that s right. one of the big questions in this day before the iowa caucuses is whether the man in the sweater vest can make mitt romney sweat. rick santorum is in the enviable position of being the final surging non-romney conservative to do well. before these iowa caucuses so we are chasing him from stop to stop to stop today. he is chasing the undecided caucus goers. and you get the sense looking at the poll that came out over the weekend that showed rick santorum in third place. if you look at the last two days that that poll was taken, he is surging into second place into a statistical tie with mitt romney. so it s no surprise that the former massachusetts governor went after rick santorum, talking about the fact that santorum was a senator in washington, trying to tie him to those other politicians, those other washington politicians, who are in the race. and rick santorum had a response for that. let s play that for you. senator santorum was kind enough to endorse m
only dreamt about a month ago. i m asking you to not settle for someone who as your nominee, who might be able to win the election, but the election would be a victory where we wouldn t have a candidate that s elected president who will do what s necessary of what america needs. romney, gingrich, perry and bachmann all have campaign events in iowa this hour. we ll dip in live where and when we can. cnn of course, the place you want to be tomorrow night. we begin getting results from the iowa caucuses. america s choice 2012 special coverage tomorrow night 7:00 eastern on cnn. a person of interest is being held for questioning in california after another night of arsons. the flames have spread to buildingings, started from parked cars. we ll get the latest on this arson spree from l.a. s biggest since those riots back in 92. the mayor will join me live. mr. nis washington state have a definite suspect in yesterday s shooting death of a park ranger at rainier national
senator rick santorum. let s go to cnn s joe johns right now. he s joining us from des moines. i think rick santorum believed in himself. not a whole lot of others, joe, did. but it s been quite amazing over these past few days how well he s done. reporter: that s true, wolf. you know, more than half of the republicans who participated in this process the last time around viewed themselves as evangelical christians. born again christians. so it might be a little risque to compare this process to a seduction, but rick santorum has gone a long way. he says the other candidates in the race are speed dating, and he says what he s been doing is a courtship. i have done literally 358 or 359 town hall meetings in the state of iowa. we ve been to all 99 counties, and we weren t speed dating. reporter: rick santorum s polling numbers, his surge in the race for iowa, is starting to look like love. though the question is, what took so long for a staunch conservative who s been cou
for something called gasgasohol. it then became known as ethanol and we renewed it. big oil tried to kill it and chuck grassley said i was the one person that saved ethanol from big oil. why do i believe in ethanol? pretty simple. if i have to choose between the next billion dollars going to saudi arabia or south dakota, i pick south dakota. if i have to pick between iran and iowa, i pick iowa. and the fact is, if we could make sure we retain the renewable fuel standards, go to e-15 as a blend and move towards flex vehicles and flex stations we re better off. brazilians have flex vehicles. auto companies say it s hard to do, every one of them do it in brazil. brazilians are independent of the middle east in their energy supplies. we can do this. we can get it done and it s important we do so. let me give you two quick examples of how totally wrong barack obama is on energy. as opposed to drilling offshore he put a moratorium in the gulf and he goes to brazil and he tells the
aftershocks, japan enters recession for a third time in a decade. as industrial output freefalls and consumers hold on to their cash. and the crumbling foundations of a failed property market. we ll look at the wreckage left behind by ireland s housing crisis. facing multiple charges of sexual assault in the united states, the managing director of the international monetary fund has resigned. dominique strauss-kahn tendered his resignation just a few hours ago in a letter to the imf. in it he writes i want to protect this institution which i served with honor and devotion and especially, especially, i want to devote all my strength, all my time and energy to provingmy innocence. in his statement strauss-kahn strenuously denies the allegations against him that alleged he sexually assaulted a maid last saturday at a new york hotel. he s still in a new york jail, his lawyers are going to court later on thursday to ask for bail. he s offering to post $1 million to stay in man