good evening. i m john avalon in for erin burnett. outfront tonight, new jobs number and the predictable partisan spin cycle. the economy added only 120,000 new jobs in march. that s 100,000 less than last month. the good news, the unemployment rate fell to 8.2%. that s the lowest since february 2009, one month after president obama took office. and not surprisingly, republicans wasted no time in attacking the white house. mitt romney called it a weak and troubling jobs report and said, millions of americans are paying a high price for president obama s economic policies. now, don t be shocked, president obama saw the glass half full. our economy s now created more than 4 million private sector jobs over the past two years. and more than 600,000 in the past three months alone. but it s clear to every american that there will still be ups and downs along the way and that we ve got a lot more work to do. so let s cut through the political spin by adding some perspective
that s off of ali s playlist, donna summer, she works hard for the money. that videotape is pretty crazy. let me introduce you to the panel, ali is joining us, cnn s chief business correspondent and anchor of world business today and john fugelsang, and will cain, cnn contributor, columnist for theblaze.com. our starting point is jobs, jobs, jobs. everyone s going to be looking. what do you think, ali, are we going to see? we ll see an addition of more than 205,000 jobs, that s the estimate for the month of march, that will be the third month in a row for 200,000 plus. it will be the 18th month in a row of job creation. there are a lot of questions as to why that s happening. some people say that back during the financial crisis, way too many people were laid off. they overshot, or they didn t, companies didn t hire enough in the ensuing months of the recovery. whatever it is, it s here. the rate will probably stay the same at 8.3% but there s a disconnect as more job
this is dinnertime here. he doesn t sleep at all basically. will cain, cnn contributor and contributor to theblaze.com and roland martin, political analyst. 7:00 a.m. eastern and 6:00 a.m. in illinois. one of the most important primary, illinois, that s what we say always, 54 delegates at stake in the primary and the winner is expected to capture the bulk of the delegates. it will be the biggest haul since the georgia primary that happened earlier this month. mitt romney looking to pad his commanding lead in the delegate chase. rick santorum we spoke to the santorum campaign yesterday really hoping to burst governor romney s bubble and the two are going at each other in their own form of chicago style politics. listen. we re not going to be successful in replacing an economic lightweight with another economic lightweight. do you really believe this country wants to elect a wall street financier as president of the united states? do you think that s the kind of experie
better. how do you do that? you can t really make that kind of argument and be persuasive on the campaign trail because it s too nuanced. if you look at all the polls that came out this week, the strength of romney s candidacy is the belief by voters that he s best prepared to help the economy improve. he can t cede that point even by a scintilla to obama that obama has the economy improving. it sounded as though he was trying to walk away from what he had just said when he was saying well of course there is always going to be a recovery but his message was off and if he doesn t, he can t cede that ground or he ll lose the foundation for his campaign. it strikes me, i was just hearing and was always thinking imagine the financial crisis moment, lehman collapses and mitt romney is the republican nominee in 2008. that would have been a different, you know, suddenly the turn-around artist, a fix it guy, that would have been a good
get apologies, let s go to the other side of the ledger and look at hamid karzai s behavior, the afghan government s behavior, their military s behavior, their police behavior and let s have them then reconcile that back to us. i don t think he needed to do it and shouldn t have done it after the military had already apologized. if mitt romney gets the nomination and comes calling to you for v.p., is the answer yes? the answer is i m not going to be considering that and i ve taken myself off the list, gretchen. you have? he s going to have a lot of great people to pick from. i was down that road before with senator mccain. i m honored to help governor romney as a volunteer and he s a spectacular, successful leader and a great person and his heart and head are connected. he s going to be a great president. but he ll be able to pick from a lot of other people for v.p. we should say the gallup poll has him head to head with president obama winning by four points right now. it do