>> production assistance for "inside washington" was provided by allbritton communications and politico, reporting on the legislative, executive, and political arena. >> we are turning up the delegates of the convention and it looks good, and we are counting the days until november and that looks better. >> this week on "inside washington," romney wins more than he loses on super tuesday. >> if the governor thinks he is ordained by god it to win, let's have it out. >> iran and talk of war. >> those who are beating the drums of war should explain clearly to the american people what the costs and benefits would be. >> a visit by the israeli prime

minister. >> we are together. >> the energy debate. >> the president of the united states is lobbying against american jobs. >> newt versus rick -- who will blink first? >> i am the tortoise. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> it was not an act out, but romney did ohio, massachusetts, virginia, and it looks unlikely that santorum or gingrich or ron paul can come up with enough delegates to take it away from him. but according to the latest "wall street journal"/nbc news poll, the candidates have taken

a beating in this campaign. romney -- peter hart says that the voters just don't know who the guy is or what his values are. >> i want to know what you want to be remembered for. >> around my home, i want to be known as a very good father. >> it seems that mitt romney is a really good father, but what does he have to do to convince blue-collar men, women, and latinos that he would be a good president of the united states? >> well, there is a question of how good a dog owner he is, but we won't get into that. but he needs is to get this over with. his negatives have risen among independents by 20 points. he needs an opportunity for a knockout. every time he wins, he slips in the next round. then he can turn his attention to the president. until then he will continue to

be damaged and diminished. >> nina? >> want think he should do and is doing his have his wife with him all the time, not just because she seems like a regular prison, but he seems -- regular person, but he seems more like a real human being when he is with her. mark tells me that is in contrast with most candidates. he does at this problem of high negatives now because of the negative campaign that he has had to run. that is not something you get rid of easily. >> colby? >> the idea is that he would say anything to get elected and he has done nothing to dispel that during the campaign. worse than that is the way he has campaigned so negatively against other candidates with onslaughts of negative ads against the gingrich, santorum. he is paying the price.

>> mark, what does mitt romney have to do to strengthen his campaign? >> accept the example and lesson of richard nixon in 1968. richard nixon in 1968 ran as a competent, experienced, people alternative to the democrats in power. that is what mitt romney past to be. he has to forget the touchy- feely thing. it does not work for him. i agree with my colleagues, the observations made about him, all of which are accurate. the reality is that he is ingot into when he truck -- it authentic when he tries to cram so as in anything other than -- he is a turnaround night. that is the argument that are to be exclusively -- ought to be exclusively. >> i think it was joe biden who

once said that you have to think of the risks as president. the best he did not take was t with rush limbaugh now. it was a perfect opportunity, a sister souljah moment, to say that i don't always play it safe and you went over the line. on clear channel, the rush network, so to speak. >> look, i am sure that is the liberals' dream, but when the president of the united states apologizes for what bill maher has said about women and this is $1 million -- >> i do not say he should apologize --

>> when the president speaks about maher's misogyny, that we can -- the hypocrisy oon the left -- >> about what? >> washed limbaugh as a spokesman for the republican party at that misogyny is exclusively republican. maher, chris matthews, and this guy louis c.k. at the congressional correspondents dinner. when i hear denunciations on the left -- >> wasting time on rush limbaugh -- >> i didn't bring it up. >> let me go back to the point about mark and mitt romney.

1968 was different. that -- the economy may still e there, but not to the extent that he thought. >> for the record, at week's end, 8.3% added. >> richard nixon in 1968 stayed within his game. he never tried to be funny, never tried to be particularly engaging with widows and orphans and small children. he was he was. that is what i am suggesting that romney has to do. the problem mitt romney has is not unlike that of john kerry, the democrat. he was a dream candidate drawn up on its board to run in 2004 against the party who brought the country into war, and george

bush, who had a spotty record, and big cheney, who had no military record and skillfully avoided it. john kerry did not turn out to be a natural candidate to engage people emotionally. mitt romney in many respects was drawn up to tough economic times, storage shed that was far from. >> i will know that richard nixon went on "laugh in" and said "sock it to me." again, it is not as if he didn't try to get out of character. but i think mark is right. what romney can also do is to make the argument against obama , liberal overreach, big government, big debt. he is a moderate conservative,

not a hard-line conservative. in moderate conservative can make a case against a rigid ideology -- against stewardship and ideology. >> first, a word on israel, iran, and talk of war. >> at this stage, it is my belief that we have a window of opportunity where this can be solved diplomatically. >> when it comes to israel's curity, israel has the vereigghto ms own decisions. >> >>in cs, that israel has pridnterests, bu --ats rsonoint

