much more from and about the hawkeye caucuses later this hour. sears holdings is out with a partial list of the sears and k-mart stores it plans to close. earlier this week sears said it would close between 100 and 120 stores as a result of poor holiday sales. the firm has released a list of 79 that will be closed nationwide. sears said in a statement that it could not say how many jobs will be cut or when the stores will be closed. sears holdings has more than 4,000 stores in the u.s. and canada. a protest in syria turns deadly. hundreds of thoses of pro-democracy demonstrators jammed the streets and homes and other cities across the country as part of what the opposition called the crawl to freedom square. anti-government groups say at least 32 protesters have been killed. witnesses say this video shows a man who had his legs blown off being carried by friends in a ma das tus suburb. crackdown by president bashar al assad s forces continues despite the presence of arab
santorum, gingrich, ron paul, rick perry and mitt romney all have campaign events this hour and we will dip in and listen in where we can. speaking of moving, michele bachmann s campaign is moving on without the former chairman of its iowa operations. he left to work for ron paul and bachmann claims she knows why. i had a conversation with kent sorenson. in the direct conversation i had with him he told me that he was offered money. he was offered a lot of money by the ron paul campaign to go and associate with the ron paul campaign. no one else knows about that conversation other than kent sorenson and myself and i know what he said to me about that. what does sorenson say? stick around. in just a few minutes he will join me live to explain himself. it is his first tv interview since he changed camps. don t miss it. poll numbers have not been especially encouraging to president obama but the pew hispanic center finds by more than a margin 2-1 they favor the president
support him. he s followed by ron paul at 22%. rick santorum is now third with 16%. newt gingrich is at 14%. michele bachmann is on the campaign trail in des moines right now, a day after one of her high profile advisers defected. bachmann is likely to face questions about the decision by state senator ken sorenson to jump ship and throw his support behind ron paul. we re keying an eye on bachmann s media event and we ll take you there live for some of the q and a session. he may be the front-runner but mitt romney isn t predicting how he will do in the iowa caucuses. he started the day in cedar falls talking about the job and the economy. speaking with wolf blitzer he responded to kplats from newt gingrich about attack ads. i don t know why he s so angry. look, this is a campaign about the things we believe in. i believe the country s being led in a very unfortunate and destructive way by a president that doesn t really understand our economy or america. i can get amer
so, we had newt gingrich and mitt romney. both on the offensive over the last 24 hours. they know that six days is a short time and that s when the caucuses are. what have we been hearing from both of the candidates, mark? well, hala, you re absolutely right. so much on the line, so much at stake here. six days until january 3rd when iowa republicans will caucus and will really kick off what has been already a very long presidential season. well, newt gingrich had pledged not to go negative in this campaign. he had said that he would only go positive and talk about his plan to try to turn the american economy around. well, the gloves have come off and, in fact, he is going negative. yesterday on the situation room with wolf blitzer, he went right after mitt romney. in fact, let s listen to what newt gingrich had to say. all i say mitt is, if you want to run a negative campaign and you want to attack people, at least be man enough to own it. that s your staff and that s
virtual tie for the lead. what happened to newt gingrich nice guy? he vowed not to go negative in response to the other candidates attack ads, but that didn t stop gingrich from blasting ron paul. in an interview with cnn s wolf blitzer he said he wouldn t vote for paul. gingrich pointed to incendiary newsletters distributed under paul s name in the 80s and 90s. you look at his newsletters and then you look at his ads, his ads are about as accurate as his newsletters. now if he were to get the republican nomination. he won t. let s say he were. could you vote for him? no. amateur video out of syria is said to show defectors trying to ambush security forces in daraa. cnn cannot independently confirm this claim. observers from the arab league are now in the country for a second day to determine if the government has kept its promise to stop the bloody crackdown on its citizens. a league official tells cnn they have postponed trips to three cities today due to l