a new front in the battle for the republican presidential nomination, nevada, which holds its caucuses this coming saturday. mitt romney is there along with newt gingrich and ron paul. instead of relishing his victory, a huge victory in the florida primary last night, romney and his team are now in full damage control mode after something romney said right here on cnn. our senior congressional correspondent dana bash is in las vegas with us. she s watching what s going on. what s going on with mitt romney, dana? reporter: well, wolf, i think we ve auld had something like this happen to us. you say something, it doesn t quite come out like you mean it, but when you re the front-runner in a presidential campaign, you can t afford to be the one who trips yourself up. making the morning show rounds, mitt romney inadvertently handed opponents an eight-word give on cnn i m not concerned about the very poor reporter: to be clear that made for a bumper sticker line was only
how about we make him pay 9%? warren wouldn t be hit by the vat tax. a lot of working class people would. let s talk about afghanistan. we have news on afghanistan as well, mika. this is something surprisingly enough that i think republicans should seize on. there s a report out, of course, that in afghanistan we have been exaggerating our gains against the taliban. the fact of the matter is it s a much bigger mess than we expected. that s part of it. there s also news on the surge drawdown. nbc news has learned that defense secretary leon panetta and joint chiefs chairman marty dempsy presented president obama with the first round of the afghanistan surge drawdown. the plan which the military is calling a surge recovery includes how the u.s. will bring home 10,000 american forces by the end of this year. this first round will be a combination of troops that are finishing their tour, not being replaced, troops not deploying