>> unbelievable. >> i love it. >> she's going to come to the dinners too. >> talk a good game. >> it's way too early. it's "morning joe." stay tuned for chuck todd and "the daily rundown." >> with the lowering of colors in iraq, the nearly nine-year war there is officially over as devi deviivisive as vietnam. we'll go live to baghdad. tonight republicans candidate meet for another presidential debate. this is the last one before the actual voting begins. mitt romney laying the groundwork for his line of attack today. will newt gingrich take the bait or does he continue to try to stick to the high road? with two days left before apparently a threatened government shutdown, house

republicans unveil a late-night trillion dollar spending bill that is sure to rankle the white house today. once again, congress using government paychecks as a bargaining chip. it's thursday, december 15th, 2011. this is "the daily rundown." i'm chuck todd. first read of the morning. republican candidates face off for the 13th time in sioux city, iowa. northwest iowa. the final scheduled debate of the calendar year. final debate before the iowa caucuses. the stakes as cliche says couldn't be higher tonight. can gingrich make the final sale to iowa voters? mitt romney spent every available moment between new york city fundraisers yesterday going after gingrich. how aggressively will he attack tonight? in an interview with "the new york times," romney picked up on a question about gingrich's "zany temperament" and boy did he run with it. >> zany is not what we need in a

president. zany is great in a campaign, it's great on talk radio. it's great in the print. it makes for fun reading. in terms of a president, we need a leader. a leader needs to be someone who can bring americans together. a leader needs to be someone of sobriety and stability. >> i did like the print. gingrich took his version of the high road to respond to zany. >> my response is i think brian science initiative is a way of helping human beings. i'll let him decide if it's zany. i understand what consultants are doing. that's fine. they should run their campaign the way they want to. >> to put brain science in context at the university of iowa giving a speech about it participating in a conference about brain science. romney is throwing the kitchen sink at newt. here's more highlights of his interview yesterday including a

tiffany's shout-out. >> he's been unreliable in support of the most conservative principles. it's difficult to replace a career politician if you are just another career politician. someone who has gone to washington to do good but has stayed to do well. he's sitting there with nancy pelosi to support a cap and trade bill was a mistake. we're not talking about someone who has learned from experience over many years. he's unreliable as a spokesman for conservatism. he's great historian. if we needed historian leading the country, people would find that attractive. >> and on wealth he started talking about how wealthy newt gingrich is and how could he have a tiffany's account. just as he used medicare reform plan as a wedge issue to note lapses in gingrich's conservative record -- >> our speaker, speaker gingrich who has taken extraordinarily unusual positions with regards to calling the medicare reform

plan a right wing social engineering plan, suicide he's called it. this is a person who has a very questionable record when it comes to leading conservative principles. >> the campaign has been loading press inboxes with releases pointing out those gingrich comments. but perhaps inconveniently paul ryan is distancing himself from the original ryan plan. ryan will unveil a new frame work today with democratic senator ron wyden who i'm sure is popular at dnc this morning which would preserve medicare giving seniors the choice now between staying in traditional medicare, not just saving it just for folks at 55 or older, but then having an opt in to a new private plan alternative. conservative blogger eric erickson tweeted this morning, paul ryan's retreat renders newt

criticisms of the ryan plan moot. national review's nut attack makes nut an outsider. it's closer to what he wants to do with medicare. it makes it more inconvenient for obama campaign who want to run on this idea that republicans and wall ryan wants to end medicare and voucherize it. makes it more difficult with that talking point this morning because ron wyden is there saying he wouldn't join up with paul ryan if he wasn't sure he was protecting medicare in the current frame work of medicare. interesting to see how this evolves. newt gingrich can say see, paul ryan is changing the way and moving closer to me. like i said, a wedge issue that confuses all sides in the political world. just a few hours ago, the nearly nine-year 800 billion dollar year in iraq came to an end in iraq with casing of the colors. tribute paid to americans that

