bombing and the efficacy of negative ads. my statistic is 0.1% were pro romney. 92% were negative. the strategy seems to have worked out well, did it not, maggie? >> just a tad. the mitt romney campaign made a clear decision after south carolina they were going to pick themselves up, go hard against newt gingrich. the ads told part of the story, not all of the story. i think negative campaigning works and ads work. i don't think this is surprising. the super pac had some money, but they never put up what they said they were going to put up. they never recountered these messages. newt sort of countered it on the trail but it ended up with him sounding very negative as opposed to what the voters took away. >> and petulent. >> just a tad. >> what's interesting is how

mitt romney has come to embrace the vitriol, that these attacks will unite us as a party and the negativity. then this morning said this on the "today" show. >> i think the attacks have been helpful. what's going to come from barack obama will be the same, just a heck of a lot more of it. >> can anything at this point stop mitt romney? >> i would say not, no. >> other than the president. >> we're talking about the nominations. >> different race. >> i think it's his race to lose. i would expect he's going to be the nominee. i would have said that a year ago and certainly would say it today. >> was there a point in which you thought newt gingrich might have taken this thing? >> having some history, i worked with him in the a90s, the answer is no. in theory i spofl there were moments where someone could have emerged to defeat romney. he was the front-runner, he has

a lot of advantages, even more now, and i suspect he'll be the nominee. he may be the bloodied nominee but it's likely. >> when we look at wimper versus bang, it looks like romney may have this thing buttoned up. we know the caucus is smaller. strong mormon community. this would seem to be romney stomping grounds. if there's a chance he can keep this going and keep engaged with romney, he's got to emerge into march where there's a better contest for him, stronger than he is today. he's going to be outspent in every state. the question, i think, is can he get back his mojo in terms of earn media, can he start contrasting with romney, can he start talking about how he would

run against the president differently than mitt romney do. he and his advisers plan to do that. slower pace. it will help him. he's got one debate. but february, you know, he's got to have a plan, and i think they do have a plan that says we can survive february even if we lose efrz contest. >> we can live off the land. the thing about the results from last night if we unpack them a little bit, romney is now beating gingrich on the electability question which to me is not a great surprise. but the margin is significant, 589% 58% to 33%. the thing that surprised me with us the female support. in florida mitt romney just took it away with 52% of women voters compared to 28% for newt gingrich. shocking. perhaps or not? i mean do -- it seems like -- >> i find it more shocking that as many people are voting for newt gingrich as are, so i think

it didn't shock me, but -- did it shock you, howard? >> it didn't shock me. >> you know, if you're looking at the media cycle on the marian gingrich stuff, open marriage stuff, that hit before south carolina and didn't really stick. seems like it -- >> it should be noted that you're dealing with four new yorkers here. >> how many friends have open marriages? >> looks like the people in south carolina were hard to shock too. it is interesting to look at gingrich's strength. look at the life lived of his compared to romney. it's not a contest in terms of what you've actually done with your life. >> we've talked about the fact that newt gingrich has never done well with women. this is not his base. i do think there's a question about whether the mary ann

gingrich interview was lost to history. u think newt gingrich does not do well with women voters. >> take it on the road. the haberman/halparin show. >> i biked here. i biked here from city hall. >> it's hard for us to be shocked. what i was referring to is romney doing well with women voters is not a big headline. gingrich is not a good candidate for women voters and the way people defined him in florida only exacerbated it. >> the likability. the more gingrich attacked the less appealing he was. you saw that in some of the women voting. >> romney is more interesting when he sort of attacks and

tries to be platitudous and positive. you saw talent and focus and even some substance. and then when, you know, last night at the victory speech when he sort of went into the vision stuff or his sort of, you know, it just seemed very van id. >> newt gingrich had a real zinger of a speech last night, did he not? no congratulatory phone call to mitt romney and laying out a lot of stuff he's going do if he's elected president. let's go through the list. he's going to pass a repeal of obama care, pass the repeal of dodd/frank bill, pass the repeal of the sarbanes-oxley. abolish white house czars, deployment of keystone pipeline. pass an executive order and do this all before going to the inaugural balls.

