future. romney supporter senator john mccain on the perils and promise of south carolina. plus, south carolina s powerful evangelical voting bloc. who will win the lion s share? with rev right hand brad adkins and bob jones iii. everything is up for grabs in my estimation. i m candy crowley. and this is state of the union. over 100 leaders in the social conservative community met in texas for two days and emerged with a single name, rick santorum for president. it is a blow to texas governor rick perry, a born-again christian whose political grounding is fiscal and social conservatism. tony perkins, head of the family research council and a major player at the meeting, says perry checks all the boxes except one, but he doesn t think he can win. what they wanted to do was make sure that the candidate that had the best chance of going forward of securing the nomination and winning the general election were the candidate they put their support behind. governor ri
alison, everyone is noting that this is just a part of the trend. right. well, first of all, don, it is an encouraging report, especially when you look at the trend here. when you look at the trend, 1.6 million jobs have been added in the last year. the unemployment rate is at 8.5%. so, yes, things are getting better. the dow is down and nasdaq is mixed. not so overly impressed. as things improve, the expectation is rising and the fact is these numbers just didn t blow away expectations. the economy at this point is kind of like an economy that s had its training wheels taken off but we still haven t moved into the fast lane and wall street wants to see if the economy is picking up steam. and when you break up these numbers, it s not equal among everyone. it s not. the unemployment rate didn t budge for african-americans. in fact, the black unemployment rate in december was 15.8%. compare that to the rate for whites at 7.5%. you know what, economists say, it s nothing k
for the first time in a very long time, kyra. we have six months in a row of jobs created. boom, boom, boom, more than 100,000 jobs created. that hasn t happened since 2006. think about that, since 2006 that we have been able to put together 6 1/2 months. that was also better than anybody expected. i want to really give you some perspective here because, kyra, as you know, this is a political story, as well. on the campaign trail you hear how this is the obama economy or how president obama is responsible for your job being lost. this is that incredible recession and financial crisis. financial crisis first and then the recession. this was, this was horrible for the american worker and the american economy. and then it was very careful start i mean, these gains here you had to have census and hiring and stimulus to get anything going and we had all these concerns about a double dip recession and now at the end of last year, you re starting to see slow and steady improvement
its own brutal crackdown, that s it s running out of money. i m wolf blitzer. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com it could get lonely being the front-runner especially if you re way out front in new hampshire as romney is now. the first in the nation primary is only five days away. that makes him the prime target of his rivals, but they re also squabbling among themselves and while romney can afford to look ahead to south carolina, some candidates can t afford to fall further behind. let s go to john king in new hampshire. john, you re on the scene for us. give us the lay of the land right now. the big picture. what s going on? five days out, wolf, you would have to say new hampshire is romney country. just like in iowa, you have the campaigns now gearing up for their final push. we see more lawn signs than we did in iowa, but nowhere near the level of past campaigns. the reason, people here are pretty well considered to b
to south america. tonight mitt romney s feeling so confident about his chances here in new hampshire, he isn t even here. romney started a quick trip to south carolina this afternoon leaving his rivals to snipe at each other. newt gingrich belittled rick santorum s record going all the way back to when they served together in the house, back in the 1990s. gingrich then was speaker. if you think of us as partners, he would clearly in the historical experience would have been the junior partner. he s not a bad person, i want to be clear about this. well, senator santorum took offense at being labeled a junior partner. i was no junior partner in that. newt was not involved in that revolution when it came to the corruption and scandal. he sat on the sidelines. cnn s jim acosta keeping up with the increasingly pointed back and forth. romney s in the lead here. i assume if gingrich and santorum are going after each other, they think they ve got to fight for second or thir