sacrificed the most. >> to all of the men and women in uniform today, your nation is deeply indebted to you. your dedication, your commitment to this mission has been the driving force behind the remarkable progress that we've seen here in baghdad and across this country. >> the iraq war may still be a divisive issue between two parties in washington but not device whiff with the american people. 71% of the public called the president's decision to withdraw all troops by the end of the year the right one in our november "wall street journal" nbc news poll. not everyone agrees. here's senator john mccain on the "today" show this morning. >> i really think we risk losing -- great risk at losing everything that we gained and it's a great risk and it was

unnecessary. we always envisioned some residual force and this administration were never really serious at all. >> nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel was at this morning's ceremony in baghdad and joins me now. you've been covering the aspect of the troops packing up and getting ready to go home. you just heard what john mccain said on the senate floor yesterday and heard what he said there today. we know what the real negotiations were between the iraqi government and between the united states government. are the leaders on the ground, how concerned are they that we don't have a residual force? >> the iraqi government decided it did not want this residual force and it became politically impossible for prime minister maliki to keep it. it was probably politically convenient for president obama and for prime minister maliki not to have that force and

that's the way it's been described to me by several military commanders. there was originally talk of having perhaps 20,000 forces staying on and then it was 10,000 and then it went down to 5,000 and then in the end it was 3,000 or 4,000. the political parties here particularly ones that are close to iran a radical shiite cleric, his people took to the streets and seized this issue and maliki just decided it wasn't worth going up against a political opposition to keep a small force in this country and the president, president obama agreed it wasn't worth it on a small scale. >> let's talk about the big picture here. 4,484 troops were killed in iraq. 32,000 wounded. 800 billion spent on the war. you were there at times it seems almost every quarter during the

war at least spending some time there. a lot of time during the hot fighting itself. just share some thoughts. >> i'm very concerned about one thing in particular. this base where i am right now, this was a u.s. military base, but the u.s. flag is still flying here because this is nowen embnow an embassy compound. one of several structures remaining in iraq that will host this embassy footprint that includes 16,000, 17,000, we don't know exactly, hard to get information about this, security contractors, diplomats, and this will be an armed presence as well. we were told by military commanders today that the embassy will be operating not only aircraft and helicopters but also about 80 emraps which are enormous military vehicles driven by civilians, civilian contractors who have been trained by the military to drive

these vehicles. a lot of iraqis if they see this it's going to be very difficult for them to distinguish that as an emwrap that's no longer driven by the u.s. military and instead being driven by civilian contractors. there are concerns in this country that the embassy presence, which is designed to foster ongoing relations with iraqis, could become a source of conflict. >> tell me about the man on the street. man and woman on the street in iraq. how do they feel today? >> you don't see celebrations. you don't see people on the street thanking americans for what they accomplished here. infrastructure in iraq remains badly broken. i was sitting last night in the apartment of an old contact, someone i have known for years, and the power was off.

we were talking by flashlight both wrapped in blankets because it is very cold here. many neighborhoods in this city only have four or five hours of power a day in sadr city where we were a couple days ago, there are open sewers in the streets. people are very angry that sectarianism is just below the surface now and they worry that it could erupt again into a similar kind of conflict that we saw in 2006-2007. you don't hear people say thank you for toppling saddam hussein and creating a better society here. you hear people saying thank you for toppling saddam hussein but then are country was broken. >> all right, richard engel, thank you for your work for all these years on this. we'll see how this goes from here. richard engel in baghdad this morning. richard, thanks very much. the political back and forth hitting a high note in washington. both sides trying to gain an upper hand on two important pieces of legislation. house republicans taking matters

into their own hands early this morning. they put a trillion dollar spending bill to a vote at some point today and it appears they are putting the squeeze on senate democrats trying to throw out gop version of the payroll tax cut extension. bring in nbc capitol hill correspondent kelly o'donnell. where are we this morning? white house saying republicans are threatening shutdown. republicans are saying the white house brought us to the brink of shutdown. find the truth here. >> reporter: it is hard to find the truth when you have such warring sides pulling from the playbook we've seen before. what we do know is threat of a government shutdown is hanging in the air and trying to avert that the white house says pass one of those short-term fixes so there's more time to fight about other issues. republicans are not too keen on that. so at 1:00 in the morning, the house put forward it's own version of the big spending bill that democrats say has not been finished and they'll try to take a vote on that tomorrow. that doesn't really fix it either. you have a lot of chess going