>> well, gingrich gets criticized for having ideas that some may say are a little out there or wacky, but you've got to give him credit for having ideas and policies and proposals. i think at some point it would probably be helpful for romney to begin mentioning some things that he would actually do in the white house other than these kind of as hugo said platitudes about replacing obama. i think it's important for him to begin now telling the american people what exactly he would do to deal with the economy that he says is so bad and has hurt so many americans. >> and that's where gingrich wins that moniker of being the ideas guy, right, because he's putting this stuff out there, never mind that these ideas are hugely questionable. >> people want to know what their president is going to do. >> that's why everyone is calling on romney to do this. >> that's right. >> the question is why is he not? is he not doing it for tactile reasons or not ready to do it? i think particularly in this

month if gingrich plans to give policy changes, i think it's going to be harder for romney to avoid saying thing. and the white house is putting the same pressure on the president today. he gave a speech about housing and threw it over to romney and said what would you do about it rather than as howard suggested, criticizing us. >> mitt romney, bring your ideas game and bring it hard in the month of february. we're actually going to talk more about president obama, his ideas of the housing crisis versus that of the gop later in the show. but coming up, rick santorum coming in third after basically skipping the florida primary and focusing on states out west. today he's in colorado. does he have the right strategy and money to stay in? we'll ask his communications director when he joins us next on "now." ask me.

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who are these three soft on immigration, big government mandating politicians? now you know. >> a new rick santorum ad that takes aim at newt gingrich. he's fighting to position himself as the conservative all ternive to newt gingrich. hogan gidley joins us now from south carolina. hogan, it's a true pleasure to have you on this show. >> well, i sure appreciate it, alex. thanks for the time. >> first, hogan, we want to ask -- our thoughts are definitely with the senator's daughter bella. i hope everything is well there. i know he returned to the campaign trail. sounds like there was positive news on that front? >> absolutely. we expect her to be out of the hospital very soon. of course, the senator said many times he appreciates the prayers and thoughts of all the people

who expressed such a -- just a love for his daughter and his family at this time. he appreciates the prayers and the daughter's doing much better. bella is a wonderful, wonderful child and she's doing better and hopefully she gets to go home very, very soon. >> hogan, we know that the senator is out in lakewood, colorado. i believe he's going to take the stage any minute now. his strategy has been to go west and to wait for newt gingrich to implode or so it would seem. do you think that february is the month for rick santorum? first of all, i don't think we're waiting for newt gingrich to implode. we're trying to show that newt gingrich doesn't have what it takes to be the nominee. you can't effective will i atack mitt romney and prove yourself to be an alternative when you pretty much agree with him on all the liberal policies he's pushed on in the past. you certainly can't draw a contrast with the president when you've pushed the same policies

as the president and as or our ad shows, nancy pelosi as well. i don't think we're waiting for newt gingrich to implode. in fact, quite the opposite. we're taking it to newt gingrich. we're not afraid to do that. we're not afraid to take it to mitt romney. we're going to show it this month. it's important to our campaign, there's no doubt about it. we're going to take our campaign nationally ads you know. went to florida for a brief period and now we're off to colorado, missouri, nevada, minnesota, and beyond and that's what we're going to do this upcoming week for sure. >> hogan, no campaign is a campaign without money, shall we say, and we got new numbers in terms of fund-raising thlitt b when you look at 2011, mitt romney raised a total of $56 million. ron paul, not too shab withy $25 million. newt gingrich, $13 million, rick santorum, $2 million. when you look at the overall trend lines, there doesn't seem to be the fiscal backing for

rick santorum as well asover candidates including ron paul. why do you think it's hard to raise cash? i don't think it's har. we started behind the eight ball. we got a huge boost after iowa and then of course another boost as the process continued. as you mentioned, $4.2 million in just january alone. that's a pretty big number. we actually have $1.3 million of cash on hand as we speak right now. i love the argument, though, that mitt romney has all the money and all the infrastructure. i hear that consistently out of the campaign trail, actually in talking to some of the people on your panel today. and while money and infrastructure is important, it's not inspiring. that's not what's going to resonate behind. nobody's putting a bumper sticker on the bumper that says -- >> that might have been a slogan