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regime, and therefore interested in its own self-interestse provs much sense as they did with the soviet union. that is the first point. missingn isebe about the united states and mitt romney serth hdoes not even know exist- what is the compelling natna inre othunited states the what is the last resort before going mity we itat is the popular spo wh a t consequences? what is the exit streg romney is making a trie political mistake. obama islawe president,ut the strength he has his national security anfoigcy >> you have a response, charles? >> i understand you are obsessed thheleis da but

long after the names "romney," "santorum" and "obama" are forgotten, if iran has the bomb able why on every child. what is the american national testn e ann mb all the arabsn r dere terrified and there will be hegemony over them. in t e, it would be a threat to the united states did not mint not the way it is too and israeli -- to an israeli. but they are lined with terris. cld lose a city, we could lose it in an hr,f an decides to use it or do it in a way that could be untraceable. it would have us alwaysn e damocles sword. that would change our relations

with the world. these are people dedicated to the destruction not just of israel and moderate arabs but ultimately of the west. that is what have to calculate. it does not mean they are ing to attack tomorrow, but can we live with an iranian bomb? >> i have seen this movie before. we went through it whene went to warn 01n s ome that somehow there was going to be, as the secretary of state said, a mushroom cloud over the it ste it would be more effective argument if we had not heard in -- >> >o you doubt iran is working on a bomb? >> i do not know -- y aed question, i was trying to answer it. if you want to continue to ask questions when i am try to answer, that is one thing. i not know what iran is

doing. i do know that they better open up to examination and spti, and failure to do so would raise strong suspicion that they are doing something -- >> i see noean to conclude that the president of the united states would not do what he said he would. he said he would prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon. i see no reason to doubt that. there is no evidence is n gogoo at >> even the words of his own a director of national intelligence, clapper, said when asked by the intelligence committee ". the sanctions had any effect --" . and as as they had economic effect -- any effect on a the clr ogm "no." what is the evidence that he is prevented anything?

>>e d't y prevented -- >> the time to take action, they s.a., is not now. you want tm dit today. >> i just said the opposite. >> iisot entirely clear he would ever have the ability to prevent it. it is only clear that we could inju isowh a pve it for a couple of years. >> i want to make a point about mark's agnosticism. is enriching uranium to 20%, entirely unnecessary if it is electric. it put the stuff under a mountain. it is suffering economic sanctions, which are enormous, because it won't allow inspectors. you telling me this is because it is producing electricity? >> it is not irrational to put

it under a mountain when you turn on the television, take up the paper, and oth countries are being urged to strike and, bomb you. >> all you have to is allow iaea inspectors. >> we will take a break. the president says he has a new clean ener program. >> what we need is a serious, sustained, all-of-the-about strategy for american-made energy, american-made efficiency, american innovation, american fuel-efficient trucks, american field of vision cars. -- american fuel efficient cars but we may not get there in one term -- >> ok, "four more years" they are chanting. does he have a real plan, nina, or is this campaign rhetoric? >> since he ran for president

this has been one of his pick things, to promote alternative energy. we all now -- combined with existing energy. we all know that presidents don't control gas prices. despite what newt gingrich says, they 29. they are the prisoners of gas prices. if they go up exponentially, barack obama will be a prisoner of gas prices. he has a plan whether it it is a decent that's become i am an agnostic. it is not going to get through congress anyway. >> why did he not be against the pipeline? >> he staked out his position. it is obvious that the political landscape has changed since he rejected the republican push for it. gas prices are up, pushing for dollars. if they go beyond $4, that has political implications an impact

