in 80. bob dole in 88 and huckabee who failed to take the nomination. fielding the argument maybe iowa shouldn t be first. until recently the major candidates didn t spend much time in iowa, jon huntsman skipping iowa altogether said they pick corn in iowa, not presidents. kind of a snarky way to put down a state where he s not spending any time. chairman of iowa s republican party. great to see you. great to see you. the institution, doll weg. and joining everybody for breakfast this morning. why iowa, when you look people have said this. you look at the actual demographics of the state. it s not a diverse state. it s 91% white and not really representative of a lot of other competitions that will happen across the country. so why iowa? two things. first, we start the process. we don t finish the process. we play the role of widower, not designed to be predictive of the final outcome, whether the nominee or ultimate victor in the white house but ironic
new york. look at landscape and the vol tiltingy in the national polls not only here in iowa what we re been talking about. debt is a big issue he in iowa and in the top three nationally. who does that help and who does that hurt? soledad, you made an important point about the economy and how it play s slightly different in iowa than the rest of country, a slightly different accent. the fact is that iowa is doing economically relatively well. we re accustomed to these melodramas about the hardships on the family farm, but the truth is that right now, it s great to run a family farm. commodity prices are booming. globalization is terrific for the iowan economy. so i think that means that questions of unemployment, which are figuring more prominently in the rest of country are lower down on the agenda in iowa, and as simon was saying what people in iowa are really focused on when it comes to the economy, basically not wanting everybody
going up to the top of the polls. we re going to find out on tuesday, are iowans going to pick who they would like to see be the candidate or are they going it try to send the message to the rest of the country as to who should be the candidate. if it s romney, it s who it should be. if it s iowa, it may end up being rick santorum, who they like personally and could care less what the rest of the country s going to do. lenny, 47 seconds. not 45. thank you very much. i m sorry. thank you all. you ll get plenty of time in the next half hour. thanks. it is now 6:15 in the east. time to check in on the stories making news this morning authorities in los angeles have a person of interest in connection with more than three dozen suspected arson fires in and around the city during the new year s weekend. they re looking at eight additional fires now to see if they re connected somehow. also, manhunt going on in the pacific northwest. in mount rainier national park in washington
doing well. ron brownstein, bring in our panel as well. ron brownstein joins us, a cnn senior political analyst. also editorial of the national journal, kay henderson, radio iowa. thanks for coming in, and a cnn political contributor joining us. nodding your head what matt was saying, it is not the death of what people call retail politics. the face-to-face, hand-to-hand, get to know the candidate? really? 13 debates hasn t changed this? no. we re living in a very different way to run for president. gone to the invisible primaries, burrowing into what really is more of a national audition. voters exposed to the same media and those tides are shaping the campaign across the country. having said that, the fact santorum is doing as well as he is is a throwback campaign to what we saw in the 70s and
that particular film was made during the bush administration. and i didn t think there was a lot of thinking going on inure country. so there was a great opportunity for parody, and ironic satire. you have done a couple of others as well. yeah. you have brought those films here to iowa. why? well, i was invited. the films have been playing all over the world, in italy and germany and canada. dozens of cities across the united states. wonderful institutions from yale to the society of illustrators in new york city. and they just recently played at dr. oz s he has a thing called health corps. and what are you hungry for, is this project that i have there. what s the goal with all of these screenings around the country? well dr. oz, they felt that people are hungry for ideas. it seems to be missing from the political process in america today. what are we hungry for? and i don t think that what people are being served up is very satisfying.