romney? >> we don't quit, we don't give up. >> governor, would you go as far as rush limbaugh did yesterday and say this is the first president in modern time who will run a campaign against capitalism? >> well, it certainly sounds like that's what he's doing. >> the reason is simple. romney is not a conservative. >> it seems -- >> impossible. >> plain foolishness. he seems to ratchet up. >> former governor of the great state of massachusetts. ♪ don't stop believing >> we begin with the specter of mitt romney's first day in the white house. and as the presumed republican nominee releases a new video featuring all the actions he would take within ten minutes of taking office. when i say actions as regards to mr. romney, i obviously mean empty bromides and attacks on the current administration.

if you don't believe me, take a look. >> day one. president romney announces deficit reductions ending the obama era of big government. helping secure our kids' futures. president romney stands up to china on trade and demands they play by the rules. president romney begins repealing job killing regulations. >> when he's not busy waving his magic wand, his fantasy first week in office is likely to feature a cozy chat with his friends at fox. this morning we got a taste of some of the challenging pronouncements he might face. court sif fox and friends. >> you said that if elected president by the end of your first term, you would get unemployment down to 6%. people all across the country this morning, governor, are saying 6%. that sounds pretty good. >> that's tough. very tough. romney went on to say how he would trash the affordable health care act. go big on fossil fuels and crush the deficit. and he was asked to respond to something that the president

said just last night. >> governor romney, he's saying, well, 25 years in the private sector gives me a special understanding of how our economy works. if that's true, why is he peddling the same bad ideas that brought our economy to the brink of collapse? >> that's a really good question. mr. romney? >> by the way work regards to bain capital -- >> thank you. >> they just put a report out about their record, the bain capital guys can. they noted they made about 350 investments since the beginning of the firm. of those investments, 80% of them grew their revenues. >> 80% of them grew their revenues. wait. we know you can make money, mitt. i guess that job creator myth has already fallen by the wayside. no doubt it was quite a load of, well, quite a load for him to carry around. speaking of myth making, this

just in from mr. grandiose himself. newt gingrich's press office. he will make his first appearance with mitt romney on tuesday at trump towers in vegas with donald trump and his hair also tappeding this fundraising bonanza. sin city will never be the same. with me in new york, a senior writer for the salon doc. democratic strategist krystal ball and in washington, jonathan capehart, a writer with the "washington post." jonathan, the new rat pack? an adulterer, a gambler and a tea totaler. two clowns and a candidate. how would you describe those three in vegas? >> oceans 15, i guess. >> you put the three together whifl heard about this, i wrote back, translation, circus. your producer wrote back, translation, circus circus which i guess that hotel is still

there. but look. what i would like to see is the q & a if one is allowed between the press that's there and newt gingrich. the questions to ask him about all the comments he made about mitt romney and his experience, romney's experience at bain capital, and what has changed between all the harsh things he said in the early part of the campaign. especially when he was being fire bombed by super pac ads from pro romney super pac ads in florida. what happened between then and now? what makes him better than the candidate he ran against and makes him better than the current president of the united states? >> you'll have to wait a very long time to get an answer to that. krystal, imagine a night out between these three. you've got one man who literally cannot leave the ladies alone even though he is an older gentlemen now. you've got donald trump who loves to gamble. and mitt romney is not allowed to gamble. he's not allowed to drink. what does he do in drive them around from hotel to hotel? >> they need a dd.

i'm kind of wondering what is herman cain doing that night? get him on it. rick perry, get the whole band back together. >> michele bachmann. >> make sure perry has his pain meds has notty. >> they were fire bombing and now they are best friends. >> i am wondering. there has been some speculation that donald trump has wanted a prime speaking gig at the republican national convention. i'm wondering if this is a little tradeoff. we'll do your big vegas fund-raiser instead of having a prime speaking spot there. that's purely conjecture but certainly possible. >> remember, night gingrich called him a liar on national television. >> do you remember when mitt came to town? a full length documentary on mitt's time at bain that was way harsher than anything the president is ever going to put on. >> speaking of films and we've just talk about the rat pack. we're wondering whether mitt romney given his ad today needs some kind of nickname as a great avenger.

