pizza? yeah. let s get a pizza. how does somebody tell me how this huntsman just kind of sling shots through south carolina. this is one of my concerns. i m not sure i see his appeal there. even if he was in new hampshire. but, you know. and you re a south carolina guy so you know. listen, let s not bury the lead here. the lead is that mitt romney is not acceptable to the conservative base of the republican party according to eric erickson. and i would suggest that if anybody knew more than talk radio show hosts, which eric also does that, more than a lot of other bloggers on the right, eric erickson knows the base of the conservative movement in america. and he says, mitt romney is not acceptable. and that leads to a question that you raised earlier in the show, john, which is if you take eric s premise that mitt romney will be the nominee, what do conservatives do then? are they really going to stay home and allow barack obama to have another four years to sit
money. herman cain going to hold that press conference today. going heavy into the third person last night. more and more into it. always a bad sign. when you start talking about yourself like you re bob dole. we ve got some fascinating things coming up. we have bill clinton coming up. yes. joe scarborough will be interviewing bill clinton. joe scarborough in the third person. we ll also have tina brown and eugene robinson. on the other side, john brought this up, a remarkable red state host this morning. eric erickson, the most influential conservative blogger out there. yeah. had just some blistering posts this morning with quite a conclusion. well, yeah. he said, mitt romney is going to be the nominee. mitt romney will lose to barack obama and destroy conservativism in the process and then concludes by saying it s so bad
okay? i can t think of a thing. oh, my. good morning. it s tuesday. he can t think of a thing that he would pay gloria allred for. with us onset it is better than better. the cain train, pulls through your town. the most how is everybody doing? good. good. a little cranky. why are you cranky? coffee. you don t have coffee? where s the coffee? it s tough. holy cow. just imagine you have coffee. visualize coffee. welcome to morning joe everybody. with us the national affairs editor for new york magazine, the cranky john halland. what the hell? excuse me? what s next? standards and practices. seriously. peewee herman? the guy that sells waffles across the street? it s good though.
my guess is 20, 25 years from now you young guys in the front row here, your kids are going to turn to you and say, how did you make it through the obama great recession? they re going to look back on these years as a very troubled time in america. and how you answer is going to depend in part on what happens about a year from now. so president obama is re-elected. you have a pretty good idea what the four years would look like. now the alternative of course is that you turn on your tv about a year from now and instead of seeing the obama camp celebrating you ll see something on the tv that says, mitt is it. welcome back to morning joe. look at that beautiful shot of the white house. another beautiful day in washington. john is still with us and
romney has gained five points since october. in third is newt gingrich with 13% followed by ron paul and texas governor rick perry both with 10%. all right. let s look at a general election matchup with president obama. cain does not fare so well. oh, well. trailing the president by 15 points. mitt romney does a little better than cain trailing president obama by 6 points. obama s approval ratings remain unchanged dating back to august with 51% of americans disapproving of the way he is conducting his job as president while 57% of americans say they disapprove of the way president obama is handling the economy. the poll also shows 73% of americans still think we re on the wrong track as a country. john, a lot of things to look at first here but let s begin with rick perry, nbc news, their analysts and their analysis of it. talked about his collapse being just mind boggling. it was mind boggling