our first read team reports the post 2012 election report that the republican national committee released yesterday, is getting pushback on two different fronts. the first, potential 2016 candidates lou are upset about the report s recommendations to reduce the number of debates and to deemphasize the caucus contests. the second front of criticism, republicans who aren t happy with the report s endorsement of comprehensive immigration reform. joining us now, senior political editor mark murray. always good to see you. good to see you. we re going to talk more about the immigration part in a few minutes. i want to focus on that first front that has potential 2016 gop presidential candidates. at least at the moment upset. potential hopeful, rand paul and rick santorum, reportedly pretty angry. reacting angrily to this. what are their concerns? a couple of reasons. one, one of the recommendations that the rnc made is to shorten
crowds. he is going to focus on another caucus state, north dakota. his strategy at this point, rack up as many delegates as i can and try to be relevant? while rick santorum, mitt romney, newt gingrich focus on ohio, georgia, tennessee, oklahoma, ron paul, super tuesday strategy is going to the caucus contests like north dakota, wyoming, idaho, hoping to get delegates to build a substantial pocket of delegates that he can take into the convention. mark murray, always good to see you. thanks. thanks, kris. espn fired an editor for using a racial slur in a headline involving overnight nba sensation jeremy lin. take a look at the papers. nation s first player of chinese descent. they say king lin. he is even on the back pages too, doesn t happen often. there we are. on the front and back pages of the post and daily news.
debate? this early would it come up too for him? if he ends up losing. it would certainly knock him down. it wouldn t be the end of his candidacy, but boy, it will be really tough for mitt romney to come back from that. the good news for mitt romney, he still has plenty of time, a lot of money, organization and ties to that state. because of those reasons, any kind of loss there would be catastrophic for his campaign. as far as the auto bailout goes, i m not sure it s as big a primary issue as a general election issue, but the obama campaign definitely wants it to be a general campaign issue. and what happened in maine, and what s this strategy? his strategy, he s been wanting to win caucus contests, and they do think they ll be able to accrue a lot of delegates from these contests even if they re not coming