very well be a doomed candidate. you have to lock up the nomination before there is, say, a rick perry resurgence. you have to lock up the nomination and soon. my favorite bit of intrigue right now is people including herman cain and newt gingrich and jon huntsman are bailing on the entire nevada caucuses. they re bailing on the state of nevada because they say that mitt romney has in jon huntsman s words gamed the system. mitt romneyi trying to force th voting process to start earlier than it has ever started in order to lock up the nomination while romney still has it and nobody has figured out how to be the anti-romney. nobody noticed what a doomed candidate he is and come up with an alternative plan. quick, i m ahead, let s vote and end this thing now. romney s rivals are alleging romney got nevada to move their k caucus early in january which bumped new hampshire to december which is bumping iowa to roughly five minutes from now or at least thanksgiving. this is a mess right now.
love it. joining us now is eugene robins robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnest for the washington post and msnbc political analyst. gene, good to see you. thanks for being here. great to be here, rachel. how does this end, gene? should we be looking at herman cain as a potential nominee? how does this end? why do you want it to end, rachel? i don t, honestly, i don t. i don t know how it ends. i don t see herman cain as a presidential nominee. in any universe. you know, mr. black walnut he called himself. i just don t see it. but the republicans clearly, the rank and file and establishment don t love mitt romney. they re not enthusiastic. it s very little intensity behind mitt romneyromney. this is a problem. if your support has flatlined like that and you re supposed to be the prohibitive front-runner, you do have a problem.
is his record. in fact, in the past he s taken position that an anathema to those in the republican party. they don t trust him. if he keeps working at it, this is the way he has to think about it. if i keep working at it, i m going to wear them down and he hasn t worn them down yet. he can t seem to climb above that 23%. gene, let me ask you about one thing about the herman cain candidacy. and the way we have seen these other surges from other candidates, michele bachmann and rick perry in particular, is that they surged sort of either because of support from conservatives or the media sort of getting a wild hare in some cases and faded when they got front level scrutiny, when people went through their records and looked at what they said. herman cain s surge is treated differently. though he s ostensibly the front-runner, he s not getting scrutiny.
the dragon ducks. those are the things i was good at. the one smash hit early video game that sort of broke that dual model that was neither was a game called sim city. in sim city what you were doing was essentially urban planning. basically zero manual dexterity required and zero killing. you were building an environment, utilities, popular centers, schools and stuff. sim city was urban planning as after school entertainment. sim city now has a weird cameo role in thisesidential nominati. if there s one thing you know about current presidential front-runner herman cain though he was ceo of a mafia named pizza chain, if there s one thing know about herman cain, it s probably this. 9-9-9 plan. 9-9-9. 9-9-9.
policy debate? i just don t i don t see it. but, you know, i was going to say stranger things have happened. i m trying to imagine one. if there is a foreign policy debate and herman cain is the front-runner, a lot of popcorn will be sold. eugene robinson, washington post columnist, msnbc political analyst. thank you very much. appreciate it. great to be here, rachel. the thing about a cliche, is became a cliche because it was true in the first place. tonight s prime example, hay senator scott brown. it s not the crime. it s the coverup. stupid crime and stupefying cover-up from scott brown coming up. think twice. it may be a sign that your digestive system could be working better. listen to this with occasional irregularity, things your body doesn t use could be lingering in your system, causing discomfort. but activia has been shown in clinical studies to help with slow intestinal transit when consumed 3 times per day.