well, welcome back to hardball, it s been a long primary season for republican voters who have watched about half dozen front runners come and go. and yet, still standing, mitt romney. an unnatural politician who has run a tight ship of operatives, many of whom love to take down opponents standing in their way. the incredible story of romney, santorum, gingrich, and the rest is all condensed into a readable ebook called inside the circus the second in a series from politico. covering the steph election. and with me are the co-authors evan thomas and politico s mike allen. gentlemen, you talk about the image issue that has surrounded the romney campaign and outside romney campaign adviser told you in the book, they haven t been able to grapple with the central issue and central challenge they face as a campaign. that is, that in the absence of a candidate who has any poetry, who has any ability to connect on an emotional level. how do you create a bond? if you re a super charismati
it would be paid for by the insurance company. this whole notion that republicans are trying to deny people contraception is ridiculous. they can go to pharmacies. this is in the president s health care bill. this is nothing the republicans did. joan walsh? first of all the associate came out for the compromise. they like what president obama did. second of all, it is merely regulating insurance companies and saying they should provide contraception without a co-pay. frankly because it saves them money. it s been ridiculous that all of these years we ve had to pay steep costs for contraception because it actually saves the insurer money and the employer money. and there was always a religious exemption. churches were always carved out of this. so they are i m sorry, ron, i like you, you are the ones who have made this an issue. the president brought it out immediately came to a compromise when he saw that there was some objection. everyone has moved on. everyone likes the compr
just a couple of days out from iowa. in other words, he completely took them by surprise. well, he took everybody by surprise. i don t think you and i thought that rick santorum was exactly going to be the republican redeemer. but he came out of iowa with his head of steam and the romney campaign had to adapt to that quickly. also with gingrich, they didn t think he was the threat that he was either. and so they took their foot off his throat as one adviser said to me as he came out of new hampshire and they got beat in south carolina. so the night of mitt romney s big win in florida, i said to one of the folks outside the victory speech. i said, so, are we done with newt gingrich? are you going to be able to let go of him? no, he s been dead before. they were going to make sure this time he was good and dead. here s another one from inside the circus. who can forget this night in october that had everyone wondering what was up with rick perry? let s take a refresher.
world think it is a high crime to say this. i just remind conservative commentators that four years what we ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. joining me now is politico s chief white house correspondent mike allen, the co-author of inside the circus available now. also joining us salon.com senior writer and msnbc political analyst steve karnaki. now, i want you to listen to something that mitt romney said today. and i want you to figure out take your time on this we get a little game showy here, reality showy here at 10:00 p.m. try to figure out whether he was
fundraisers told us they could only schedule 50 when they wanted to do 100. and so when you get into a debate that s in two hours, you can imagine if you have screaming back pain, well, that s going to have a big effect. in your book inside the circus, you also portray calista gingrich as being, i don t know if controlling is the right word. how about exhibiting a lot of influence in that campaign and being concerned about the way in which she s represented or depicted. evan, can you speak to that? well, one of the people we talked to, mike and i had dinner with, talked about maintenance. a lot of calista maintenance that goes on in the campaign. you know, taking care of her. she likes to travel first class, she likes to come home on the weekend. one of these key weekends she was smelling the cherry blossoms with newt instead of campaign. the next week she plays an instrument in the at the one of the cathedrals here. you know, they cater to her. now, that s not such a bad thi