Economically and militarily and politically so important and so threatening states, if they could, the largest states reasserted their authority and they are trying to reassert it as much as they can now. Rose we conclude this evening with a footnote about one of our frequent guests mike allen who appears weekly on charlie rose the week. Mike announced today the he is leaving politico and play book after the end of the election to go in pursuit of another newventure. He has been a good friend of this program and will continue to be on this program and here is what he said when i asked him about the change. Im there through the election. We used to think that 2008 because the election of our lifetime. Now im starting to think based on our conversation today this is the election of our lifetime. Rose politics the internet and a change at rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose the 7th Republican Debate took place in des moines iowa last night. It was the final debate before mondays caucuses. Senator ted cruz and marco rubio used this debate to attack each other. Particularly over immigration reform. This is the lie that teds campaign is built on and rand touched upon it that hes the most consert e[8 guy andeveryone else is a rhino. The truth is ted throughout this campaign youve been willing to do or say anything in order to get votes. I mike marco, hes very charging and very smooth. But the facts are simple. When he ran for election in the state of florida, he told the people of florida if you elect me ill lead the fight against amnesty. When i ran in texas i told the people of texas if you elect me i will lead the fight against amnesty. We both made the identical promises. When we came to washington we made a different choice. Rose for the biggest news of the night was Donald Trumps conspicuous absence. Before we get to the issues lets address the elephant not in the room tonight. Im a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid fat and ugly. And then ben youre a terrible surgeon. Now that weve gotten the donald trump portion out of the way. Rose trump held his own debate. His fund raiser for military veterans allowed trump to air his grievances. I didnt want to be here i have to be honest. Wanted to be about five minutes away. And ive enjoyed that, ive enjoyed that. All the online polls said ive done very well with that, with the debates. I got a kick with it. But you have to stick up for your rights. When youre treated badly, you have to particular up for your rights. Rose joining me is matthew dwowd chief political analyst with abc news, carol lee the whitehouse correspondent for the wall street journal and from iowa al hunt of the Bloomberg News and dan balz of the Washington Post. I am pleased to have all of them on this program. Al i go to you first. Any consequences coming out of what we saw last night a debate without donald trump and donald trump and his own show. Charlie i suspect not as much as people suggested today that conventional wisdom teamed to be that trump did well, it was true and smart. I dont think that was thee7 case. We had a three way republican race with trump and cruz and marco rubio coming on. I think that was the case 24 hours ago and my guess is thats the case in 72 hours. Rose dan. I agree. These debates have an impact for 12 hours and people get back to normal and begin to make their choices to turn out operations and start cranking up. I think als right. For the most part its still a trump and cruz race. Rubio has at least some wind at his back lets see how much it turn out to be. Rose it is said a lot of undecided voters wait until the last minute obviously. What does that mean. 20 of the caucus goers that wait and decide at the very end . I think at this pointed, that number may even be a little bitits undecided, they are soft voters. This wisdom i do agree with, if theres a huge republican turn out, 180 190,000 that would seem to favor trump. Hes bringing out new people who havent voted before. If its a convention good turnout, you may want to put a little edge for ted cruz hes got clearly the best organization ground game analytics whatever one wants to call it out here. Rose tell me about marco rubio and how hes coming o he got the endorsement on the des moines register. I think the biggest winner of the debate was marco rubio. And donald trump maintained his lead. I think ted cruz really suffered through that debate. And i think marco rubio right now has an outside chance at finishing second in iowa. Rose and behind. Behind donald trump. And if he does that the race is over for ted cruz and marco rubio then goes to newau hampshire with a huge head of steam and finishes a strong second then its a to person race, the two person race we thought it was with cruz and trump becomes a two person race with trump and rubio. Then i think trump has to wonder did i do myself a favor by not showing up for that debate because i just gave lift to marco rubio. Rose i keep reading things if in fact donald trump wins in iowa he may be instoppable. Of course hes far ahead in New Hampshire. Yes. I mean thats the conventional wisdom on that. And certainly once you get move from iowa into New HampshireNew Hampshires a very different race than what youre seeing in iowa. Theres a little more flexibility for some of the folks who are not doing very well in iowa. You know, depending on what happens out of there, it could go on for some time. You could see a state by state combat where certain states are not taking all of their fighting over different delegates. Its going to be, i think if he were to win iowa and then New Hampshire, you know, potentially the concern is he could be hard to take down from any of those later states. Rose the battle with the trump precipitated with fox news. Was that