week. although the holidays intervening a lot can change between now and january 34. that is number one. number two, iowa is not always representative or predictive. the base and organization matters more. that will help ron paul. new hampshire is famously contrary in its open independent voter in new hampshire which will favor someone like a huntsman or a romney. i think the underlying dynamic, republicans are searching for the most conservative candidate they can nominate who still has a chance of getting elected. michele bachmann, herman cain, rick perry and now you newt gingrich. the problem for mitt is he is a suspect conservative but he is more electable. he needs to prove his bon in fides. i think he still is the most likely default option for the republican party. chris: ed, as i mentioned you ran mike huckabee s campaign which won iowa four years ago. how important is a field organization in especially in a
caucus state and the reason i ask that specifically is newt gingrich this weekend is finally trying to put one together. how big a problem is that for h him? it is is a big problem. one thing to say to a pollster i m for newt gingrich or mitt romney. another thing to go 7:30 at night to a firehouse or a school yard. 50,000 voters made up their mind the last ten days. 20,000 made it up that very day. still half the people in the state have not firmly committed to a candidate. geting that vote out is very important. you got three people in the petnhouse, romney and gingrich and ron paul. ron paul has the strongest organization. you have three people in the basement, perry, santorum and bachmann. one of them has to get out of the basement to become a credible candidate and that is divided up right now. chris: let me bring that to you, ron, i will slightly move one of the people from
penthouse to the basement. four people that have to do well. ron paul. you could argue he is in the penthouse. ron paul, rick pe perry, michee bachmann, rick santorum. which has the chance to overperform and do well in iowa and propel into the top tier going on. i don t think there is any question ron paul. not only does he have the campaign structure we were just discussing but there he has money that has paid for the ads you were watching on tv where he was attacking others. huntsman falls out all together. bachmann has had mercedes moment and has not worked herself back up. santorum has worked hard in the state. no evidence again in the polling that he has taken off. it really comes down to ron paul, newt gingrich who i think needs to i meanfy was the ed rollins of his campaign i would
democratic party s approach for allocating the early delegates on a proportional basis and we watched what happened when the democrats did that. their primary process went on for a long, long time. so we are prepared if we he go on for months and months we will have the resources to carry a campaign to each of the states that will decide who gets delegates and who becomes the nominee. chris: one of the knocks against you is that at a time when republican voters want dramatic change that you are offering fine tuning. let s start with taxes. rick prosecutorry calls for rick perry calls for a 20% flat tax. you would keep the top rate at 35%. and this contrast to most of your rivals you would not lower the tax on capital gains and dividends for any one making more than $200,000 a year. question, aren t you basically right there with barack obama the rich should pay more? no, i m just saying don t
i allow middle income families to be able to save their money tax free. no tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. the argument is middle class people can t afford, they don t have enough money to have a lot of capital gains and dividends. i recognize it is not a huge tax cut. it is a tax reduction and allows middle. income folks to participate in making a brighter future for themselves and for saving. if it there is no tax on savings, middle income people will take advantage of that to save for college and retirement and things that they want and saying let s provide that same break to the high income people that costs a lot of money and is really not the a tax cut that is needed there. chris: then there is spending. ron paul says that he could cut federal spending $1 trillion in the first year. rick perry says he can put the federal budget a quarter of it each year. you say that you would cut $500 billion in 2016. again, if a voter wants