supporters. there s a polling institute that shows if you put palin in the race, her and bachmann are down 10% range. take palin out and bachmann is first. they are pulling from the same poll. there s basically a three-way fight feasting over the same demographic. mitt romney is praying for it. he wants as many in there as he can get. he would love sarah palin and bachmann fighting each other. the more scared they get of the extremists, the more romney looks good. new hampshire, mitt romney tops that. michele bachmann second. i don t know why she keeps announcing she s thinking about it. seriously, there should be a moritorium. they say there are no concrete plans for a run. the only people that know are
months. why is it being covered? to palin s credit, she milks it. the bus tour, going to iowa and new hampshire. is she going to make a decision or not? yeah. mike? you know, i don t think she ll run. everything i read indicates she is leaning toward running. if she does run, her issue is largely personal, not political. if she s in against michele bachmann, i think she hurts herself. michele bachmann has shown the ability to listen to her campaign. something governor palin never indicated. she gets out in the stump. i don t think she compared well rhetorically with michele bachmann. after three to formonths, she drops down. she withdrawals from the race. there go her speaking fees. they have the same
stand the attention michele bachmann is getting. she is going to do whatever she can to step on that like she stepped on mitt romney s announcement in new hampshire. this is driving her crazy that michelle bachmann has stolen the spotlight. there s no doubt about your assessment to her. there s no doubt that at some point soon, the next month at the 4:00 budget meetings and major newspapers around the country, some editor when looking at the slot for the following mornings paper is going to look and decide instead of doing it at the leng we are doing it, i want to know about the lives we are losing in iraq and afghanistan. i want to know about the families. it s a better story. it s a compelling story. she s stepped away from fox, temporarily, right?
losing a little bit of steam in terms of people focusing on it, but it s still in that top three. now, chuck todd, to you, as we look ahead on the political schedule not just for this week, but really a summer of intense campaigning, what are you watching out for? there s two dates that i m watching in particular. one is july 15th. that is the fund-raising deadline. we ll find out, rub hits the road on money. how much did mitt romney raise? somebody hinting from his team that he could get to $40 million or $50 million, a very bushlike number when bush was running in 1999. what is tim pawlenty s number? did michele bachmann out-raise him? that will send a message to rick perry. if romney has a big financial lead, perry may bow out. and then i would say august 6th is rick perry s national day of prayer that he s hosting. reliant stadium, home of the houston texans in houston. that will tell us. he s not going to announce before that date, i ve been told by advisers he doesn t want to p
she ll be doing more of that this coming week. and this is how the field now looks. if you look at our latest nbc news/ wall street journal polling, mitt romney s still on top, sarah palin, herman cain at 12%. and excuse me, let s just go back to that previous board, if we can do it. i glossed over it and i shouldn t have, because you ve got those who are undeclared or undecided. palin is the perpetual one that we speculate about, giuliani, and rick perry creating a lot of buzz. we ll talk about that in a minute. and even john bolton, who doesn t think they re talking enough about foreign policy. you heard that debate a moment ago with lindsey graham. so, chuck todd, there s a lot on the table. where are we at the end of this week on the republican side? well, first, i m going to stick with the baseball theme, and that is, i think the focus is on the player to be named later at this point, because of the people running right now, mitt romney is not just a front-runner, i think he s