intentional, did he want to not do this debate and he wanted at the same time to confront fox news and show he was donald trump and no one was bigger than he was. Anybody . Well, i think heres what i think about donald trump. I think a lot what he does is accidental and then it turns into a good strategy because what happens in it. I think hes probably the most politically astute and media savvy person thats run for president in years. In our modern lifetime. Rose politically astute and media savvy. He understands modern politics, modern campaigns better than almost Anyone Running for the rains or running the campaign. Rose he understands modern Media Coverage and how its changed dramatically. I think what donald trump has done is eliminated the party for organizing vehicles for candidates. The next thing hes doing is eliminating foxqi news as the decider of who those candidates are. If he goes on to secure the nomination in the course of this process which right now hes heavily favored to do. The odds arehe on him. The Republican Party as it existed is no longer and the ability for media vehicles like fox news to control the process its severely hampered. Rose dan i used to hear up until rec ly9 people saying my god donald trump for president. Thats a terrible idea i cant live with it. Its never going to happen. Now they say yes it could happen and yes i may find myself because of the alternatives voting for donald trump. Do you hear that . Well you do hear that. But charlie, i think part of it has to do with people trying to decide whether if they think hes going to be the nominee theyve got to begin to become comfortable with it. I mean matthew may be right but at this point he would be favored to win the nomination. But if things change and they always do once the voters are heard from, theres going to be some twists that we didnt expect. If at that point donald trump doesnt look quite as strong or formidable as hes looked over the last six months you will get a reevaluation on a part of a lot of those people saying i think i could be comfortable with them and some of them are saying we really dont want him as our nominee. There are some twists ahead on this race depending what happens in the next two weeks. Charlie i agree with dan. I think my pal matthew is too quickly dismissing cruz and too quickly koronateing trump. I talked to some antitrump and what their rational is he really doesnt believe in anything owe maybe we really can do deals with him. Maybe he really doesnt believe in some of this stuff hes saying so it wont be so bad and then theyll say were not sure we believe that. Rose lets me push my esteemed colleague. I think if you take a look at this process im not saying ted cruz doesnt have a route, i think his route is very small. And marco iraq ohio has a raul and its very small. If you take a look at the process and how it unfolds, if donald trump wins iowa and then goes and wins New Hampshire bringing and then goes and wins South Carolina. No nonincumbent president republican has ever won iowa and New Hampshire ever. George bush didnt do it. George Herbert Walker bush didnt do it bob dole, mitt romney. Nonincumbent president ever won that. The problem you unfold in this process as soon as february is over, it becomes a national primary. Its no longer state by state. February is state by state. We have 20 states vote in the first eight days of march. Whoever has momentum at that point is going to sweep those states. Rose are they more likely to be towards donald trump because of his views on immigration and guns. I think at that point it doesnt matter. These processes are judged by momentum and whoever has momentum going into march 1st in those 20 states whoever has that is going to win a majority of those states no matter where they are. Rose carol. In terms of the republicans in general becoming more convertible voting for trump when you talk to folks in washington, republicans in washington they feel that way because they think hes better than cruz. They just dont want ted cruz. We had a poll recentlyshowed that voters feel the same way. They are more increasingly comfortable with or can see themselves with how the question was posed votintrump but i think that is right that it matters theres going to be a lot of twist and turns and remainltz to be seen remains to be seen how they will actually vote. Rose if donald trump wins in iowa his election to lose and he will to inflict a mortal wound on hi does. Up to a point. But this is a long process, and matthew laid out a couple different scenarios. One, if trump starts to run the table here and goes into New Hampshire and South Carolina thats one. But as matthew said, its possible perhaps that marco rubio finishes surprisingly strongly here. That would set up a different dynamic. Or if ted cruz wins in iowa and donald trump the man who has won everything loses the first one then weve got a third dynamic. So i think we can sketch out where this race might be going but until we actually know what the order of finish looks like here how strong anybody looks compared to some of the others, were still guessing what the republican electorate down the line is going to do. Charlie can i ad one thing to what dan just said. Everything we learned about american politics has been turned you side upside down in the last six months. Why shouldnt we think the same thing will happen in the next six months. I think the lessons we learned in the pass may not be applicable in this year. If donald trump taking himself down inflicting himself is like the python. He comes at you donald trump seems that way and doesnt seem iz make him go away. I think donald trump rose he can shoot somebody in fifth avenue and supporters will be with him. 80 of his voters are solid. I think its somebody catching