on. part of the real fight here is that republicans say do what expires first. meaning the government funding which runs out at 12:01 saturday morning and democrats are saying deal with the payroll tax cut extension and unemployment benefits before you get to that other big piece because there's some issues they say are unresolved. this is a classic kind of thing. what is different is last night reid, boehner and mcconnell had a meeting. they don't do that all that often. some described it as a gut check moment to see where they really are. others say no real news came out of it. no real game plan to go forward. one of the things, chuck, that strikes me as different than some of these earlier iterations of crisis that it's harder to get knowledgeable aides on both sides to tell you the chess moves of how they resolve this. typically people see two or three steps ahead and it's a matter of getting there. now you have people who know how this works struggling to see a clean way to get it to an end

result so agencies are now also preparing for the contingency should a shutdown happen. >> do we think we'll see a weekend shutdown the way things are going? feels like they have a lot of work to do in 24 hours. >> reporter: it feels like that possibility is greater than we've seen before. at the same time, everyone knows the political price there is to pay for that. and it's the holidays and all those other things. also hard to imagine that in the 11th hour they wouldn't do the short-term passage of given themselves another week or so that the white house, which has been opposed to it before, thinks it's a good idea now. that kind of band-aid it's hard to imagine they wouldn't do that but they aren't lining up that way right now. >> right. they feel farther apart than they have in previous showdowns. kelly o'donnell, capitol hill, long weekend ahead. thank you. >> yes. >> top of the ticket capitol hill's power players are taking sides in the republican race for the presidency. we'll talk to two lawmakers elected officials who made

opposing picks in the endorsement war of romney and gingrich and house speaker boehner reveals what he thinks of the former speaker. his comments getting a lot of attention this morning. a look ahead at the president's schedule. remarks at noon today that dan is promises will be a familiar face and not a famous face but a familiar face from the 2007 campaign trail. it's not the are you fired up lady? i can tell you that. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. ♪ [ male announcer ] it's easy to see what subaru owners care about. ♪ that's why we created the share the love event. get a great deal on a new subaru and 250 dollars goes to your choice of five charities. ♪ with your help, we can reach 20 million dollars by the end of this, our fourth year.

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the leading republican

candidates touting endorsements from lawmakers past and president as we get closer to actual voting itself. mitt romney is leading the way with conservatives in congress and newt gingrich has supporters who weathered the campaign storms. congressman, let me start with you. why romney and not newt? >> i support romney because he's number one the guy who can win the election and most importantly he's the guy who can best lead our country. >> you think number one electability? >> absolutely. they favor mitt romney over barack obama. he's our best chance at recapturing the white house. at the end of the day we have no shortage of great ideas in washington d.c. we need someone who can get the job done. you look at history whether ronald reagan who came from

california or bill clinton who came from arkansas, i'll take the governor from massachusetts. a democratic state who can get things done. that's the kind of bipartisan leader we need in washington d.c. >> congressman kingsman, did you choose to support speaker gingrich because he's a georgian? >> i have known newt for a long time. having served with him in congress led to my decision as much as anyone else. aaron mentioned ronald reagan. what two figures in the last 20 to 30 years have really changed the face of our country? newt gingrich speaker of the house, ronald reagan as president. we did the contract with america. we balanced the budget when we came in and there were deficits of over $2 trillion. when he left surpluses of over $2 trillion. four years of balanced budget. reformed welfare, reformed medicare. these are not small achievements especially with bill clinton as president. so while newt can ruffle