if you take what he says, he will stand down china. he is going to prevent obviously iran from developing a nuclear weapon. he is going on kill the deficit. he is going to cut regulations. he is going to do everything. is he obsessed with something like a god complex in some way? >> the effort romney is is to run the broadest possible campaign. >> broad? this is ludicrous. >> they are running on very broad promises. on all the issues, if you take a poll, do you think taxes are too high? do you think unemployment is too big? i'm going to cut that. >> at the absolute heart of this is basically a simple calculation. when the economy is this bad and people are this despairing and this hopeless, they're going to look at obama and say we just want to get rid of him. the whole role for romney is to

be as inoffensive as possible. >> it was pure focus tested nonsense. nonspecific. and i think, too, romney himself has said, frankly my plan can't be scored. so there's no even pretense of having the kind of details where you could dig in and say this is what a romney president would actually look like. >> at least he is consistent. he will not reveal his tax returns and he doesn't know what his policies are. that is skin. john, in just a couple of hours the president will speak in iowa pushing clean energy and job creation. while mitt romney talks about exploiting fossil fuels. going big on coal whiflt come to social policy as well, it is hardly surprising that people describe him as the candidate of back to the future. do they? >> when you get him talking about social issues, he only stays on them. he only gives them glancing mention. it says marriage should be between one man and one woman. he talks about other things in

the briefest possible mention. as we've been saying for week now, every day that mitt romney is not about the economy, and his vague plans for what he would do to jump start the economy if he were president, is a day lost. so if he addresses social issues, god bless him. good for him. it won't do him any good. >> romney's big push is on education. i think he should be charged with plagiarism. he has stolen all the ideas from george bush and the current president. however, he visited a school in philadelphia but the city's mayor was a bit less than welcoming. >> if you're going to talk about education, it would be nice if you had an education record. it would be nice if you had an education platform. it would be nice if you knew something about education. you can go wherever you want to go but he has no record to run on. >> to your point, no details. >> no details. and he does actually have a

record to run on in massachusetts but he does not want to run on it. >> because he raised student fees 63%. he slash the higher education budget by 14%. >> that's exactly right. from what we do know of him signing on to the paul ryan plan, a plan that also cuts back on pell grants. it would make it much more difficult to go on to college. that's what a romney he indication plan looks like. up it is plagiarism. it is based on lies and object fist indication. he is trying to paint the president as some sort of toadie for the teachers' unions. even at that fundamental levelering always has to take it that one step too far. if he run on the facts and the truth, he can't win. >> when you hear him talk about this three-pronged approach to education, he talked about better teachers, better administrators and two-parent

homes. i'm sure all of us would agree that's a wonderful ideal. is he operating in 21st century america when he describes the kind of idea that he has for how young people can grow up and develop? >> what i was talking about before, you ask people what is sort of the key to education. what would you see as the ideal scenario for someone to have a quality education? good schools, good teachers. he is giving you those buzz words. the challenge is to have us make very pleasant sounding noises and sounds about all these issues. and it is to avoid what jonathan was talking about before. basically to get dragged into a situation where he has to cater to that base that wants to hear very tiff things in this election that wouldn't be so pleasant sounding to the general election audience. you played that clip from fox news. that's one of the trap for romney. if everything on the sean hannity show, sean will be asking him about reverend wright and throwing all sorts of inflammatory stuff. if owing fox and friends in the

morning, everything say obama is against capitalism. he has to say yes. he has to talk mushy about education. >> even in that mushy, the saying that it is founded on a two-parent home. sbeegs a communicate where some of the parents are single mom and you're saying, sort of putting out there a judgment on their house hole and their family. even in that he demonstrates a tenure. even as he tries to be over risk averse and so safe. >> reporter: i don't know if it so much that he has a tin ear as much as it is, he is still trying to secure the republican nomination. he is the presumptive republican nominee but he is still doing things to convince conservatives that he is actually one of them. that he is actually conservative. so you see him bear-hugging newt gingrich and donald trump. you see him saying these things about marriage and about two-parent households. as krystal that, two parents?

