night, and we'll be in miami on monday. >> we will. i can't wait. >> and we learned rick santorum had a great night. you noticed the time he ripped off newt gingrich going out for the press, you know what it reminded me of? mcdowd's "coming to america." >> i don't put seeds on my buns. >> that's great. i've got to see that again. willie, if it's way too early -- >> it's morning joe. stick around right now for chuck. joe, that was a long set upfor the payoff. anyway, newt gingrich got his wish, a rowdy crowd. too bad they were rooting for romney. and rick santorum, he showed a lot of life. a raucous night. accomplice our news poll has great news for gingrich unless he's planning on running against the president one day. ened a the president wraps up

his swing state tour, not a campaign trip. he's in michigan this hour tackling soaring tuition costs. we'll take you live to an saudi arabiao. that speech is at the end of our hour. it's friday, january 27th, 2012. i'm chuck todd. let's get right to my first reads. post-debate msnbc/"wall street journal" poll, and he just kept swinging and swinging. romney came on stage with a plan, don't let a single opportunity go by. he wanted to send a message to conservatives that he has the fight to take on the president, and he was relentless. he chastised gingrich on the ad his campaign pulled down. >> mr. speaker, i'm not anti-immigrant. my father was born in mexico. my wife's father was born in wales. they came to this country. the idea that i'm antiimmigrant is repulsive.

i'm glad you withdrew it, i think you should apologize for it and i think recognize that having differences of opinions on issues does not justify labels people with highly charged epithets. >> all i want to do is allow the grandmother to be here illegally with some rights of residency, but not citizenship so he or she can fin their life with dignity within the law. >> our problem is not 11 million grandmothers. our problem is -- all right? [ cheers and applause ] and when gingrich tried to play the media card and shut down moderator wolf blitzer mocking his question, it was romney who bailed blitzer out. >> this is a nonsense question. >> how about if the four of us agree for the rest of the evening we'll talk about issue that is relate to governs america. >> mr. speaker, you made an issue of this this week when you said that he lives in a world of swiss bank and cayman island bank accounts. i didn't say that, you did. >> i did, and i'm perfectly

happy to say that on an interview on some tv show, but this is an national debate. >> but when you make a serious allegation, you need to explain that. >> i simply suggested -- you want to try again? i mean -- >> wouldn't it be nice if people didn't make accusations somewhere else that they weren't willing to defend here? >> okay. >> zing. and romney criticized in other debates for pandering, he turned the tables, accusing ging witch to playing to the space coast crowd. >> i do not want to be the country that having gotten to the moon first turned around and said it doesn't matter, let the chinese dominate spade. >> if i had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred mill ben to put a colony on the moon, i would say you're fired. >> ralph cram den, take that. romney came in with two goals.

he scored on the first, but he may have failed on the second. rick santorum aggressively exposed romney's weaknesses, boxing him into a corner on the massachusetts health care plan. >> what governor romney just said is that government-run topdown medicine is working pretty well in massachusetts and he supports it. >> that's not what i said. >> think of that what that means going up against barack obama where you're going to claim we should repeal it and he'll said, wait a second, it works well. >> i didn't say i'm in favor of top-down health care. we had no more free riders. we're insisting on personal responsibility. either get the insurance or help pay for your care. >> it's something that president obama would say defending his health care plan. yesterday romney's campaign had

to amend the financial reporting, saying, quote, any document with this level of complexity and detail is bound to have a few trivial inadvertent issues. romney's defend last night on his portfolio is likely to come back to haunt him in an ad down the road. take a listen. >> governor romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he's made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments. >> first of all, my investments are not made by me. my investments in the last ten years have been by a blind truths trust. have you checked your own investments? you also have investments from mutual funds that also invest in fannie mae and freddie mac. my trustee loaned money, and they got paid interest, of course, just like if you buy u.s. savings bond. >> "the boston globe" reported that he earned money in a fund

he could have reviewed himself. he flubbed a question on his own immigration attacks. you've had an add running saying that speaker gingrich calls spanish, quote, the language of the ghetto. what do you mean by that? >> i doubt that's my ad, but we'll take a look and find out. he signs off in spannic, and he had in. >> i've never voted for a democrat when there was a republican on the ballot. any chance i goat to vote against bill clinton or ted kennedy i too. >> when he voted -- still overall this debate everything went according to plan as far as the romney's campaign is concerned. even all of -- any problems he