feathers, he can get the job done. that's what we need right now. >> speaker boehner had this to say about gingrich's ideology. he's neutral in the race. here's what he said. >> they have great ideas and then they have other ideas. it would be hard to describe newt as not conservative. i'm not sure he's as conservative as some people think he is but newt is a conservative. >> congressman kingston, let me get you to respond to that. speaker boehner said not as conservative as some people think, fair? >> lifetime american conservative union rating of 90%. that's conservative. and while newt dabbled off the conservative talking points here and there and look at new ideas, yes, he will. a 90% lifetime american conservative union rating to me ends the discussion. >> is it credible for governor romney to be saying newt gingrich is not a consistent

conservative? >> well, i think at the end of the day what's important is who is going to fix the economy. we have an ailing economy. does anybody honestly with a straight face think the best qualified person to lead us to economic recovery and best republican who understand pro growth economics isn't mitt romney a proven job creator in the private sector and job creator as governor of massachusetts. it's also important to note that the people who served with mitt romney as governor and people who worked with him at the salt lake olympics, are the people who are supporting him saying i worked with this guy. he's a credible guy. he's respectable guy. i want him to be president. contrast that with newt gingrich who staffer after staffer and colleague after colleague came forward say we're not sure he's the right guy. >> follow up on the ideology issue. the concern is that governor romney is not a conservative. >> part of that is because the media likes to focus on people's changes in positions but look if

anyone thinks that barack obama from state senator to u.s. senator to president of the united states from candidate in primary to now president of the united states hasn't changed his position on a number of issues or modified them in some way, you have to be kidding yourself. at the end of the day there's no one who is questioning whether mitt romney is going to be a free market pro growth conservative and the economy will be the number one issue and he's the best guy to lead our party's ticket and best guy to do the job. >> congressman kingston, a lot of folks who have served -- there's been a whisper campaign in washington. a lot of guys won't go on camera yet. they are willing to tell you on background how much they don't like speaker gingrich. they may like some of his ideas but he doesn't have the temperament to be president of the united states. >> well, number one i will say this about his former staff. i went to a reception last week hosted by his former staff,

chiefs of staff, key people that dealt with us on the hill on a daily basis, and i think every one of them was there. i don't know anyone that jumped out saying i don't like this guy. as a republican, particularly a republican from georgia, i can tell you if you want press, just jump up and say something bad against a fellow republican particularly newt gingrich and thin you can become the hero of the day and media or those critical of newt. i understand there's a big temptation with our team on it. i'm comfortable with mitt romney. i think. >> second choice. no problem if he's the nominee. >> yes. i would say all of them will have better ideas and be more conservatives than current occupant of the white house. newt gingrich has gotten things done in washington. the republican establishment won't like him because they don't like change. when he came out with a contract with america, not every member of congress would sign it. and the senate pooh-poohed it.

washington doesn't like a populist. why is newt the number one guy right now? he's connected out there with the population. washington rejected him in may. had some missteps. he went straight to the people in new hampshire, iowa and south carolina -- >> let me ask you this. he's comfortable with newt gingrich as nominee. >> i like newt gingrich. i will work my heart out if newt gingrich is our nominee to elect him president of the united states. at the end of the day as a republican primary voter, i want to nominate the most conservative guy who can win and poll after poll shows that newt gingrich has a favorability rating below 30% among general americans. how do you win a general election fight if americans don't like you. the strongest candidate who can win and do the job is mitt romney. >> i think you most articulated well. we may see it tonight. congressman kingston,

congressman shock, thank you both. why super tuesday is about to get more super and tough times in america. new census numbers show how many of us are scraping by with less these days. tom brokaw will be here taking a hard, long look at the state of this country traveling around it the last couple years. first today's trivia question. it's a good one. congressman kingston not allowed to participate. newt gingrich's congressional opponent in 1994 was once an actor on what tv show? tweet me an answer. the first correct answer gets a rundown with us. all energy development comes with some risk, but proven technologies allow natural gas producers to supply affordable, cleaner energy, while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air - by monitoring air quality and reducing emissions... ...protect water - through conservation and self-contained recycling systems...

