themself into a jeopardy-like game show with electric turns and letting wolf blitzer, john king, others formulate the questions and plot. mix it up and decide on their own venues. there s nothing written in the constitution where they have to submit themself to these people. you mentioned the monday night debate that had no audience participation. why invite an audience in if you re not going to let them be involved? that s a good question. you used to work at nbc, you tell me? i think they didn t want certain candidates to get that i don t know, roar of a rush of adrenaline from the crowd. i think it s more they re intimidated. they don t like having their questions booed. they don t want to be booed and it could get out of control. if you come back and people are booing and you can t get your word out except people watch more when
know a lot about baseball. yeah, absolutely. too bad he wasn t a baseball commissioner. every week, every one of these debates, the constant improvement factor goes to rick santorum. yeah. he s gotten better in each debate and last night was his best yet. the gingrich thing. there s nothing better. i ve always thought covering a loser s locker room is the most interesting aspect of college sports, today and tomorrow, the gingrich campaign in florida would be very interesting off of his lack of performance last night. but you can t treat newt gingrich like you would treat any other loser in a locker room. because newt is preparing for the next attack. you know one of my favorite bill clinton stories was the story of i think it was david who talked about in 80 after bill clinton lost, his people looked outside second floor down on the square and bill clinton s
offensive, romney pushed it back at him. he let a lot of softballs go by. a lot of times he could ve hammered romney and didn t do it. it was in a defensive and angry place and romney was totally equipped to dismantle whatever gingrich tried to throw at him. willie, romney had a very good night, rick santorum, though, most people i talk to think if you look at who did the best last night, rick santorum had a great night. he had a great night. mitt romney also had a great night. but i think santorum s long dissection of romney care and drawing romney into that debate where romney had to explain went back three or four times how it was different than president obama s affordable care act. right. and it didn t sound different from president obama i think that s an argument that the white house liked hearing and something you ll hear again. if romney makes it through the general election. but i think one way he might
important issues we have by playing petty personal politics. can we set aside that newt was a member of congress and used the skills that he developed as a member of congress to go out and advise companies. and that s not the worst thing in the world and mitt romney is a wealthy guy because he worked hard and he s going out and working hard. leave that alone and focus on the issue. it didn t stop there. good morning, everyone. it s friday, january 27th. with us onset, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, msnbc and time magazine political analyst mark haleprin, as well. welcome, everyone, to morning joe. that was a fascinating debate. there were so many different story lines in that debate. it was one of the most fascinating ones i ve seen. bottom line, though. bottom line is rick santorum had a great performance. mitt romney was one. mitt romney was pretty darn good and newt gingrich didn t show up. it was one of the stranger story
in tampa. the biggest difficulty for gingrich off of last night, though, could well be a little guy sitting out there watching this debate in las vegas, sheldon edelson thinking i m through writing checks. that s another piece of conventional wisdom. he could also say, newt s been mistreated. newt s been attacked. i m going to invest more. oh, lord. but there is another guy in the rocky mountain west that was watching last night going, this rick santorum guy s doing okay. a i ll going to write more checks. santorum had a big night. santorum had a big night, he could show some movement in florida, and that s very important for the super tuesday states in the south. if rick santorum becomes the evangelical candidate, he s going to pick up delegates moving forward. let me show you one more thing, newt gingrich defended his insistence that the united states should build a colony on the moon.