republican debate of this election season. good morning, i m chris math in manchester, new hampshire. two days away from the new hampshire primary. we ll be here for the next hour and a half. i m here with the huffington post political director and eugene robinson, pul utser prize winning author. both are analysts. fantastic event this morning a ripping debate, highly charged. electric in many moments. yes. let focus the main question of new hampshire. whether mitt romney will be ratified as the likely nominee of the party in this debate showed his weaknesses. it showed his stance as the nice guy, businessman, nonpolitician was open to question. it was questioned by everybody else on the stage and very surgically and strategically by the questioners, david gregory and the other. your first thought, gene? they landed some blows on romney today.
you have a surprised look on your face. it s still my time. are you going to tell people you re not going to run for reelection for president if you with in? rick, it s still my time. i m just asking. go ahead, governor romney, take 30 seconds there. what i m going to tell you is, this for me politics is not a career. for me, my career was being in business and starting a business and making it successful. my life s passion has been my family, my faith and my country. as you made the point, finally, somebody asked the question why didn t you run for reelection if you re such a great governor of massachusetts. he didn t have much of an answer. he didn t have an answer. as others point out, mitt romney, newt calling it pious baloney. pick up on this. saying he s not a career politician saying it s baloney. he s been running since 1994. he never stopped running. here s the point made by newt gingrich.
expect things to be accomplished. that s not happening in washington. david, i think in closing, i want to congratulate you again on the substance in this case. i think you got a lot out of them in terms of means testing. the wealthy. they seemed to chime in there. that s a tough one for republicans to hear. i thought they were all very forthcoming in that regard. david, congratulations on an amazing performance. thank you very much, chris. a lot of substance we ll get out of this as we study the transcript. thank you, sir. thank you howard, my colleagues and lore and eugene robinson of course from the post. more analysis from us. you re watching msnbc s coverage. what a great morning for nbc and msnbc. we re talking about the republican presidential debate just held here in manchester new hampshire just two days before the new hampshire primary. let me answer the question you asked earlier. what are the three areas you would make reduction that people
[ applause ] we are back for our final half hour. so much discussion, speaker gingrich on facebook in the course of this debate about jobs. you can understand why. we ve talked about spending, we ve talked about economic growth. it was governor romney who made the point to a young person who approached him. if he were president and when this person got out of college, he or she would have a job. if president obama has a second term, he or she will not have a job. isn t that the kind of thing that makes people angry, the politicians, easy answers like that? i don t think that s an easy answer. i think that s a statement of fact. [ laughter ] [ applause ] let me go back to what john distaso said. it s the same question. the long-term answer to $4 heating oil is to open up off shore development of oil and gas, open up federal lines to oil and gas. flood the market as dr. paul said, make supply and demand work for us, not against us.
i m curious why governor romney governor sue new new why did the governor say he hadn t seen the ad if he had? well, he has gene. the clips describing what s in the ads. you don t think he reads news clips? don t be silly. don t be silly. so you re attesting to the fact he doesn t see the ads before or after they re airing. can i ask a question? sees the ads. i know he reads the news clippings. i don t know why you re skirting theish eye but saying he didn t watch the ads. why are you dodging the issue of responsibility? everything that he talked about has been described in the news clips. and if you guys aren t smart enough to understand that, you got a real problem. okay. let me ask you, governor. let s lower the temperature for a second. we ll notch it back on my end. he ran against ted kennedy. we agree that was an uphill battle. not a suicide campaign but i difficult campaign. he took credit for the fact that he forced him to mortgage his