that's so 1950s. any way, i'm done. >> let's also point out this is someone who does not support marriage equality. when he is talking about two-parent households, he is talking about a specific kind of two-parent household that meets his criteria. >> he is talking about himself. that's whaes talking about. . a programming note, don't miss chris matthews' interview with the serial adulterer on "hardball." >> we would have spared the war in afghanistan. we would have spared the war in iraq. >> where he is, right? you did not know where -- osama bin laden was. >> they could have? [ male announcer ] this is lois. the day starts with arthritis pain... a load of new listings... and two pills.

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ed. for more now on the race for 2012, and nbc's new battleground polls show the president leading in three key swing states. in ohio, leeing by 6. for those margins, they are tightening and 48% is describe as the ras of what the president needs for re-election. we're back now with our panel. steve, what on earth is going on with the polling at the moment? yesterday we had a quinnipiac poll that had mitt romney ahead by 6. yet here we have the president ahead in florida in the same state. >> these swing state polls. i'm always going to be interested in them but i think at this point in the campaign the best advice is to take these words a grain of salt and to pay a lot more attention to where the national horse race is and president obama's overall approval rating is.

a lot of individual states flows from the national race. the effects of in this state, the economy is going this way. it is rare that you have situations where states will swing dramatically from their usual voting patterns. it all lines up with what the national pollsful are i feel like you have obama generally ahead by a few points. he is going to be doing a little better in the swing states. it doesn't mean he has any extra special protection. it means if mitt romney goes ahead in the national polls, that path to 270 will open up and all these swing states will start a lot better. >> chuck todd was saying, our political director, that mitt romney still needs to grow his base. isn't the problem for mitt romney hispanic voters and women? those are the two areas where he is in real trouble. >> that again illustrates this point of he has to still three the needle. he still has to make sure that the base will show up for him. there is as i believe chuck was pointing out, there is a sliver

that will say will i even show up to vote for this guy? there's that problem and then there's the huge gender gap. in this latest poll i took a look at virginia. the gender gap is still at 10 points. the latino gap is huge. massive. and he is doing essentially nothing to combat that. and you know, just saying i have a wife and she tells me about women is not going to get the job done. he has to be able to talk about policy that's would be good for families and women. >> he has already told you his favorite policy. defunding planned parenthood. >> given that even mitt romney appears to be reversioning his career at bain, talking about revenue as opposed to job creation, is this a sign, do you think, that the scrutiny that has been placed on his career at bain is proving beneficial to the president? >> well, that remains to be seen. but any time a politician starts shaving his or her words to try to get away from an overall

narrative, it is a good thing for the person who is going at them. the other thing in the discussion you were talking about before. the support of latinos is also very key. chuck talk about this on morning joe. if mitt romney cannot get his latino support, at least to 35%, there is no way he will be elected president of the united states. and right now, in the nbc poll, i believe president obama's latino support is at 61%. and i think if i remember correctly, mitt romney's support is at 27%. and as krystal just that, mitt romney is not doing a whole heck of a lot to try to endear himself to latino voters. >> no, indeed. steve, at the same time, nearly six in tensayinthe country is o track. so explain what that, how that works in practice? why do you find that finding? yet the president ahead? >> he is ahead. if you look at where his number

are, these are still very shaky number. he is under 50% in all these states. and sometimes he'll take these and be significantly under 50%. if you had to compare where obama stands at this point in his re-election campaign with a recent past president, the best parallel is george w. bush in 2004. the approval ratings at this point basically sync up. the country was basically polarizing in a similar way to right now. that was an election i think on paper if you looked at the, the forecasting model that's the political signs will pick out. a lot of them said bush probably should have done better than he did. that kerry actually overperform this year. that there is wiggle room but basically '04 tells us, that's where we are now. >> one thing that the president does have going for him is a large majority of voters in these swing states and across the country believe that he inherited the economic problems from the bush administration which of course is true so it is helpful that they know that.