of mitt romney, money and infrastructure 2012. mark halparin has a question. >> i grew up on the mason-dixon line so i'm not that bright. why are you running an ad against nancy pelosi when mitt romney is the front runner and you have to take him. >> the reason we did that is newt gingrich is in our pachlgt we offer the clear conservative alternative that mitt romney just doesn't have any credibility in offering. and when you take a look at a poll that just came out in ohio and also in missouri yesterday, a head-to-head between us and mitt romney we win and have a convincing lead in some of those polls. so it shows that people are clamoring for a conservative, that they can trust and has a conservative track record and quite frankly newt gingrich doesn't off that. and coming out of south carolina, he had a huge lead,

huge momentum, huge buzz, goes down to florida, spends all this money, all this time and has nothing to show for it. so if you look at his campaign, you have to ask yourself, when he had a chance to take it to mitt romney one on one, he couldn't do it. so when we need to peare this race down to mitt and the anti-mitt. he pretty much agrees with him on so many issues that the liberals and the president and nancy pelosi agree on. >> hogan, when we talk about this in the race, sheldon adelson is on the newt gingrich side as sort of the fairy godmother. i wonder, is there any sense that he may donate more money? i know he gave a quarter of a million to the super pac. is there any sense he may give more money to help inch the campaign along in the hopes of

unseating newt gingrich in the coming weeks? >> sure. that's an interesting question. i don't deal with him. he obviously helps the pack or so i've read in the articles. but i mean i can tell you since our last debate in south carolina and since the debates in florida, the uptick in our fund-raising has been through the roof with the small dollar donations on the line that have given us that $4.2 million. in fact, it's almost in direct correlation with newt gingrich's demise. as he tends go down and get lower and lower in the polls, we tend to shoot up and get more money. so i can't really speak to what foster is going do, but i know from our donor standpoint, our base is broad and those small dollar donations that amounts to yes money and it amounts to votes and that's something we're going to need moving forward in addition to the money. >> your rick santorum fate

twinned with that. best of luck with everything. we'll be talking with you in the weeks and months to come. >> thank you, alex. you all have a good day. god bless. after the break, iced tea is the brand grande old party. having a cooling off period with the tea party that. will be next on "now." this is an rc robotic claw. my high school science teacher made me what i am today. our science teacher helped us build it. ♪ now i'm a geologist at chevron, and i get to help science teachers. it has four servo motors and a wireless microcontroller. over the last three years we've put nearly 100 million dollars into american education. that's thousands of kids learning to love science. ♪ isn't that cool? and that's pretty cool. ♪ isn't that cool? and that's pretty cool. what do you get when you combine the home depot with this weekend?

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thank you so much, i appreciate it, i'll be right back. they didn't take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money ? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. no nonsense. just people sense. the tea party appears to have two opponents, democrats and the republican establishment. new news coming out in the last 24 hours about al len west. that old allen west is switching districts because a new map decided upon the lines drawn by a fellow republican in congress is making his district more democratic. that's redistricting chair will

weatherford who's a romney backer. i think this is an interesting outlier as far as what's going on. the backlash, the sense that perhaps the tea partiers in congress have not served the parties that well and perhaps the beginnings of a revolution or at least a movement to damper their power in congress, an interesting move, i think. or not. or not at all. or totally boring. >> interesting in florida. and certainly a question of will the tea party be an electoral force the way it was in 2010. in 2010 they were a negative force for republicans in some races because they i lekked people who could not be elected. they missed out on a chance. the election being fought over the question of is the democrat and those in congress big spenders. i think one of the challenges is try to make the election outlive

that of 2010. the presidential nominee will have to have some specifics. you get in a fight with the president on terms he would welcome. >> i wouldn't write him off just yet. one of the things i find so remarkable is if you closed your eyes and listened to newt gingrich's attack on romney about bain capital and how he made his money, you would think it was coming from the left wing of the party. he's clearly within the constitueco constituency that's represented by the tea party. that's a real problem with some of the upper income, echelon, hierarchical thinking. >> and yet may have to swallow that pill if mitt romney is the nominee. i think to a certain degree in 2010 the democrats sort of took it lying down. now we see a super liberal pack called cree doe that's launch add take down the tea party ten campaign. it focuses on ten members through the cam paper that are anti-women, anti-science, and my

