halley, give us a sense, what s his strategy coming into tonight? reporter: if it ain t broke, don t fix it is a fair way to characterize it. you look at marco rubio s past performances in the debate. his campaign likes to say he s 4-0. this is somebody who is a communicator. he understands how to get a message across on a national stage. so i don t know that we will see much in terms of strategy shift from marco rubio. that said, when you come to preparations, for example, look at one of the big moments for marco rubio in the previous debates. it was that sort of line against jeb bush that seemed to silence bush. why did that happen? rubio was absolutely prepared that bush was going to come after him on that line of attack and rubio knew how he was going to respond. you look at what s going to happen tonight. ted cruz will almost certainly go after marco rubio on the issue of immigration. this is an area where marco rubio could be weak. it s an area where other campaigns believe tha
democratic foreign policy voice or national security voice in the united states senate right now, and if she is starting to say hey, there needs to be a strategy shift, you want to call it change or however you want to call it, she wants to see a ramping up. she s making an argument this the air strikes aren t working. that s a significant break politically for the president. just to point this out before we bring pete into the conversation and kim, this is exactly in contradiction to what the president said an hour or so ago. that s right. where he said he was, you know, he took on all his critics, i m not surprised when he takes on his critics. i was surprised he did it in that forum so close to where we were. there s a lot of raw emotions out there. he s probably experienced his own raw emotions. i m surprised he didn t try to take a different tone, almost brush aside or even throw a bone to some critics and say look, we are looking at everything. we are scrubbing everything rig
trying to stand up a new government in baghdad, work with the kurds. add to that a ground combat mission against isil and assad. before you go, senator lindsey graham called the president s strategy shift in sufficient. let s listen to that. this is, in my view, an incemental change, so it will not change the issues on the ground. in the eyes of the enemy, this is weakness. in the eyes of our allies, this is unreliability. isil will not be intimidated by this move. he is getting hit from both sides. no doubt the republicans will come after him on this. i think the president has largely gotten it right. he has largely committed to keeping u.s. forces on the grouped. do you still have him on the w side and not the hawkish side? yes. . i think he understands the iraq war and understand this is has to be a limited engagement.
they used in this budget were actually crafted by the ways and means committee that he was che chairing over the last year and change. something that he spoke out against the process but welcome the peace in how he can deal with the more far right members of his conference. luke russert, thank you very much. we also have breaking news out of chicago this morning. former house speaker dennis hastert has pleaded guilty to evading banking laws. offering millions of dollars to an unnamed individual in order to hide secrets from the past. the admission of guilt will spare hastert from a trial which could bring those secrets to light. hastert sentenced on the 29th of february and faces up to six months behind bars. lots ahead on this jam packed wednesday, starting with a major strategy shift in syria that could, could put u.s. boots on the ground in the fight against assad. richard engel is live from
that president obama is trying to take away everybody s guns. the president denied he s trying to do that and urged people to use their votes to show that they want universal background checks and to keep assault weapons from falling into the wrong hands. alisyn? michelle, thanks so much for that. well, the u.s., to begin stepping up attacks on isis in syria and iraq, including taking, quote, direct action on the ground. defense secretary ash carter telling the senate armed services committee that the strategy shift will mean more air strikes and special operations raids. jim sciutto is live in washington with more. jim, after all of the debate, the long debate about this, now it seems to be moving quickly. no question. this is something that has white house has resisted since the start of military action against isis. in fact, the president assured it would not happen, but now hard options on the table for a more forward roll for u.s. troops in iraq. this is the way the defense se