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lawmakers have reached a deal on a new congressional map which paved the way for a single primary on march 6th. instead of virginia being the most important supertuesday state that day, ohio will have a big say on who the republican front runner will be that day. new census data out today shows a grim economic reality. nearly one in two americans is now poor. some 97 million americans are considered low income. 49 million americans fall below the poverty line. that's nearly half the country. another grim measure of the nation's health is also out this morning according to the center on education policy. nearly half of america's public schools didn't meet federal achievement standards this year. that's the largest failure since the no child left behind law took effect a decade ago. all right.

up next, tom brokaw will be here to talk presidential politics and also his book and frankly the new census numbers we just reported on. newt gingrich shrugs off the latest nbc "wall street journal" poll showing him trailing president obama and did an interesting way to push back on it. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. it's like having portable navigation. a bluetooth connection. a stolen vehicle locator. roadside assistance. and something that could help save your life - automatic help in a crash. it's the technology of five devices in one hard-working mirror. because life happens while you drive. this holiday, give someone you love an onstar fmv mirror for only 199. visit onstar.com for retailers. try bayer advanced aspirin. it's not the bayer aspirin you know. it's different.

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and the countless lives lost. we owe it to them to protect funding for cancer research, prevention and access to care. congress, make cancer a priority and give millions of americans what they need most. is the american dream disappearing? according to our nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, 69% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. that's an improvement. 76% in our poll call 2011 below average or one of the worst years in their lifetimes. with me now, tom brokaw, nbc news special correspondent. i just have to have you react to that. your latest book "time of our

lives a conversation about america who we are and where we have been and where we need to go" to recapture the american dream, they're not surprising but consider this is one of the worst years of all yitime, 2009 2010, people are depressed. >> that's what prompted eed me write the book. a lot of parents and grandparents would say to me i don't think my children will have lives that we've had. i had not heard that before because that goes to the heart of the american dream. by the way, those numbers that you're seeing there, really are going to drive the election next year and especially the numbers that proceeded that and the number of people who are now officially classified as poor in america and in my own judgment, i don't think we have enough of a political dialogue about that. what i tried to get at in my book "time of our lives" we have to talk about how to get out of

this together because the essence of the american dream has always been realized when we're more than the sum of our parts and at the moment we're trying to divide each other every day in our political dialogue and we're doing a lot more shouting than listening. i'm trying to change the equation some. >> it does seem as if the presidential re-election team is trying to tap into this a bit. when you read the speech he gave in kansas trying to basically to channel the words of teddy roosevelt in a speech he gave, a very populist speech, some republicans say it was a devi divisive speech. he was trying to get at the time topics. newt gingrich gets at the topic more than mitt romney if you look at the two republicans. >> i think that's right. republicans are going to have to look at what the big message has been out of their republican debates so far. they have been debating all

summer and all fall and now at the end of that time the american people believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction by almost record numbers certainly in contemporary polling data. you also have congress in single digits and the house is a republican majority so the country is voting in polling so far and you don't find a lot of wild enthusiasm for any of these republican candidates as i go across the country. i don't find a lot of enthusiasm for president obama either. this is a work in progress as we are just one year away from the election, less than a year. >> both of our pollsters believe when you look at the volatility, peter said that frankly he saw it in '68 and '92 and that's it. that's the only comparison when we know what we got then politically it was divisive. we got third party, george wallace in '68.

ross perot running on populism. to go back to the republican presidential campaign, mitt romney isn't running as this. he's running as a guy that wants to fix stuff but it does seem as you bring up whether republicans are and they may not be happy with their choices but they keep looking for somebody that channels something bigger in their minds. >> it's a skichizophrenia goingn in the republican party right now. at this stage the nomination process is being dominated by what you would describe as the tea party nation that really drives a dialogue and at the end of the debate all those candidates are trying to make sure that they hit all of the talking points the tea party wanted them to. at the same time when you go into a wider polling as you did this past week with "wall street journal," then you see mitt romney bumping up as the most competitive of the republicans against president obama in a

