rallying to newt against romney by conservatives and there will be a big look at his record, but i he will say when he was speaker of the house, he took over the budget deficit was $200 billion, and then when i left it was a surplus. i became majority whip of the house, the republicans were in the minority, and i left republicans were in the majority. we passed welfare reform. he can defend his record effectively against romney. juan: the best to say about gingrich is lots of people think he is the smartest guy in the room and when he enters the room people are overwhelmed by the ideas and the proposals that come forth from gingrich. but, the fact is, in just hard political terms if you are a democrat and you are looking at gingrich as a likely opponent to
opened a big lead. at 32% followed by mitt romney at 19. herman cain falling to 13 and ron paul holding steady at 10. and in new hampshire which as always been a romney stronghold, gingrich is trailing romney by two points within the margin of error with paul and cain well behind. brit, how do you account for newt s rise particularly after the dismal start, million dollars in debt, his staff firing him and now he is the co-frontrunner? in the sense it was his turn and he now occupies the single most dangerous place to be in american politics which is the nonromney leader in the republican field with the position has been occupied by everybody from donald trump to most recently herman cain with a couple others in between. everybody who occupied that spot has entered almost immediately a slide. it remains to be seen, of course, if gingrich will. i think he has vulnerabities and the explaining you saw him do on greta van susteren s show
president obama, maybe the analogy is like those balloons that will float down industrial park for thanksgiving, any moment, any of the trees along the way could poke it and the balloon explodes and that is what is going on with gingrich. any moment, you can say, my gosh, i forgot about that. i forgot about the insurance problem. it is just too much. you have to wonder, so, it is not about romney. it is about romney, it is not about newt, it is about romney. why does everyone come along and challenge mitt? he can t get above the limit of 23 percent to 25 percent? chris: and we only have a couple of minutes, brit, back to newt, and as bill points out, there is a lot to like about newt, he was if you are a conservative republican, he was the guy the republican revolution in 1994 and he brought the republicans back from the wilderness into the report for the first 40 years,
big lead, at 32 percent, followed by romney at 19 percent, and herman cain, falling, to 13 percent, and ron paul holding steady at 10 percent and new hampshire which has been a romney stronghold, gingrich is trailing romney by just two points, and paul and cain well behind. so, how do you account for the rise particularly after the dismal start and million in debt his staff firing him and now, he s the co-frontrunner. guest: it is his turn and he now occupies the single most dangerous place to be if american politics which is the non-romney leader in the republican field, with the position occupied bien from donald trump to most recently herman cain and a couple of others. everybody who has occupied that spot has entered almost immediately a slide and it remains to be seen if gingrich will. i think he has vulnerabilities and explaining he did just now is a sign of that.
mitt romney s getting a boost from new hampshire republicans in his potential bid for the white house in 2012. the former massachusetts governor won the state s gop straw poll yesterday. romney beat texas congressman ron paul by 24 points. former minnesota governor tim pawlenty came in third with 8% of the vote. sarah palin rounding out the top four with 7%. let s bring in a.b. stoddard, associated editor and columnist for the hill. good sunday morning, a.b. good morning, alex. romney was expected to win this straw poll. he owns a home in the state. he s got tons of name recognition there, spends a lot of time there. so does the straw poll suggest momentum in any real sense or is it more of a popularity-based contest based on other factors? new hampshire as you mentioned is sort of a romney stronghold, so it s not really going to help us, you know, determine how popular he is in other places. we re also still looking at national polls besides these individual straw polls, we re l