>> indeed. thanks so much. stay with us. much more ahead. >> gosh, this is quite a revelation if you have the president of the united states that doesn't understand that productivity is a measure of output per person in the nation as a whole and is driven by such things as the level of automation in the society. >> why were. >> reporter: my teeth showing like that? >> because you're smiling. >> excellent. c'mon dad! i'm here to unleash my inner cowboy. instead i got heartburn. [ horse neighs ] hold up partner. prilosec isn't for fast relief. try alka-seltzer. it kills heartburn fast.

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action. some crowned him a hero while criticizing a greedy american tax system and of course, laying blame squarely at the feet of the democratic party. anti-tax guru grover norquist not surprisingly was among the most outspoken critics drawing a crude analogy between schumer's effort and jews trying to flee nazi, germany. he told the hill, i think schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. it existed in germany in the 1930s. he probably just plagiarized it from the original german. earlier today, senator schumer took to the floor of the senate and offered a stern rebuke to mr. norquist reminding us of the two definition of heroism and invoking a very personal history. >> i know a thing or two about what nazis did. some of my relatives were killed by them. and saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements

in american society in turn has a responsibility to do right by america is not even on the same planet as comparing to what the nazis did to the jews. >> a dignified response to a most undignified comparison. we say to you, mr. saverin, assuming your facebook investment survives its rocky start. enjoy your singapore sling. as they say in my country, go play with the traffic. stay with us. today's top lines are coming up. [ dad ] i'm usually checking up on my kids. but last year my daughter was checking up on me. i wasn't eating well. she's a dietitian and she suggested i try boost complete nutritional drink to help get the nutrition i was missing. now i drink it every day, and i love the great taste. [ female announcer ] boost has 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d to help keep bones strong

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anything over 4% is not cause for celebration. >> and she stepped -- >> they say my 25 years in private sector. >> whether our clients make money or lose money -- >> the same bad ideas that brought our economy to the brink. >> it sounds like you guys -- >> mitt romney met with a group of wealthy latino business owners. or has romney calls them, the juan percent. >> i may not be a perk man or a perfect president but i wake up every day thinking about you. >> you just sang a song about smiling. you're all smiling, right? >> mitt romney and president obama, he this both attended harvard. we put together this segment about how they got into harvard. >> president obama was accepted into harvard law school based on his high marks at columbia university. mitt romney got into harvard because of daddy. >> my advice to you is simple. relax, dude!

you just finished college at harvard. >> i went to college and i became an english major. >> hey, folk, it is on me. shakespeare for everyone. >> you wonder, does english take you anywhere? it helped me. >> it will be a great year. >> i understand how to read a balance sheet. >> so does bernie madoff. does that qualify him? >> millions of our kids are getting a third world education. this is the civil rights issue of our era. >> look out! >> that's a headline. president obama equated you with president george w. bush. >> would you go as far as rush limbaugh? is it game on? >> i'm afraid he doesn't understand what the word productivity means. this is quite a revelation. >> i love you, too. >> let's get to our panel. joining us live from washington, and msnbc political an list dave corn joins us here in new york. sorry, he is also in washington, i believe. he is the editor for mother

jones magazine. he is also the author of" showdown." you've just published this book and it is entirely your own work. if did you what mitt romney did with the sub of education yesterday, wouldn't you expect to be dismissed as a plagiarizist? >> it was nothing new. certainly was not creative destruction which he has been talking about of late when it come to the economy. it is really what we see with a lot of his policy ideas. whether it is in foreign policy or domestic policy. a dash of pepper from the obama administration. he has taken up the reform mind ideas about teacher accountability and school accountability that bush liked. with more responsibility has the the bush administration pushed. so there is really not much of a break with the past and not much imagination. yet mitt romney presented it as

