this is a southern activist crowd. it is important for any republican to lockdown the votes and has largest regional straw poll. with this primary deadline coming out this is really go time. a lot of these republicans want to shore up support and build polling numbers and get on the stage. we have three republicans talking today, scott walker rick perry, rick santorum. we learned huckabee will not participate in the iowa straw poll. why are they pulling out of that? it is interesting. when jeb bush bowed out a lot of people in iowa said he was never going to do well. we don t know if he is trying to compete in iowa. it is much worse for the fate of the iowa straw poll that mike huckabee is polling out. obviously huckabee is competing heavily in iowa. he has been there and it was the first stop after announcing
who has said iowa will be important for his run says he is still evaluating whether he will take part in the iowa straw poll. jeb bush said next week count him out. which begs the question does the event even matter anymore? here s correspondent mike emanuel. reporter: the straw poll in august could be in current jeopardy. scott walker told fox s bret baier he s not ready to commit. we will make a decision after my state s budget on whether or not i m going to be a candidate. reporter: in the past six presidential cycles dating back to 1980 he has gone on to win one election. that was george w. bush. his brother, former governor jeb bush says he s not planning to participate. because it has nothing to do with the caucuses that ultimately will determine how people are going to be successful. reporter: the most damage to the significant of the straw
reason was that he seemed to be doing very well connecting with people, he ate some pie at a local club and seemed loose, enjoyable. people seemed to connect with him pretty well. it s an underrated aspect of his campaign abilities but it will be interesting to see how he handles that now that he s had the bloom off the rose a little bit, this tough week talking about iraq repeatedly getting tough questions not just from the media but voters too, while he s been on the road. so it will be interesting how he connects when he gets tougher question. schirra, conventional wisdom says he has to remain available in new hampshire. is new hampshire viable if he decides to announce which we re waiting for? that might very well be his best path to success in terms of the nomination. we heard as of this last week he s not going to participate in the iowa straw poll. he says he is still going to try to win the caucuses but given the nature of new hampshire and
president. this comes after bush announced earlier in the week and reiterated that he is not going to contest the iowa straw poll that is scheduled for august. that set off a wave of speculation. bush made it sound like he will only be skipping the straw poll not the caucuses. he has been covering bush in the gop field. he joins us. let s set this up first with we talk about the news out of iowa with jeb bush. the speculation that he is doing so terribly there that he might have to skip that. it was a bad week because of the question of iraq and the question that was initially posed to him knowing what you now know, would you have gone in like your brother came in? knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the
primary season liter. let s move to jeb bush now. he is also in iowa this weekend. he has said he will skip the iowa straw poll but if you look at his numbers of the declared candidates he is still undeclared. the quinnipiac poll, bush is in seventh place here of the declared or potential 2016. he says he is going to campaign hard in iowa, that he is going to skip iowa and move on to new hampshire? yeah. right now, it s all about momentum and managing expectations. listen. iowa caucus-goers are much more conservative than republicans nationally. the dream scenario for jeb bush here is that he can do basically what mitt romney did in 2012 which is sort of skip iowa and make connections there and make a late push and come in with a surprisingly strong finish. romney very nearly won the state even though he looked sort out