favorite, downright crazy. but, you know, a real backlash as far as what these guys have done and i think democrats sort of taking the knives out as far as the tea party's concerned. >> i think they're a base motivator for the democrats to use in their own parties. i think that's a lot of what you see here. there was an exit poll stat. you might know this better than i do that hat newt gingrich and mitt romney coming close in terms of the tea party yesterday. whether that means something greater going forward, i don't know. i think we've seen the tea party has not been the mobilizing force we had expected to see. i think what howard said about this income disparity issue, thing that's where you see the room for potentially a third-party candidate, someone who is not part of the republican establishment. >> anyone you're thinking of in particular? >> no. no. anyone else? i'm just asking. but i think it is too soon to rule them out. they have not been the force people had expected simply because they've not been able to

organize. >> that's a great point. >> it's interesting how wide open the republican field was that no real candidate that had tea parties credentials was ashl to get any traction at all. that speaks to the movement. >> and the dearth of viable candidates. the fact that newt gingrich is -- you know, the organization question is interesting. the always quotable buzz feed has an interesting story about in nevada specifically how the movement's fallen apart. they've sort of got sharon engel out there in the 2010 race. now they say they're divided, the fund-raising isn't there, there's a lack of unity. i think on a certain level you kind of expect that. it was a rabble-rousing bunch. here it's put your money where

your mouth is. mark, you look like you were about to say something. >> no, but i will. they've always had organizational problems. i think they have won a big victory in the sense that our debates revolve around how to cut the budget and move toward balance. there's not a lot of talk over stimulus spending. >> income and equality is a hunl part of the national discussion as well. >> i agree, but i think both of those -- i think the balanced budget part and reducing spending is baked in the cake. it's part of the debate and this election will be part of the next congress's agenda without a doubt. it hangs in the balance in part not because it's got less moral authorities but because the tea party was much more sophisticated than the occupy movement has been about getting involved in politics in terms of getting politicians to pay attention. >> an interesting debate that will probably be continuing over the course of the next few months if not year. coming up, president obama is targeting his focus on housing

and economy today. is it just a coincidence that he's doing so in between the florida primary and the nevada caucus? we're going to connect the campaign dots for you next on this show "now." you name it. i've tried it. but nothing helped me beat my back pain. then i tried salonpas. it's powerful relief that works at the site of pain and lasts up to 12 hours. salonpas.

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♪ because your moment is now. let nothing stand in your way. learn more at keller.edu. it's personal. you know, i've been saying that this is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and this housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class in america. our homes. >> i'm in this race because i care about americans. i'm not concerned about the very poor. we have a safety net there. if it needs repair, i'll fix it. we'll hear from the democrat party the plight of the poor. >> this morning the president has been hitting the issue of fighting for the poor and the middle class. did mitt romney walk right into

the stereotype his campaign is making of republicans? i will repeat this. >> yes, he did. >> i'm not concerned about the very poor. is this -- is this an error on the level of i like -- >> this is outrageous. look. we could have a real debate about issues. mitt romney has said a version of that line scores of times on the campaign trail. the point is the poor has a social safety net. he says if there's a problem, we need to fix it. the rich are doing fine. we need to worry about the middle class. you can drill that and say what are your policies to effect that. but if this campaign is going to be fought over who misspeaks and who's better to mock it on youtube, i think the country will be a criticism of our business letting political opposition define the new cycle by taking something where the guy didn't speak clearly. >> that's the problem. you have to stand there in front of four audiences. if you're the president of the united states, you simply have to do better than that.

