else. they simply don t care about the american people. both parties they just don t care anymore. you do think that this has repercussions in 2012? of course it does. what do you think happens in the house and senate given what s happened in the last eight months? i think the house republicans a new republican nominee, presidential republican nominee s neck. if they continue to be nuts and not care about the rest of the country i think they bring the republican party down. i think somebody has got to sit them in a room and say if you don t want to come here and destroy government, go home. that i guess the fault lands on boehner s doorstep. how much is he wounded critically? to defend boehner, he had a caucus, republican caucus filled with tea party freshman conservatives who just would not bend to his will and i don t think they would bend to anybody s will. they came to washington thinking they had a mandate to do nothing but cut spending no matter what it did. shut down
as wooden. do you folks and to john, i ll ask you first, does chris christie help mitt romney with iowa voters at all? you know, alex, i think that probably less so here than he helps mitt romney in some other places. he, i think, will be a stronger surrogate for mitt romney down the line in the industrial northeast, in the industrial midwest. there s a reason why chris christie decided not to run for president. and it was that he thought he would have a very hard time winning in any of the early contests. and that included iowa, where he did not think he had that much appeal. so, although it s not surprising that romney is rolling him out as a surrogate, because as you said, he s a very strong, per se a very strong surrogate, i m not sure he s going to move a ton of votes in iowa into mitt romney s column. although he may actually kneecap the people that don t vote for mitt romney. people with violence in iowa. the last time i saw someone drive a bus into a warehouse,
that s not something i m planning today, but never say never. but if you were president, it s not that hard to make a commitment that if you re elected president of the united states, that you would release the tax returns. every president does. you know, if i become president, why then i ll consider that. it s a little premature for me to be talking about that at this stage. is there some secret? people know you re wealthy. yeah, i understand. there s nothing to hide? no, a degree. there s nothing to hide. that was andrea mitchell talking to mitt romney about his decision not to release his income tax returns. you ll see more of her interview at the top of the hour. but speaking of hiding, 2011 seemed to be a year of ducking and dodging questions and explaining away the unexplainable. here s a look at this year s best excuses. excuse me. i don t think right wing social engineering is any more desirable than left wing social engineering. any ad which quotes what i sai
president we ve ever had. the economy is not in the best shape it s ever been. there s going to be something inside the obama campaign that s going to be tough to beat. a sitting president is always hard to beat, no matter what. basically it was moderates, so to speak, who stayed out. so to some degree, clearly, it s the getting over the iowa thing that made them all look like, oh, if you re chris christie, if you re tim pawlenty. don t be so hard on iowa. that pawlenty quote by the way, was on the money. you have to be an entertainer in chief polenta. seize the momentum for a tea party fueled republican contest right now. and you know, if you are a serious governor somewhere you ve got a real reputation behind you, do you want to play that game? i just think that you look at the fracturing of the party, you mentioned earlier, one of the ideas is in winning, to unite this group. can anyone pull this party together, can you actually get any kind of throw away out of this prima
bret: i really do need. i really do need your help january 3. i believe the people of iowa are smart enough they can see the difference between somebody is trying to help the country and somebody who simply running a negative campaign. that is a cannon shot to south carolina. very quickly, the field is going to thin out. we think we are going to be exactly where we need to be. the fact is you want to win here, you don t have to. i think we will have a good showing here. i have been saying the same thing for 30 years. all of a sudden there is excitement. bret: there is a lot of excitement. we can tell you that. we have don t often put up countdown clocks. one on the screen all day today. we have a new poll out todayment it s a rasmussen poll here in iowa. it s very interesting. it shows mitt romney at the top of the pack. 23%. newt gingrich at 20%. there you see ron paul about where he has been, about 18%.