good morning. certainly our best to chris and his family during this difficult time as well. i was watching you, and i was listening to you, and i had the sense that you were trying to pick his brain, clearly, and what is your sense after that interview as to where gingrich is in this campaign? well, i think he s made peace with the reality that the likelihood of mitt romney winning the nomination is overwhelming, and i think that came as initially, when romney overtook past him and hit him hard with a tremendously expensive ad campaign, that the speaker really thought he was on a glide path to the nomination, the speaker, and he was angry and bitterly disap$, but i think he s gotten past that. and i think, bill, yesterday we saw the new newt. there is a new newt. it s the newt that converted to christianty i should say catholicism, serious about it, the old newt showed up in a number of
our games were successful. while i was fighting to save the olympics you were fighting to save the bridge to nowhere. martha: karl rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to president george w. bush. also a fox news contributor. welcome, karl, good to see you this morning. thanks, martha. martha: what is your take? how did things look to you last night? well, i think romney became the winner of the evening in part because santorum did so badly with his answers on things like earmarks. he sounded like a sitting member of the united states senate defending business as usual and i think particularly in that exchange over earmarks, romney got the better of him. gingrich showed up, the old newt showed up last night. jovial, visionary, big, funny ron paul showed up but the main focus was santorum and romney. i think by all accounts romney did better than santorum and santorum did not get the night he needed in order to keep momentum going. martha: this is fascinating
i don t think it was a fun time for her. she loves to play with these ideas. she s got to look at field and recognize they are pretty lame. maybe i should have thrown my hat in. newt gingrich hasn t been forgotten. take a listen to this. if newt gingrich can speak for american catholics, then it s true, in america, anything is possible. just consider what can happen. the cast of jersey shore can lead a national campaign for manners, humility and modesty. if newt gingrich can do it, why can t they. good old newt being mocked. a poll has him with a 63% disapproval rating. things are tough for newt and he s being mocked everywhere. we knew this everywhere. the people that knew him best, all of them endorsed romney or
so whatever bad blood is between these two guys and former leaders of the house of representatives in the 90s, it s getting spilled right now. the reason they get so unnerved is the fact that you can t it s very hard to find anybody who served under him in the house of representatives, certainly served at that leadership table that thinks he should be president of the united states. it s very hard to find people who have worked for him at think tanks, or people who worked in his campaign even six months ago who think he should be president of the united states. these are the people who worked most closely with him. these people are conservatives. these people want to win and want conservatism to prevail. and if they are frightened of the thought of newt gingrich being president, they worry that independents will be more frightened by that prospect. the trouble is he s like an old polaroid film. starting to develop. we re getting a good look at the old newt here and that s killin
people there were very enthusiastic, strongly anti-establishment, one of the biggest applause lines in the intro was that newt would be the candidate to take on the rnc as well as the dnc. and newt came out and threw a lot of red meat to the crowd, said mitt romney was engaging in a similar war on religion as president obama, was all very well received but again, small crowd. that is what happens when you don t have a lot of money, e.j. dionne, florida is shaping up to be the first citizens united primary according to politico, the spending is up 1600% in the republican primary compared to this point in 2008 in that race. how are democrats going to compete with this? they are going to raise a lot of money. i suspect barack obama can raise a lot of money through the super pac.