if it was a black and white difference for what we have with the current administration. >> okay. so plagiarizing is accurate. there is an interesting article today. it is all about the governor of massachusetts. it quotes the current governor saying. this i think it is weird for mitt romney to talk about what he wants to do in governor and not make reference to what he actually did in government. i suppose it is weird but there's a good reason that mitt romney never mentions massachusetts, isn't there? >> i think there is one obvious reason which is that he is trying to run as a conservative. and his record there, particularly on health care, was fairly moderate and a lot of conservative there's say liberal in term of the health care bill. he push through as governor of massachusetts. the other thing is during the primaries, particularly, he wanted to run as this anti-government outsider. and you cannot say i'm an outsider except i was governor of massachusetts. that's what he was doing for the primaries. he was trying say i want to lead

government but i've never done anything in government. >> let's listen to this. >> his main calling card for yes thinks he should be president is his business experience. he's not going out there touting his experience in massachusetts. >> it is clear he doesn't like about bain. he doesn't like talking about his actual record in office. what does he like talking about? i guess the olympics. talk about the bad economy. we've talk about this a few times, martin. what he would like this election to be, in classical term is a referendum on barack obama. the economy is bad. 60% of the public thinks the country is not moving in the right direction. so that would all help anybody but obama win a victory. >> obama wants it a choice election. you have me and you have the other guy. he wants to look at everything mitt romney has said and done and romney just runs away from

that. when mark halparin asks him about bain, he starts talking about obama. he doesn't want to talk about massachusetts or bain. he wants it to be, he wants people to feel bad about the economy and take it out on barack obama by voting for the other guy. which he happens to be. >> that's fortunate. let's compare that statement about third world education with what romney said last september. about the president's education secretary, arnie duncan. listen to this. >> here we are in the most prosperous nation on earth. but millions of our kids are getting a third world education. the recent third world claims in the u.s. >> he doesn't know about an issue in which they basically agree on most of the substance of it. you have an issue where they agree. romney is trying to amplify difference that's don't exist.

then you get language like third world. he is trying to intensify. the disagreement doesn't really exist. he doesn't really have a strong agenda of thing he is for. he is talking about what he is against even in case where he is not really against it. i'm sorry i didn't look at i. the story from last september where he references education secretary arnie duncan. listen to this. >> secretary duncan has opportunity some good things. he is the current second of education. i hope that's not heresy in the room. he has a program called race to the top which encourages school to have more choice. more testing of kids. >> david, this is literally during the campaign. today, he says the education system resembles mogadishu. in september he says, arnie duncan is a good guy. there are good policies being implemented by this administration. it is going well. >> i am just so shocked that he would say that a president who

was born in kenya, a secret muslim, is running a third world education system. >> that's the theme, sorry. >> listen. he has said, he said it over and over again in the last few months that obama doesn't understand the economy. doesn't understand the uniqueness of america. so of course, his plan is to have a third world education system. i hate to say this about romney because it sounds, ideological. but he is in a position where he will say literally anything about anything if he thinks it gives him a momentary advantage. there are issues to discuss. there are ways to have honest policy disagreements without using the excessive rhetoric that feeds into the obama hate machinery out there. but yet he doesn't seem to be able to do that. >> you've made some specific comments in writing about this individual rod paige who is now romney's education adviser. mr. paige, as i recall, referred to a certain teaching union as

an organization of terrorists. but what did you discover about this man's actual record in education? >> well, rod paige was the education second for george w. bush. i remember when bush ran, he talked about the texas miracle. how great the education system was, particularly in houston which has the second largest school system in the country. he took superintendent of that school system, rod paige, and made him the education second and they pushed it together. promoted the no child left behind act. while rod paige was in washington, the news broke that the houston school system, when he was in charge of it, had dramatically underreported dropouts. that it wasn't a miracle themselves just rigged the books. how bad the school system was. rod paige at that time refused to talk to report betters his involvement or explained. years later when 60 minutes was going into the storiering refused to talk to them about it and he still has not explained

what happened on his watch. yet mitt romney comes along and makes him a special adviser. whoo! big deal on education reform. i don't know why he hasn't looked at the clips. rod paige is tainted goods at this point in time. >> an excellent choice for mitt romney. thanks so much for joining us. coming up, president boehner? why a romney victory could put him in charge. ♪ surf's up everybody get your boards and your wetsuits ♪