fire and i think the most likely person that could catch fire and take donald trump down is marco rubio and not ted cruz. Ted cruz is disliked by all his colleagues and everyone in his establishment. Rose he uses that as his weapon. Its a badge of honor in iowa. The voters want to like you. I think thats the path that takes donald trump someone catching fire like marco rubio. Rose you guys disagree with that on iowa. Likability is so important how come Richard Nixon was a National Ticket five times . I agree with, l charlie i agree with matthew in this way. I have always thought that rubio was playing a strategy to get hot late. And that has often been the key here in iowa. We saw with john edwards in 2004 in roaring up and almost beating john kerry in the final days. I always that that was the rubio strategy, to hang back, not to peak too early but be there at the moment when people will say this guy may be the guy. I think thats what hes trying to do here in iowa. Hes run some very iowaspecific advertising here aimed at christian conservatives trying to cut into what cruz has and what carson has. So well see the extent to which its successful but i think hes the one candidate who has thought about being able to try to do that. The other thing is we see in the media like we dont totally understand and have predicted things not correctly going into this cycle so i think its going to be fascinating what happens in iowa and what happens in New Hampshire and will probably learn that we actually didntyq know something that was going on. Thats the way its been. Rose what could the surprise be . I dont know. But one of the things our reporters are hearing on the ground in iowa for instance is that a lot evangelicals or some evangelicals are breaking for trump who lack College Education because of the economy. And so one of the theory is that perhaps the economy is trumping what would be a traditional conservative religious values voters. Thats a trend that you see moving forward, that could be a very interesting dynamic in the Republican Party. Rose so al let me shift to the democrats and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. If this is the year of surprises, could there be another one on the democratic side. Yes, i dont know what the surprise would be, charlie. Theres metaphors about this race being as tight as something or other. Iaaulocked in an almost dead even race out here. I think like the republican contest it will depend a large part on turnout. If theres anything approachingst what barack obama achieved in 2008, boy i would put my bet on bernie. If its a more normal type turnout, she might have a slight slight edge. Rose any reason, drawing the kind of crowds he has will he have the same kind of enthusiasm on caucus day and the turnout for him might be just that. Charlie, ive made a number of calls to people here in iowa. Theres an old line a race in iowa sometimes comes down to say organization versus momentum. I think a week ago you would have said clearly that Bernie Sanders definitely has the momentum. Weve seen the size of those crowds. They are not diminishing. What he gotdoesnt affect iowa directly but what he got in minnesota earlier this web was pretty astounding, 20,000 people combined two events. But theres a sense here that over the last three or four days some of that momentum may have begun to dissipate. Now these are people reading tea leaves so take it for what its worth. People believe in the organizational battle that Hillary Clinton has a somewhat better organization. A slight edge on that. So if sanders can create the momentum and find a way to really get the new people as al was saying. Then he has a chance to win here. But i think in both campaigns theres a sense that right now she has a very slight edge. I think the fascinating thing about the Iowa Caucuses is this could go on each side in two totally different directions. On each side it could be either a very short process that iowa sets it up to process on the republican side depending on what happens. And on the democratic side. If Hillary Clinton wins iowa i think its very hard for Bernie Sanders to get any oxygen. Hell win New Hampshire but then theres no where else for him to go. If he wins iowa, then that process goes out for a much longer period of time. The National Polls begin to close. Thats what happens when you get momentum he will have won two st ates in a row. The night of iowa is going to tell us is it short, is it long. On each side of the aisle. The other fascinating thing we havent mentioned jeb bush in the course of this which is the race to 100 million. And had a right good debate. Berdz Bernie Sanders is going to win more caucuses. And this went no where close to what we thoughtwn six months ago. Rose carol last question from you about washington. What surprise will you looking for . Is it turnout or is it what. I think turnout. It matters as everyone was saying, it matters for Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders. I think the other thing the eye of organization is Bernie Sanders really organized. Hillary clinton has a lot of the obama folks working for her and has learned some lessons, shes done this before. And you know is whether or not Bernie Sanders can translate what he has his enthusiasm into something actually on the ground is a big question. Rose carol thank you so much. Thank you. Rose stay with me for a moment here. Looking at this race so far having the experience youve had in politic, the trump factor. Is it as some say Reality Television . Is it hes a different kind of campaigner. You said he was politically astute. Is it somehow that he is less politically astute that this is a moment where the country and a personality came together . I think its all of those things and then you couple w