>> i think we should be nicer -- >> do you think there's a chance mitt romney doesn't care about the poor sth. >> of course, not, of course, not. you have to be more careful about how you're saying that. >> if you i in the media, let the whole news cycle be driven by, that again, it's not a partisan thing. both sides, i do not thank's what you drive our coverage of this election. >> i will concede your point to a point, but the romney campaign gets itself into trouble when they're not going out and making any positive news. i mean the president is out there apparently announcing some sort of housing plan. you can agree or disagree, but he's saying something specific that presumably he believes would help people. what's mitt romney doing to drive a positive message whaurnd he would do as president. when you're not doing that, you have a volume. it gets filled by gaffes and people in the, you know, obama war room making trouble. >> i also don't think is just

gaffes and this is the media cirque lated a bad sound bite. i would question how much mitt romney cares about the poor. i would question how he thinks the poor hasn't been working hard enough and a large part of their problem is their own motivation and we have too many handouts. >> i think's a strong sentiment in the party about the makers versus the takers and i think mitt romney -- >> that conception doesn't mean they don't care about the poor. >> let's listen to a montage of mitt romney talking about the poor. >> uh-oh. >> look. i'm going to do my very best to help. it breaks my heart to hear your stories, your experiences. i want to help. >> don't try and stop the foreclosure pros is. let it run its course and hit the bottom. >> and by the way, i'm concerned about our poor in this country. >> i'm not concerned about the very poor. we have a safety net there. >> i would question whether the treatment of the poor and the american social safety net is at the top of mitt romney's agenda.

>> he is a republican, so it's typically notice going to be at the top of his agenda. >> i don't know that -- >> i disagree with that. they have a different conception about how to help everyone in this country. my point is he should be putting the meat on the bone of what his agenda is and then he would know. do you know what his -- >> the ryan budget would help people greatly. >> i'm not here to defend -- >> he's got an absence of policies i don't disagree with, but, again, the notion that he doesn't care about the poor and the notion that when he speaks inelegantly that the whole day should be does mitt romney care about the poor, the whole country suffers. >> inasmuch as people think mitt romney does or doesn't care about the poor, president obama is in nevada talking about a program that will put $3,000 in the pockets of homeowners whose homes have been fore closed upon

for those feeling the pain. when you're talking about the general election strategy, should mitt romney, as you suggest, put meat on the bone. >> in the clinton campaign we had a theory that unless we were saying something positive about what he would do as president, that we were in trouble because somebody would say something unwise or unclear and the press would make a big issue of it and we'd spend 24 hours talk about that. so we would rather be talking about what we would do to solve the mortgage crisis, which is what barack obama is doing today and mitt romney is going to talk about how he's carrying about poor people, which is not what he set out to do. >> it's not urn like them to point out when the president miss speaks or things get misspoken by another candidate. so it's not one campaign trying to work in a clean political word and the other isn't. think with you it's harsh to say -- i think it's hard to say that mitt romney doesn't care about the poor. i think that's a very heavy statement but i also think that it is, as howard says, the candidate's responsibility to put meat on the bones in terms

of policy and to fill the void lest it get filled for them and get themselves elected. >> i think mitt romney's tax policy does not necessarily look with a dim lit eye. whether or not that's a valid statement is probably not up for debate. as we talk about president obama and his proposals, let's switch gears in terms of how he's selling the message. john boehner unsurprisingly does not have particularly kind words for what the president is doing in virginia, not nevada, my bad. >> how many times have we done this? we've done this at least four times where there's some new government program to help home owners who have trouble with their mortgages. none of these programs have worked. >> none of these programs have worked. the question is, and howard i'll direct this to you. obama is out there putting meet on the bone. is the american public still

listening? are we too entranced by what's happening in the republican party or perhaps too over it all to listen to these -- to give obama a fair shot? this plan has very little likelihood of getting passed. does $3,000 actually make a difference? >> i think people are disillusioned, i think people are concerneder the economy, they look back and they don't see as much progress as they would have liked in the last three years or so or four years. on the other hand, president of the united states, people are going to pay attention. if he's offering policy proposals, people will consider them. whether they become law or not, probably they will not given the republican opposition, but, no, i think it's important for the president to go out and swha he would do and i do think people would pay attention. they're going to certainly pay attention in nevada where he certainly was. he'll get a lot of local press. it's an important state in terms of winning. it's a huge problem in nevada. the housing crisis is enormous there. so, yeah, i think people will pay attention.