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president, would work out. working together with good democrats and good republicans. we'll get the country going again. congressman chris van hollen is a democrat from maryland and the ranking member. mitt romney has become the number one purveyor of slogans like let's slash spending. you're a veteran of both budget fights. you also understand the reality of fighting to protect assistance for people in need. so what is your reaction when mitt romney makes this sound like a piece of cake at a church picnic? >> well, martin, you're absolutely right. i think mitt romney needs to go back to remedial math classes. because the reality is if you do what mitt romney and the republicans in the house say they want to do, they want to say that folks who are a million dollars a year should contribute nothing more to our effort to try to reduce the deficit. and if you say from the beginning that you're not going to ask anything more of the

wealthiest americans or by ending taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies, then inevitably, everybody else, and everything else, gets hit a lot harder. that's why the house republican budget would end the medicare guarantee. slash medicaid which helps provide support to nursing homes, folks in nursing home. it would cut deeply into education and transportation at a time when we need to repair our roadways and transit systems and by the way, have 16% unemployment in the construction industry. so their proposal again says to folks who are doing very, very well, we're going to ask nothing of you and we're going to ask everything of the rest of the country. >> when he says that he'll work with good democrats, does he mean democrats who don't mine slashing meal on wheels for the elderly or transportation and respite care for a million disabled americans? are they the kind of good democrats he has in mind?

>> i guess the kind he is for are people who have change to the republican party. i don't think you'll find many of those who subscribe to the romney view of the world. which really is a sort of social darwinism. and i recall just a short while ago when he said, well, he doesn't really care about the folks at the top or the bottom. the folks at the bottom have a safety net. yet the budget that romney has embraced, the house republican budget, slashes the social safety net that he says is available. it would cut deeply into food nutrition programs. it would dramatically cut into medica medicaid. when do you the math, you cannot have it all ways. that's what mitt romney is trying to do. and i don't think it will go over with the american people. >> in an interview he gave yesterday, he said that he knows how to read a balance sheet. and that makes him superior to the current president in terms of handling economic policy.

but again, he seem confused. he seems to think you're elected to be president of profits as opposed to president of the people. >> that's right. the balance sheets that mitt romney is used to reading are the ones that show whether he is returned a healthy turn to his investors and that was his job when the job of the president is very different. the job of the president is to make sure the entire country benefits. not just a few preferred investors. and that's where romney has it entirely wrong. in fact, if you look at the romney tax plan, and the economic plan and you want to figure out who it help, it help people like mitt romney. it helps folks who have already done very well. the theory is based on the failed trickle down strategy which we know is a failure. we tried that for eight years during the bush administration. at the end of that eight years we saw a net loss in private sector jobs even though we provided these tax breaks to

folks at the very top. so you know, been there, done that, didn't work. why would we try it again? >> some people would callett voodoo economics. >> he is relying on collective amnesia from the american people. >> indeed. thank you for joining us. coming up, how europe could spell trouble for the president. stay with us. [ groans ] [ marge ] psst. constipated? phillips' caplets use magnesium, an ingredient that works more naturally with your colon than stimulant laxatives, for effective relief of constipation without cramps. thanks. good morning, students. today we're gonna continue... thanks. like, keep one of these over your head.

