plus, the shocking end to an equally shocking case in saudi arabia. a woman beheaded for witchcraft. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. just 24 hours ago, the mud was flying between newt gingrich and mitt romney as they campaigned in the first primary state of new hampshire. now gingrich is vowing to run a clean campaign and refrain from initiating the kind of attacks that have come to characterize the modern race for the white house. some question, though, whether newt gingrich means it, whether he can live up to that commitment. joe johns is working the story for us. what are you finding out? well, wolf, the last few days have certainly been ugly, but now both candidates are saying they re going to do what a lot of voters have said they want and that is have a campaign that is free of negativism. of course, newt gingrich, the former speaker of the house running for president has gone as far to put his words actually in writing. though a lot of people out th
there are three simple ways to handle it. the first is to do what utah senator bob bennett did, try to make the case for keeping your job. trouble is it didn t work, so that s what we call the bennett. step one is to make your case, step two lose. then there s the approach arlen specter took. here he is summing it up in 2009. my change in party will enable me to be reelected. and i have heard that again and again and again on the street. senator, we re glad you ll be able to stay in the senate and help the state and the nation. wow. you can t beat that. that didn t work either. that doesn t work either. that s what we call the specter. step one switch parties, step
step one switch parties, step two, lose. so the only approach that seemed to work was what john mccain did. after years of calling himself and being a maverick and running for president as one, he told newsweek i never considered myself a maverick. that s what we call the mccain. step one, go hard right. step two, win. that appears to be the tack orrin hatch is finally taking for 2012. here he was at the cpac convention talking about his vote for t.a.r.p. to my tea party people, i ve said i feel badly i did vote for it. on the other hand no, wait. i also make it clear under the circumstances at that time we were going down. and let me tell you we were going into it let me answer and then you may disagree, but you re not sitting there having to make these decisions. sounds like he was at the zoo. anyway, looks like he was going
will be. two top vote getters will move on to a general election. there s a lot of weird scenarios that come up when you ve got lots of candidates on the same ballot. you can someone with 17%, 18%, being the next congress person. jane harman a force for cent trifts democratic policies. you lose another centrist democrat as part of the caucus. absolutely. as well as someone who has been a strong voice on foreign poll policy. the centrists, jane harman of the blue dogs. this is a group that was literally almost decimated by the 2010 election, so many blue dog democrats lost in the south. they don t have that many footholds anymore. it will raise questions about is the democratic party, can it be a home for moderates? we ve seen a lot of moderate to conservative democrats on the slate legislative level switch parties, democrats who were republicans. this will add to the story line. this should be a seat democrats
out across the country, as you keep an eye on this, as we go through this, now we want to look at income. it makes sense, incomes are higher in the areas where we saw lower poverty. incomes are lower down here where we saw the higher poverty. that s your look across the country. here s one more. this all tracks pretty steadily. home values, well, guess what. where people have higher incomes, you have the higher home values here. out on the west coast as well, down where you saw all that poverty, you see much lower home values here. fascinates data. go to the census website, our website, catch a link. beginning to see this data and we ll track it as the face of america, the demographics of america are change. this is vital data to see and it affects politics, it affects just about everything else. when we come back, two african-americans, longtime democrats in georgia politics just after the midterm elections, will republicans make big gains? what did they do? switch parties. they ll te