eve bash in the world on this american morning. captions by vitac www.vitac.com good morning, everyone. so glad you could join us. it is friday, december 30th. i m deb feyerick along with alina cho on this american morning. thanks for joining us, everybody. up first this morning, mitt romney trying to steal the deal in iowa. former massachusetts governor is the front-runner now, a few points ahead of ron paul. with four days to go before the caucuses, romney is tweaking his schedule, planning to spend a lot more time in iowa over the next 96 hours telling voters this election is about saving the soul of america and he is the man for the job. cnn political editor paul steinhauser live in des moines, iowa this morning. good morning to you. so romney is enlisting high-profile help on the trail today. isn t he? sure is. thinking here and across the country, iowa, chris christie. a lot of people wanted christie himself to run for the white house. in october he finall
more on the race straight ahead live. newt gingrich is starting his day in iowa meeting with moms at a coffee shop. newt gingrich has seen his support among likely caucus goers plunge. part of the reason is negative ads targeting him. analysis finds almost half of all the political ads in iowa have been attack ads against gingrich. crowds defy danger and took to the streets in syria today. opposition groups call the rallies the crawl to freedom square. they urge demonstrators to defy sniper attacks to make their way to public gathering places. the opposition says 32 people were killed by security forces today. the uprising has prompted some soldiers to defect. translator: we got the orders in the army that went against my oath as a soldier. i had sworn to protect civilians, but when i saw what the government forces were doing to the people, i defected. they say there will be no change in policy despite the death of kim jong il now replaced by his son. the state-run ne