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stoerp mitt romney may be the president's opponent in the next election, but it could be his so-called friends in europe that end up costing him his job. a less than successful summit, crisis in europe and a plum set in economics make him less than successful. could the return of the greek

dropping if europe continues its slide in economic crisis? >> it is amazing that our presidential election, martin, may be determined in november by what happens next month in these greek elections, and it's not because greece itself is so big or important, but because things are sort of teetering here. we are in the beginning of an economic expansion that hasn't really taken off. it wouldn't take much of a shock to throw everything back into recession or at least to retard growth enough so that president obama loses in november. so that sort of chain reaction could be set off by greece if it defaults. if it departs of the eurozone, if there's a continued economic downturn in europe, this, by having even a small effect on the united states, winds up having a huge effect on the election. >> indeed. in your column this week, you write this about the president. quote, europeans generally are resisting his urgings that they prop up their alien economies,

combined with a prospective pullout of greece from the euro this could send the u.s. economy back into a recession. why are they fighting him on this? >> well, they are in somewhat different circumstances. greece doesn't have a whole lot of choice because its masters are in germany, and they have to answer to the european central bank. so it's a little bit of a different situation, but certainly the lesson of austerity in europe has not been particularly a favorable one. it seems to be what people agree on was economic stimulus in the short term, budget discipline in the long term. by imposing budget discipline in the short term, europe seems to have made its own problems

worse. >> very quickly, dane a the newly elected french president is expected to introduce some stimulus measures. he's talked about and he sold himself to the electorate there on being a hope for growth. is that a good sign, do you think? >> it's a good sign, but they're pulling french troops out of afghanistan which gives obama another headache. so i think he's got a lot to complain about since he's built all these bridges to europe and the friends there are not paying him back. >> indeed. succinct and excellent. thank you, sir. we'll be right back. ♪ [ male announcer ] introducing new dentyne split to fit pack. it splits in to two smaller, sleeker packs that fit almost anywhere so you can take them everywhere. dentyne split to fit. practice safe breath. yeah, but the feeling wasn't always mutual. i should be arrested for crimes against potted plant-kind.

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blades for wind turbines. the president is also calling on congress to renew tax credits for the wind power industry. let's get the latest from nbc's kristen welker and joins us from des moines. we've had three states? the last 24 hours. the recent poll has the president about 10 points higher in iowa. does the campaign think he can hold through until november? >> hi, martin. they are not taking any state for granted. they are looking at the totality of polls here in iowa which really show overall a very close race between the president and mitt romney. the campaign has spent the past year building up its ground game here in iowa. so far it has eight campaign offices. compare that to the romney campaign which has one campaign office so far, but romney officials stress they are going to be rolling out more campaign offices in the near future, so this is going to be a very hard fought race here in iowa. but the obama campaign likes the

argument that they have to make here. the unemployment rate is 5.1%. that's far below the national average. the represent can governor here has talked about the fact the economy is getting stronger, manufacturing is coming back, so those are some of the things we expect president obama to talk about when he addresses some of his supporters here a little bit later on tonight. but again, martin, when you look at the totality of polls, you see a very close race here. that is something that the romney campaign is going to be seizing upon. both candidates will be here quite a bit, and they are expecting the polls to be quite close, right up until election day. mart martin? >> now, the president is pushing his to-do list on congress, as you know. it includes renewal of tax credits for the wind turbine energy. do you think congress will do the right thing when it comes to these jobs, or do you think it will be the usual gridlock? >> well, martin, the polls have

some bipartisan support. it's not clear if it's enough bipartisan support to get it through congress. you have some republicans basically trying to do away with the efforts. i've spoken to folks on the hill, though, who say we're in a wait and see mode right now. we want to wait and see what the ways and means committee has to say when it weighs in, but everybody agrees this is something they'll debate over the next several months. martin? >> thank you, kristen, and safe journeying back. >> thank you. a reminder, don't miss a "hardball" exclusive tonight when newt gingrich goes one on one with chris matthews. stay tuned for that. i'll be hosting the last word tonight at 10:00 eastern. dylan ratigan is here. dylan, if you were given the chance to interview newt gingrich, what would your first question be? >> my first question to newt gingrich would be a simple one, which is, what would be the