full fledged congressional showdown with a tax hike for millions of americans hanging in the balance. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. this just coming in. our brand new poll numbers hitting pitting president obama against the republican candidate. the survey puts each toe to toe the president and even though the election is still almost 11 months away, the results still troubling for the gop. let s go inside the numbers with ron brownstein of the national journal. thanks very much for coming in. these numbers, hot, they re fresh right now. hypothetical match-ups between the president and the republican challengers out there. look at this. in a hypothetical match-up between president obama and mitt romney. right now, president obama would win 52 to 45%. margin of error, 3%, but he would still win national. those are some of the best numbers we have seen for president obama in any of the head to heads recently. seven points ahead of mitt romney, wider than
street. and facing dozens of counts of child abuse, coach jerry sandusky speaks out in an interview and denies he s a interview and denies he s a pedophile. captions by vitac www.vitac.com in a predawn raid, occupy wall street protesters were driven out two months after they started camping out. a court is deciding whether they should be allowed in. let s go to poppy harlow. what happened in zuccotti park and what happens next? well, wolf, at about 1:00 a.m. this morning, hundreds of new york city police officers raided the park behind me. completely cleared it out of occupy wall street protesters. i was here from 2:00 a.m. on. there were clashes in the streets from protesters and the police. the scene now, this park is surrounded by protesters and supporters of the movement waiting for a result from the courts. the hearing going on right now. what happened is this morning, a new york state supreme court judge issued a ruling saying it was illegal for the protesters
out for the first time about some shocking revelations that cremated remains of american war dead were simply dumped in landfills. i m wolf blitzer. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com it may have been the most awkward 53 seconds of the presidential campaign so far and certainly the most widely seen. texas governor rick perry s brain freeze during last night s republican presidential debate was the most viewed video on youtube in the united states earlier today. if you haven t seen it, you re about to as we look ahead to what happens to rick perry s campaign now. jim acosta is in auburn hills, michigan. the scene of perry s monumental stumble. how does he recover from this? wolf, after last night s debate and rick perry s meltdown in michigan, the candidate and his campaign seem to have a new strategy. get the voters to laugh with him and not at him. commerce, education and the what s the third one there? let s see i
i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com he s plunging in the polls and in need of a boost. will a new plan help rick perry climb back to the top of the republican race? his rival, herman cain, is leading the pack according to a brand new poll and perry is a distant fifth with cain apparently benefitting from his 9-9-9 tax plan, perry today unveiled his own new tax plan and 20 is the magic number. he proposes a flat tax of 20% for individuals and corporations, but in a twist, perry would let people choose to pay his flat tax rate or file under the current system, which he derived. the size of the current code is more than 72,000 pages. that s represented by this palate right over here and the reams of paper. that s what the current tax code looks like. the best representation of my plan is this postcard. this is is size of what we re talking about right here. taxpayers will be able to fill this out and file their taxes on that.
we re live on the las vegas strip where in just four hours, the republican hopefuls will face off in a cnn western presidential debate. tonight, herman cain is the candidate to beat. since the last debate one week ago in new hampshire, herman cain has continued to rise in the polls and is now the front-runner for the republican presidential nomination. he is joining me now. he s here in the situation room. we re in las vegas. mr. cain, thanks very much for coming in. how does that feel to be called the front-runner running for the nomination? the way it feels is that you got this big bull s eye on your back so that keeps gets bigger. it feels great, but as you know, the challenge is how do we continue that momentum and we believe we know how to do it. they re all going to come after you tonight. i m ready. have you been practicing? what are you doing? what i always do. in other words, i make sure i know where i stand on all the solutions i m putting on the table.