just don t see it. let s talk about the president sitting at 44%, most incumbents would be very concerned three years in. the right track, wrong track still upside down in a way that would lead i mean would lead most campaign managers to have nervous breakdowns. but look at these head-to-head matchups. yeah. obama versus romney, obama wins. you go to obama versus cain, obama wins big. obama versus perry, don t even think about it. it is don t go there. two very, very weak parties. it is. and that s what you look at this poll and you sit there and say, boy. and you look at it through the prism of the president and, you know, 10 of 12 potential issues, ten of them the voters say he
romney has gained five points since october. in third is newt gingrich with 13% followed by ron paul and texas governor rick perry both with 10%. all right. let s look at a general election matchup with president obama. cain does not fare so well. oh, well. trailing the president by 15 points. mitt romney does a little better than cain trailing president obama by 6 points. obama s approval ratings remain unchanged dating back to august with 51% of americans disapproving of the way he is conducting his job as president while 57% of americans say they disapprove of the way president obama is handling the economy. the poll also shows 73% of americans still think we re on the wrong track as a country. john, a lot of things to look at first here but let s begin with rick perry, nbc news, their analysts and their analysis of it. talked about his collapse being just mind boggling. it was mind boggling