in this country. changes people's buying habits. what they can not stand is the consumer prices starting to rise and threatene the economy with a 227,000 new jobs announced this week. that is a real threat. you can see it in the fact that they lost 10 democratic senators -- >> i believe so. >> something about this keystone , and spoken of an interesting -- they thought they had a deal to go through nebraska, and it fell through. obama vetoed the pipeline and said to find another route did i have no doubt at that is going to go through. it may not go through nebraska, but it will go through somewhere. >> if it doesn't go here, it will go to china. >> canadians a building it down

to our border. >> that is why it is an absurd decision, so obviously a political one, i gave to his left. the hypocrisy of the president when he says that our strategy is all of the above -- the sea and imagine that americans are so stupid -- all of the above, except for canadian oil on a platter from the keystone, except oil off the florida coast, except a drilling in the arctic, except the national petroleum reserve set aside by harding in 1923? his answer -- algae. oh, yes, algae is the oil of the future. all the swimming pools in america -- all you have to do is fire the pool men around america and algae will grow like crazy

and -- >> i would like to lift this a little bit above the absurd. let's go back to the pipelines again. they do not get a specific plan to move the plan -- as of yet, they don't. >> they abandoned it. >> before you approve it, you have to see where the lines are being confronted senator ben nelson, not a strong supporter of the obama administration -- he is not up for reelection -- he voted against the amendment. there are substantive and reasons to be concerned . >> back to politics. who is going to drop out first, newt or rick? >> do we ask people who are tea party folks to join us? you bet. i want romney supporters, i 1

everybody's support. >> we are staying in this race because they believed it will be impossible for a moderate to win the general -- election -- i believe it will be impossible for a moderate to in the general election. >> gingrich won in georgia, ron paul has not won anything yet. it is not look like either of these seven will make it, especially gingrich. >> newt -- maybe vanity. these campaigns have been taken over totally by super pac's. newt gingrich's super pac in oklahoma, tennessee, and georgia outspent his own campaign 70-1. this is just a fiction. hello, john roberts, sam alito. thank you very much for taking our system and screwing it up completely. after that, rick santorum as the argument. if he gets in which's vote,

which he will -- gets gingrich's vote, which he will do, t ime to go, newt. >> they cannot overtake him. on the other hand, if you look at what is ahead the next seven weeks, they are going to give delegates to gingrich and santorum. >> he still got the lead, and there isn't somebody else. he had to win oil, or there would have been in a -- talked- about -- he had to win ohio, or there would of been a lot of talk about somebody else. they keep losing more delegates than that they should. >> newt has to win mississippi and alabama. if he doesn't, i think he is gone. then where does he go.

>> texas. >> he will talk about texas. he would try to hang in there because it is is a matter of pride and narcissism. in the end he does not have a path and he knows it. >> he has to win in alabama to qualify as a regional candidate. >> i told him twice -- i am not going to tell him a third time. >> last word. see you next week.

[uplifting music] ♪ >> burkhardt: when this largemouth bass returns to the backwaters of the mississippi river it will carry some luggage: a $175 radio transmitter affixed to its spine. iowa department of natural resources biologists mike steuck and denny weiss tag this fish and other bass, crappie, and bluegill,

usually in the fall, to see where they spend the winter. the fish tracking has been going on along 85 miles of the mississippi for almost a decade now, part of a $2.5 habitat restoration project under the federal environmental management program. >> it's on there really good. when we locate these fish, we're going to take water quality measurements: dissolved oxygen, temperature, water velocity, water depth, that kind of information. >> burkhardt: to do that, they skim along the frozen backwaters in a hovercraft above 18 inches of solid ice. scientists now know these fish and others like them prefer to winter in fairly deep, calm water, but that habitat had been disappearing due to increased sedimentation from the river being dammed and heavily traveled and from eroding uplands. a rebuilding project now under way is changing that. >> and we create this with a deflection levy and a berm,

so it decreases the wind and wave action. the plants can grow up and provide habitat for the fish. >> burkhardt: using gps to plot the fishes' locations, steuck and other biologists can get a precise picture of where the fish go. >> yeah, we've had great results. we've seen the vegetation go from nothing to coming back, and the fish are now using more of the project area. >> burkhardt: the new habitat encourages vegetation to grow rapidly and is also good for nesting geese and ducks. the ice fishing's better too. for this american land, this is bruce burkhardt.