december 22nd when i asked him that. what are we up to, january 21st. this is his problem in a nutshell. i ve spoken to a lot of republicans about this question for several weeks actually. and nobody can figure out what the strategy of the romney campaign is or if there is one. you ve got to figure that he would be in better shape if he released it a month ago. he says he s not releasing them because he s afraid of being attacked which is a defensive post tour and being attacked for not doing it anyway. in your experience, when you see a candidate struggle with some issue like this, usually it s actually not a staff issue, usually it is a candidate issue, isn t it? i was interviewing governor zununu in south carolina. why hasn t he released it? ron paul hasn t released his and gave me a 20-second answer which actually dealt with it. you just did that in 20 seconds. why can t your candidate? he said i don t know.
overwhelming support when you look at how many votes went elsewhere. so how much concern is there in the republican party, do you think? enthusiasm is a macro issue, not a candidate issue. i talked to republicans in iowa, new hampshire and south carolina. look, in iowa, they set a record for turnout of a republican caucus. just barely, 122,000, 4,000 more than in 2008. now you would think compared to 2008 republicans would be much more charged up and terry said a margin of 140 to 150,000, fell way below that. it was a record but not an impressive one. in new hampshire, 247,000 voters showed up, 45% of the availables, that s pretty good. that s a record for new hampshire. but it doesn t come close to what democrats did in 2008. so there is a tremendous enthusiasm comparison between 2008 for democrats, so charged up with hillary clinton and barack obama, that republicans are not matching. talk to republicans in south carolina today, they believe they ll come in about 450,000, about 8,0
so the key now is to make sure there s strong followup, strong execution of the plans that have been put forward. as president and candidate for re-election in tough times mr. obama was crystal clear on the domino effect of that euro zone deal. if europe is weak, if europe is not grown as our largest trading partner that is going to impact our businesses and ability to create jobs here in the united states. a bit more positive news from the commerce department. it reported that the over all u.s. economy grew at an estimated annual rate of 2.5% in the third quarter. now that s hardly a robust rate yet it is nearly double the anemic growth back in the april, may, june quarter. can this rally be sustained? can we finally set aside worries of sliding back into recession? we begin with alison kosic live at the new york stock exchange tonight. was this rally all about europe? it was all about europe, john. the european debt deal is what wall street has been waiting for, f
tax cut extension currently here in congress. republicans are concerned that it could break social security. lynn. tracie potts, thank you. last night on the rachel mad dough show, she asked if she expects the rights of gay rights to be brought up as a candidate issue. i wouldn t put it past any of the presidential candidates. it s historically been one of the things that s used. and kind of how we should be treat treated or how we should be accepted. having a gay sister doesn t affect a politician s willingness to do that? i don t know the answer to that. if he is a politician and saying these things because he s a politician but he did you want