campaign. how much did you say, oh, that s not good. this is another gaffe to deal with. this is in iowa weeks from the caucus. good morning, alex. the campaign will say, he s h human, he doesn t have practice responses. he s going to slip up from time to time. the more he makes them, the smaller his margin of error is. if another candidate would make the same mistake, it would still be written about. but for rick perry, ree, that margin of error is very, very small. how about the level of confidence going into the debate? can you get a feel for that? the campaign is feeling very good about iowa. they are looking at numbers and spending a lot of money on ads and going into double digits
projections of $2.7 trillion for the next decade. after four years, we had surpluses of $2.3 trillion. unemployment went to 4.6%. welfare reform was accomplished in which childhood poverty was decreased and two-thirds of the people on welfare got jobs. now, this was done under a bipartisan administration, working with bill clinton, and sometimes fighting bill clinton very famously and very openly. and yet, despite the chaos, the achievements and the accomplishments speak for themselves. and that s why i think he s doing so well among republican voters who have been watching this whole process for six months, tuning in on every single debate and saying, debate after debate, newt gingrich seems to be the winner. well, one of the people who watch newt in action is me, congressman, back when i was the speaker, tip o neill. i watched a couple things, which i think are objectively wrong about him. there are some strengths. he s obviously very smart. and in many ways, he brought the republi
let s get more on what to look for in tonight s debate with mike. reporter: good morning. six candidates debating tonight. let s get to the stakes. lay them out for us. reporter: you re absolutely right. with little more than three weeks to go before the caucus, all eyes are on iowa and that debate scheduled for tonight. you re right, alex, although there are going to be six candidates on that stage, all eyes will be on two of them. mitt romney and newt gingrich. now trailing in the polls, mitt romney campaigned in iowa friday, stressing gop unity ahead of tonight s debate. i think there are seven or eight of us that have debated several times. we do a better job as president than the current president. yes, they re all qualified, including speaker gingrich. reporter: even as romney praised him, his allies were on the attack against front-runner newt gingrich, a super pact backing romney launched an ad campaign in iowa trying to stop the gingrich surge. gingrich has a ton o
economic issues. but the original treaty establishing the eu after it failed to win some key concessions. wall street reacted after consumer sentiment and the trade deficit. now back to hardball. back to hardball. is donald trump s political clown show finally coming to an end? for months, we ve watched candidate after candidate making the pilgrimage to donald trump. but all but two have said no to the debate later this month. only newt gingrich and rick santorum have said they re coming. it s not exactly the blockbuster he d hoped for.
start at 6:00, so roemer arrived at the park 15 minutes early with two of his aides. the temperature was below freezing. finally, at 6:15, roemer s director of scheduling looked at his watch and realized b roemer had already received four $20 tickets in the past month. fearful of more tickets, his staff had taken to pausing its work every two hours to refi governor, we better deal with your car now, the scheduling director said. okay, said the governor, let s call it a night. there s no audience here anyway. well, not quite the image you usually associate with a presidential campaign, is it? i think calling it a night might apply to the roemer campaign itself. up next, from the sideshow to the clown show, now with no ringmaster, donald trump has been unable to attract more than a pair of contestants to his december 27th debate. he s got newt and he s got santorum and none of the rest. and that s ahead. you re watching hardball, only on msnbc.