at least three republicans are not going to be in the audience, including jim demint. right. one is going to opt to hold a twitter town hall. is this disrespectful to the office of the president, joe? i don t know if it s disrespectful? it s not smart. the president hasn t gained much traction in the past with these speeches. the president has an american people waiting. you look at poll after poll after poll. americans lost confidence in the president. they have lost confidence in republicans and congress. americans want to see them working together. it may not excite the base, but it s where middle america is. let s think about what happened last night at the gop debate. did rick perry say what he needed to say to maintain his momentum as he s now the leading candidate? i don t think so. he keeps calling social security a ponzi scheme. if you want to say social security is a ponzi scheme,
he had ordered his guys out by radio. they were a couple of floors below. they kept saying, you know, we ll wait for you, you know, and he goes no, keep going. meet at the rig. and they all got out with the civilians they saved. they all survived and billy stayed behind with them. at one point, he called they called out to friends to let them know they were still alive. the woman that billy called, he was a bachelor. she begged him to stay safe. he said this is my job, this is who i am. unbelievable story. to think there wouldn t be a set of stands for the victims families on one side and find out if there s room for anybody else is staggering to me. have you gotten a good explanation? no, haven t gotten any explanation. we haven t gotten any explanation and i don t think the firefighters have gotten any explanation not that i m aware of. and you know, they wouldn t ask for any explanation. that s who they are. they re asked to go. they re called into duty. they go. but they re
points to make on it. the other thing that emerges is the electability argument. can we prosecute the case against barack obama on social security and the general election when you have just that indictment and no plan going forward from rick perry. kevin, before i go to karen, can you point to me the republican primary where the electability argument persuaded republican primary voters? is that for me or karen? it is for you, kevin. you made the argument. i m sorry. definitely not dodging that. i thought that was for karen. ultimately, what people what many of these primary voters are looking for right now is someone who is going to beat barack obama. right now, i think many of them everybody agrees that barack obama is bad on the economy, they believe he s bad on jobs. what happens is when we get into when you get into the real core question you ask people in primaries and caucuses, who is going to be the
texas is a great state, zero income tax. a right to work tate. a republican legislature, republican supreme court. texas has a lot of oil and gas in the ground. those are wonderful things but governor perry doesn t believe that he created those things. if he tried to say that it would be like al gore saying he invented the internet. the reality is there are differences between states. i came into a state that was in real trouble. huge budget gap, losing jobs every month. three out of four years we had unemployment rate below the national average 4.7% unemployment rate. i m proud of what we were able to do in a tough situation. michael dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did mitt. as a matter of fact george bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did. neil: today the media
now. chief political correspondent carl cameron has the story from los angeles. rick perry s debate debut was a slugfest from the opening bell as the governor traded blows with the former massachusetts governor mitt romney over the jobs record. we created more jobs in three months in texas than he created four years in massachusetts. that is true. but the massachusetts economy and state budget were a mess when romney took over. he did improve things. governor perry doesn t believe that he created those things. if he tried to say that it would be like al gore saying he invented the internet. the verbal elbows flew all night, each accurately pointing out they failed to match record of the predecessors. michael dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, mitt. as a matter of fact, george bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, governor. that is not correct.