and hopefully herman cain won t be an art project any more soon. i would give it back. we re going to need a disembodied voice to judge your answers. usually that is steve brennen from maddow blog but steve has a cold. so we re going to have one of our producers in the control room do it. your judge this evening is the all powerful and om initialent trisha mckinney. say hello, trisha. hello, allison. hey, trisha. there we go. ready for your first question? yeah i m ready. last night s show, we reported on the surprise federal indictment of the long time speaker of the house denny hastert. denny hastert first became house speaker during which scandal, a, the impeachment effort against president bill clint job, b, the iran contra affair c, watergate or d, abscam? i am going to go with a, the
mitt romney is now blasting the former speaker as a washington insider, and it takes one to know one, a flip-flopper! and ron paul has a scathing new video highlighting newt s hypocrisy. but newt is reveling in all this, saying the race for the republican nomination now boils down to newt versus anti-newt. that he s the true conservative that he, newt, led the effort in congress to defeat communism. how could we have forgotten that one? and then the dow s nearly 5700- 500-point jump yesterday raises this question if the economy does pick up, is mitt romney really the best candidate for the republicans? a better economy neutralizes the one advantage romney has over the rest of the field. you know, if the car s running, who needs some guy tinkering under the hood? we re going to ask the hardball strategist about that. what happens when the old playbook gets thrown out the window? and herman cain won t make a decision about his stumbling campaign, he says, until he sits down face-to