general election and at the same time speaker gingrich in a deficit position. so that's the schizophrenia that the republican party now finds itself in. a lot of as you know a lot of what you call traditional mainstream establishment republicans are very worried about that going into the fall not just about winning the election but what it does downstream to the party. does it do real damage to the party for the long haul if you get a third-party candidate coming out of this who is more right of center. >> if i'm not mistaken if i have your book orders right, i believe your previous book was '68. do you see a lot of parallel? >> here's the difference between '68 and now. first of all, we had anti-war movement that was better organized than occupy wall street and we lost 16,000 people. a very traumatic year, chuck. dr. king was assassinated, robert kennedy was assassinated, johnson was forced to step down, a pitched battle between bobby

kennedy until he was killed and jean mccarthy. wallace came into the race with racism and bigotry. richard nixon reinvented the republican party but the economy was in good shape. people had jobs. they could afford their homes. that's the big game changer this time. it seemed like if you think of the american economy it is started to slide away from beneath the feet of people and so you have all of those folks at home who are looking at their mortgages and looking at the value of their house and long-term net worth and they just don't compute. that's a lot of anxiety and with good reason. >> tom brokaw, you spent a lot of time thinking about these issues. i think we all wish folks here in washington did the same. tom, thank you, sir. >> my pleasure, chuck. the political panel will be here next and don't forget you can get the latest political

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>> good riddens. the world is better off without you, mr. saddam hussein. when the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it. >> believe it or not, it was today, this day in 2003, when

president bush held his first press conference following the capture of saddam hussein and of course today is just over eight years after saddam's capture. u.s. formally ended u.s. operations in iraq. is newt gingrich leading republican voters over an electoral cliff? he was asked that question in iowa whether the latest nbc news "wall street journal" poll shows him with a lead in the primary but struggling against president obama and whether that should be disqualifying. >> i think i'm where reagan was against carter at this stage. reagan does not catch up until september of 1980. >> senior editor for national review and deputy governor for bloomberg news but used to work at the atlanta paper for years covering newt gingrich and steve is a democratic strategist every time newt gingrich's name -- >> i'm for newt. >> i want to start with the establishment not rallying toward romney but rallying

against newt. your magazine founded by conservative populist anti-establishment guy william f. buckley writes this. to nominate former speaker newt gingrich front-runner in the polls would be to blow this opportunity. gingrich said he wants to transform the country and is unable to transform or govern himself. we urge republicans to have the good sense to reject a hasty marriage to gingrich which would risk dissolving harmony. >> we reserve the right to endorse him but our main concern right now is to warn republican primary voters about the front-runner who is a flawed candidate even though we've had good things to say about him in the past and have some sympathy for. >> i just don't understand why not rally around romney? why not help lead in that charge

if you believe gingrich will somehow set back the conservative movement? >> we're not sure what the iowa, new hampshire and all these voters will do and what mix will look like. >> are you holding out for huntsman? >> this is mitt romney's problem right here? >> are you holding out for jon huntsman? >> i endorsed romney myself. the magazine and colleagues are split. please not gingrich. we've seen this movie before. >> you have covered newt gingrich when he was the outspoken minority whip. covered him as speaker back in the atlanta paper. we've had a georgian on earlier today who said it was easy to get press if you said something bad about newt because he loved to banter back. are you seeing a new newt yet? >> no. i think that he's more disciplined than he was back then. but there are many, many echos of newt. we are who we are. people don't change dramatically once they are grown up. he's all grown up. and so, you know, he's newt and

he's the same creative thinker and the same person who speaks off the cuff, which is what gives republicans headaches many times. you know, he's the same newt. i got to say as much as the white house and steve's colleagues may be thrilled that he's surging in the polls, if he gets into a general, he doesn't poll very well but he's like wrestling with a cat. you're not going to come out of this thing looking very good when it's over. >> it comes to me as tom always does forcing junkies to elevate the conversation, when you sit there and think about who is actually speaking to sort of this bigger issue, newt is more comfortable speaking to this larger issue that seems to be gripping america right now than mitt romney who is looking at it like a power point presentation. >> mitt romney is running a tactical campaign and his response on issues is very tactical. newt is running a great big philosophical global campaign. radical transformational change

