it was the timing of the rick perry campaign that came in exactly at the beginning of the voting in the iowa straw poll when he announced his candidacy in south caroline with, the next day rick perry came to iowa to the very sim building in waterloo where michele announced her presidency campaign. and rick perry went to the top of the charts right away. that took michele bachmann s bump away and that was a disappointment for her. we hadn t, there was a lot of things going on campaign wise where it was hard it maintain communications. some of the stuff, we didn t talk as off then as we should have. but in the end, i m looking at this big picture and i said that as good of a friend she is, as much as i like and respect her, as much as we are together, i wasn t toward say, this is this isn t about friendship, this is about the president of the united states. she has been a fantastic job here. she has opened doors, especially
than 50 cars set ablaze since friday. los angeles police announce arrests. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. we re counting down the hours to the first voting of the 2012 presidential campaign. 28 hours to be precise, until iowa republicans gather at more than 1700 locations for their party caucuses and start picking their favorites. candidates have spent millions of dollars, logged many thousands of miles in this long iowa marathon. now it s a sprint. as they dash across the state looking for the last few votes. mitt romney is at the head of the pack trying to hold back ron paul and a hard charging rick santorum. let s go live to cnn joe johns joining us from marion iowa right now with the latest. joe? wolf, mitt romney is pushing across the state traveling hundreds of miles. certainly one of the busiest days of his entire campaign. he is trying to get his supporters to go out and caucus for him. on the final day of campaigning, energy is everything in io