a week of twists and turns in the race for the republican presidential nomination. with two of the candidates in a very hot spotlight. herman cain facing accusations of sexual harassment and rick perry stumbling badly if the latest gop debate and now struggling to recover. cnn s jim acosta is watching awe of this unfold. so what s going on right now? there are certain there is certainly a lot at play. certainly. there is an unromney and his name is newt gingrich. take a look at new polls that came out, first the let s look at the first poll first. mitt romney on top 23% and then newt gingrich at 19%. he has moved into that unromy position. he is sliding it with herman cain. and then you see ron paul and rick perry. this poll, we should note, is interesting in that it was taken in part after the gop debate on wednesday night when rick perry had that big oops moment. so that potentially has hurt him in this race for the gop nomination. now to the cbs poll which also confirm
failure? reporter: romney gained only a point in the latest fox poll but perry lost ten to fall in second place. herman cain skyrocketed to a close third. newt gingrich has surged to be the only other candidate in double digits. romney campaigns as the republican best equipped to battle the president on the economy. and released a new web video juxtaposing to write the economy with voters who say it s failed. no benefit from it. reporter: perry attacked romney using the hard cover romney book no apology to imply that he backed the obama stimulus. the all-democrat stimulus passed in early 2009 will accelerate the timing of the start of the recovery. reporter: the perry attack suggests romney flip-flopped revising the paperback to read the all democrat stimulus passed in early 2009 has been a failure. but romney did criticize the stimulus elsewhere in the hard cover book in an interview with fox news all but accused perry of lying. he has a hard time getting
taxes must be paid. as the focus shifts to perry, florida s jewish voters are paying attention to him. a supporter tossed him a custom made symbolic gesture before the debate. they support scaling back the department of education, bachmann even said she would shut it down and lock the door. rob, linsey? interesting side note to that idea about mitt romney s book no apology when it went to paperback version, a line taken out. we can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country speaking of health care reform and mandate. he came out and defended it, says always revisions are made from hard cover to paperback. certainly there had to be political consideration behind it after the president s health care plan. wasn t very helpful that perry pointed that out. jab for a jab there. they keep going at it. i wonder how everyone else on stage feels, a two-man race at this point. basically, you don t count. you are not a threat to me. turning the page, president obama focuses on
reporter: a stainedalone nation, and one of the deals was we could leave anytime we want, so we re kind of thinking about that again. leave anytime you want. okay, rick perry. meanwhile, the strategy is to hammer him for calling security a ponzi scheme, but in his book no apology romney writes, quote to put it in a nutshell, the american people have been effectively defrauded out of their social security. if someone in the private sector did a similar thing, they would go to jail. when you look at these front-runners, suddenly things look better. mitch daniels and chris christie both critical of the field at times were together for a political discussion today. christie said, quote, republican presidential hopefuls are
the cool weird motorcycle guy though that wasn t me on the motorcycle in my ad? remember when i was that guy, not the guy whose campaign was spelling his name wrong and having their infighting on politico and i have the vote on my head? please remember me as the motorcycle guy. please. governor huntsman, when it comes to reforming social security, is anything from your perspective off the table? i don t think anything should be off the table. except maybe some of the drama that s playing out here on this floor today. i mean, to hear these two go at it over here, it s almost incredible. you have governor romney who called it a fraud in his book no apology. i don t know if that was written by kurt cobain or not. is that the right audience for that? jon huntsman trying very hard but emphatically failing to lock up the influential cobain fan base vote in the republican presidential primary in tampa. maybe. i don t know. what jon huntsman needs to be doing right now is becoming a