people who served with him, do not come down where lindsey graham did this morning. they are quite and in all my years covering republican politics i have never heard republicans who knew the potential nominee well speak this poorly of someone. and, yes, he accomplished great things as speaker, but they also remember the chaos, the polarization, the incendiary remarks, and at the end of four years, they believed he had damaged the republican brand and that he had damaged the conservative cause. i mean in that last election, the people, republicans in close districts believed that gingrich had become so radioactive, he cost them ten points. we ll continue with more of these major moments. also the issue of marriage came up at the debate. more with our roundtable right after this. teamwork.
undecided voters. it could go any way. and, really, people are looking for the strongest and best candidate that will defeat barack obama. alex? chuck, to your point, the best thing about mitt romney is not that he s been a cautious man. the truth about his success is he s been a transformational figure. he transformed the olympics. he builds companies. transformational change in massachusetts. that s the mitt romney i know. and this campaign, i think, has diminished him by making him smaller than his great gift really reveals. there is this attempt at a real contrast. what i thought was another major moment and it wasn t the debate last night, was the contrast romney painted of himself versus gingrich on this issue of gingrich saying that the palestinians were an invented people. watch. i will exercise sublime care, stability, i m not a bomb thrower. rhetorically or literally. i think sometimes it is helpful for the president with
this morning we have new results from our nbc maris poll, south carolina and florida. it is gingrich going away in both of those states. as the front-runner, gingrich bore the brunt of the attacks in last night s republican debate in iowa and here with us live this morning, dr. ron paul, the texas congressman and candidate for president, of course. dr. paul, welcome back to the program. thank you, david. good to be with you. did newt gingrich do anything to diminish his chances in iowa last night? well, i don t know whether he did it, but i think because he had to face a lot of serious questions about, you know, his change in positions and what he has to defend, i would think that he shouldn t have gained from that, but that remains to be seen. i guess somebody s going to do a poll rather quickly. but, you know, we ve had people, you know, leading the pack off and on this whole past year, so it will be interesting to see just what happens. in the next week or two. the question
i ve had to seek reconciliation. but i m also a 68-year-old grandfather, and i think people have to measure who i am now and whether i m a person they can trust. lisa myers? i thought it was perhaps his best moment of the debate because it was a potentially very difficult moment for him. he acknowledged errors. and i think that s also been his message behind the scenes, not on marriage issues, but that he would, indeed, be a more reliable conservative and he s not as undisciplined and erratic as he was during the four years as speaker. i think it s selling with come conservatives. i m fascinated that he used his age there and using grandfather. almost saying i m 68, i m not doing that again. almost saying, i m not going to do that again. i m not that guy anymore. i may have been, and it s not just it s rare that you see somebody emphasize, he s one of the older presidential candidates we ve had that has a real shot at the presidency. so it s interesting that he used his age.
control? you re actually doing pretty well for who i m authorized to talk about. the full interview tomorrow night, on rock center. your point there, ted, is that we ve got a big footprint and a lot could still happen in iraq. the point is ron paul was almost right last night. do you remember one of the overlooked points in the debate? he spoke of the 17,000. he spoke about civilian contractors who are still in iraq. we do have 17,000 people still in iraq. they re not all civilian contractors, but a great many of them are. you ve got a consulate in basra, a consulate, the one in basra is less than 20 miles from the iranian border. 1,320 americans down there. they are rocketed two or three times a week. they are about as vulnerable as any americans have been since