filled with supercharged language that makes people want to listen to him. he's clearly the smartest person in the republican field. there's no question about that. he has the most ideas. it's just that he has ideas that most independents will reject. >> tactically and i know it's giving you a hard time, your magazine a hard time, you say you personally are for romney. a new new hampshire poll shows how quickly the race is going to close in new hampshire. this is what new hampshire does. the large lead romney had in november has already shrunk and cut by ten points here. now romney 38, gingrich 20. jon huntsman in double digits. ron paul at 8%. mitt romney has an expectations problem in new hampshire which is unfair for him. he has to do whatever it takes to win but a narrow win won't give much comfort. >> part of the game for the next couple of weeks is going to be to try to manage those

expectations so that any win counts as a win and we're not all pouring over the margins. i'm not sure that's going to work. i don't think the romney campaign is really reacted well to the gingrich surge and it seemed to me that gingrich is dropping in in the polls largel- what romney's done has been flailing around and it hasn't really driven that drop. >> yesterday was stunning. romney went everywhere. through tiffany's in there. i was surprised at him doing the kitchen sink rather than just staying focused on the temperament argument. >> precisely, how does romney attack someone for being wealthy? really? he's a multimillionaire and we all know that. ron paul's commercials have been much more effective in trying to undermine the gingrich candidacy. >> your strategy is -- it's my understanding when you set up a line of attack, you want to set up a line of attack that you hope -- where they are most likely to make a new mistake

that reinforces the narrative you're trying to create which says to me, the romney folks should only be focused on temperame temperament, right? >> that's right. and you want to make sure there's a clear contrast between the line of attack and what you're criticizing your opponent for. when a rich guy calls newt rich and when someone that's changed places on every issue, it's like, what are we doing here. newt gingrich's congressional opponent in 1994 was once an actor on what tv show? "the dukes of hazard." the democratic candidate was ben jones. he actually ran for congress in virginia, too, to not much success. we'll be right back. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. i'm good about washing my face. but sometimes i wonder...

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the republican nominee has to carry every single state john mccain carried and then flip three typically republican states back into the fold. then our nominee needs to add florida and ohio to the mix. and then to win, any other single swing state on the map. >> that was karl rove's voice. he has a new video out for american crossroads. it's a fund-raising video, pure and simple. but he did his little electoral math there. you can make an argument that actually shows how difficult this electoral college path actually is for the republicans. >> i think absolutely. there was a great piece called "the blue wall." if you assume what john kerry got, you only need 27 electoral votes after that. the obama campaign believes

there are five different paths to the nomination. there's really a narrow path for the republicans. >> and the thing about mitt romney is new hampshire, michigan get thrown into a battleground that i don't think newt brings in. >> and i would also argue pennsylvania. obama's not so strong in all those carry states. >> anyway, good luck with that. shameless plugs? what have you got? >> at bloomberg, we go back in time and we look at -- although in the debate tonight we'll hear reagan was the greatest guy who ever lived. we go back and see, they weren't all fans back in the 1980s. >> newt really was a kemp guy, not a reagan guy. >> and ron paul left the party to run as an independent as part of the reagan years. >> steve? >> a new poll coming out on monday and a surprise trial heat that everybody will be talking about on tuesday. >> three-ways, i smell a three-way.

i'm not sure it's an e-mail i'll not receive. >> dakota christmas is a new kindle single. check it out. >> are you getting any rights to this? >> just the pleasure of knowing people will have a good read. >> that's it for this edition of "the daily rundown." see you tomorrow. coming up next, chris jansing and andrea mitchell. bye-bye. ♪ with quarter-inch holes and blueprints for the coming year? those of us with doers on our lists. and because it's always better to give than to guess, we can take these last few days of shopping and our holiday budgets a lot further. ♪ more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. this 18-volt ryobi starter kit is just 89 bucks. ♪