whether it becomes law or not -- >> i think the question is whether it's meat on the bones as maggie was saying. i think to boehner's point, this is, you know, the fourth of or at least four of these housing policy initiatives, none of which have had any accumulative effect. so it is a question of sort of like throwing it out there. 3,000 extra dollars that you're not going to get because the republicans are not going to let us g it. is that an actual conversation? >> energy, immigration, deficit reduction. the only way to make a solution has got to be bipartisan. there's nothing moving bipartisan. the house republicans have their idea, the senate, the republican presidential candidates have their ideas. >> maybe a third party. >> maybe a third party. but in the short term without a can-do filthy rich candidate, there's no way that any of these things are anything but talking points for the election, and the voters deserve better than that. but it's simple. the right wants the house republicans to have the rule of

the day, the left wants the president to. it's not going to happen based on our legislative process. >> at a time when one in five americans' mortgages are under water. that's just for context. after the break, congress is contemplating a pay freeze, a curb on insider trading, and president obama's buffett rule. has political football season bebegun? we'll discuss next on "now." [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents: the cold truth. i have a cold. and i took nyquil, but i'm still stubbed up. [ male announcer ] sorry buddy. truth is, nyquil doesn't un-stuff your nose. what? it doesn't have a decongestant. really? [ male announcer ] you need a more complete cold and flu formula, like alka-seltzer plus liquid gels. it's specially formulated to fight your worst cold and flu symptoms, plus relieve your stuffy nose. [ deep breath ] thank you! [ male announcer ] you're welcome. that's the cold truth! [ male announcer ] and to fight your allergy symptoms fast, try new alka-seltzer plus allergy.

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one is the stock, the stock bill. the stop trading on congressional knowledge bill which is about curbing insider trading put out by shaun duffy. is that right? snow no it was not. brown has a similar bill about putting people's interests first. basically it's about putting aside insider gain to make stock trades. does this matter at all to the american public? is this part of the general -- you guys say yes. why do you think it duh? >> this all surrounds in part the "60 minutes" report. there's a sense that the game is fixed in washington. whether that's true or not, there is that sense. this is part of why the mitt romney ads against newt gingrich and the super pac ads were so effective. it was essentially painted as, you know, influence peddling.

newt gingrich argues he was not, he was this, he was not. i think it's clear he was taking advantage of lobbying loop holes. it makes you walk up to the line without crossing it. whether it moves people's votes, i'm not sure. >> you know what issues i love? i love issues where you can go to a tea party rally and occupy rally and say what do you think of this. i think this is one of them. perhaps we can rae store public trut and make people feel better about washington. >> there's another one. the pay freeze. that was, in fact, introduced by shaun duffy. i e'm getting details kind of rate. democrats or some in congress have said this isn't fair. we'll freeze our own salaries but we don't want to freeze the pay of federal civilian workers. they haven't gotten a raise in six years. the problem is if you're against the bill, this enyou have to

vote a against freezing your own salary, the options of which are not particularly great. again, does this instill greater confidence in terms of the greater public and their views of congress. >> i think the concern is you end up kind of talking down the instituti institution. now, 13% of the american people are talking it down already. so people in congress are kind of on that bandwagon, right? it's popular to talk down the institution. the long-term implications of that is not very good with how we govern in the country. if everybody says it's horrible, what are they going to think about congress? at the end of the day, i tend to think these issues around how we fix the mortgage cry circumstance create jobs, those kind of issues probably resonate more in the american people than some of these other things. yes, it's important that they police themselves, but it's probably more important in the long run in terms of improving that 13% number to create some jobs and help some people snoop there's no chance of any of that stuff passing right now, so they have to get something more

straight down the middle. >> i suppose. >> the self-flange land torrey behavior, cut them off at their kneecaps, whatever it was, the notion that serving the public and being elected to office is somehow a bad thing. >> i don't think there's that much danger of that. look at the people running for president, the republicans. these are people with a lot of options in life. mitt romney does not need to be a political figure to be a big success. he has a lot of money. think a lot of people do want to serve. i don't think that's a real problem. i do think that congress is -- their public reputation is -- you know, everybody likes their congressman, hates the institution. that's kind of the nature of it. it's at an all-time low but it will bounce back. >> bullish. >> i'm not sure it 's going to bounce back? >> never.

>> i'm not speaking in perpetuity. i think there is a problem. i think this is one of the arguments where congress and the senate is very fearful about newt gingrich at the top of the republican ticket. it's not like they're doing that well on their own. granted you don't want to necessarily drag down the margin by what you do. let's be honest. we're not talking about people. >> 13% does not get a valentine's day memo to congress. coming up, how his campaign is turned bundling into an art form. next on "now."

did you watch any of the gop debates? >> you know, i don't really watch that stuff. it's -- you know, we even got a lot of work do in the white house, so we pretty much stay focused on what we have to do. you know, we'll sort of cross that bridge when they pick a nominee. >> welcome back.

it's time for everybody's favorite segment. what now. michelle obama made her first "tonight show" appearance since becoming a first lady. michelle obama, a campaign weapon, is she not? every time she's on screen, she, in many ways, is a better surrogate for the white house than perhaps sometimes the president. >> i think actually if it is a romney/obama race, which i think most of us will agree, it will be an interesting battle of the surrogates. an romney is very good. she's warming him up. she's natural, comes off really well, sort of pops off the screen. but i do think michelle obama has been very strong for her husband. she had a very funny line in the interview where jay leno showed her a clip of mitt romney sing, asked her what she thought of it. she poused and said "lovely." it's a great line sniet was pause, grimace, lovely. >> correct. >> she's become an awesome public performer.

that's great appearance. i bet it helped them across the board with everybody who watched it. the best part about it, it's a reflection of who she actually is. it's the best if you're portraying yourself as yourself and coming off good, that's good. >> good is good. >> and look, if we're talking about a general election race, ann romney has come a considerable way. she's really humanized men. if there's any wife on the campaign trail that can give michelle obama a rub for her money in terms of likability, i think it's probably ann romney. speaking about president obama, in the fourth quarter he raised more money than all the gop candidates combined with a $68 millimet million haul averaging $1,700 per donor given the fact that he's an incumbent. howard, what do you make of that? >> he's a very, very good fund-raiser. it's clear he's not going to slow down very much this time.

there's a lot of people who gave last time who may end up giving. he may get new donors. he will not want for money. and while romney is forced to spend money in the primary, he's going to sit on that money. you don't have to spend a lot of that money. if he wants to, he can. if he wants to begin finding republicans, he can do that. there was a time in our lifetime when democrats wouldn't raise as much money as republicans. those days are over. barack obama is going to be well funded. >> do you think he's going to -- >> i think it's unlikely. >> do you think he should? >> i'll take a fifth on it. >> i think when you talk the prowess of the obama fund-raising machine, the $1 million projected to be raised this year, it in some ways jims

up the fire power. mitt romney is not the nominee but he's now getting secret service protection. is this badge of honor, hugo lind gr lindgren? >> yes. irthink it's a badge of honor. >> i have friends of mine walking around with credit. anyway, thanks zweg to maggie, mark, howard, and hugo. that's all for now. aisle see you back here tomorrow. pollsters peter hart and bill macintyre. again your can follow us. now "andrea mitchell reports" is next. hello, an drae ya, good afternoon to you. >> thank you very much. good afternoon to you all. michigan governor rick snyder is going to be here to talk about his state's big economic turn around and how he says other states can follow suit. a big win for romney.

what now. joining us supporters from the romney and newt gingrich campaigns. all that right here on "andrea mitchell reports." perience dual, with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it's the only listerine® that gets teeth two shades whiter and makes tooth enamel two times stronger. get dual-action listerine® whitening rinse. building whiter, stronger teeth.

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now just 199 bucks. mitchell reports," a big victory for mitt romney. but fresh from that victory lap, the front-runner showed an empathy deficit. >> i'm in this race because i'm concerned about americans. i'm not concerned about the very poor. i'm not concerned about the very rich. i'm concerned about the very heart of america. >> he's explained since but that's sure to show up on the sound bite playlist if he does become, indeed, the nominee. first there's that problem of newt gingrich. it isn't going away. >> the same people who said