ran into, they may have ended up helping rick santorum, and any vote for santorum is one less vote for gingrich. momentum clear on the side of romney. our new poll does illustrate a problem romney still has with conservatives. whenever the conservative base has rallied around a candidate, it's never been romney, and now that gingrich is the front-runner, there at least today, santorum is third with 18% of the vote. ron paul has 12%. when you field is narrowed to just two candidates, gingrich is ahead by two -- why? it's the consolidation of that conservative base. in short his's winning the heart and souls of the electoral. among southerners, it's romney is down 65-28, and for now, he is the tea party candidate beating romney 65-30 among those voters who call themselves tea

party supporters. now, the question is, when do those folks rally around romney? had decide okay with them, they certainly like him, but will they rally around him? florida is on its third republican governor in a row, but that kind of statewide strength hasn't always been the norm, and former governor bob martinez joins me from tampa. he's also former mayor of tampa. go everyonor martinez, thanks for coming on this morning. >> good morning, chuck. good to be with us. let me start with all of the conversation we've heard this week on immigration from newt gingrich and mitt romney. from what you've heard, are you concerned about where the republican party is today on immigration? or do you feel better after watching this debate this week? >> i think the last couple of debates seem to be moving more

to the center than the earlier debates where i think the candidates were more extreme obviously florida is a large hispanic population, you have the cuban-american, which tends to be a rep group and another large group with a lot of voting power in florida is the puerto rican american, and they have a tendency to be democrat, but i think they have a common concern how you talk about immigration. i think it's important as we continue to move into the large states like florida and others that follow that they have a better idea, greater clarity to what they mean by immigration policy. . florida is not a state as if it feels it has an immigration,

maybe new mexico is going through. is that a fair assessment? >> absolutely. i'm native to florida, and there's always been immigrant workers here. that part is not new. as i child el can remember that. it's a larger percent, a lot of them working construction and landscaping, so they've left the farm, so to speak, therefore there's greater employment opportunities. there's been a slowdown of that in florida, mainly because our home building and commercial construction is down. as a result jobs which many of them worked in are no longer available, so as a result it's probably -- >> is the republican party a conservative party in the state of florida or more moderate?

>> it's interesting. you have the establishment of the party obviously which i am one of them, but then the rank and file which often are insurgent to the candidates chosen by party leaders. we saw that happen in 2010 where three of the four statewide races were won by candidates that did not necessarily represent the establishment interests, and they got the nomination, then went on to win the general election. so you do have that. we have that closed primary. it's a very large state. ten huge immediate xwra markets, and it makes campaigning here very, very difficult. for the last four weeks mitt romney and the super pac has been carpet bombing the state of florida with ads. you can't come into florida and not have ammo. by ammo i mean money and organization. >> from what you have seen, it's fair to assume that romney has the most money with the super

pac. gingrich seems at least somewhat competitive financially. what kind of organization does gingrich have, in your opinion, compared to mitt romney. >> of course, romney ran four years ago, and a lot of the family he put together four years ago remain with him. so immediately before the attention was on florida, he had amassed a rather large fund-raising organization, had early a nounced his leadership team, early a nounced a -- most of the other candidates didn't show up here until after south carolina. you can't do that. you have to come in early. it's a huge state, you have to organize. to raise money you have to come in much, much earlier, so i think candidates in the future may have to understand they can't wait until the week of the primary in florida to move in and do any good. all right. well, i know you haven't backed anybody yet. will you back somebody before

tuesday publicly? >> no, i'm going to stay neutral publicly. i'm an early voter. i show up there early in the morning, but i'm not going to get engaged with a candidate this time around. >> governor bob martinez, coming to us from tampa this morning. thanks for sharing. >> thank you, chuck. up next, we're digging deeper into our brand-new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll. he's no match for the president. we'll show you those numbers. and beal tell you what the republican candidates have in problem with john kerry. our pollsters are here to crunch the numbers. the candidates exhorted last night and concentrate on the real issues like how to build a colony on the moon. but first ahead, the president's schedule. we'll get a taste of it before the end of our hour, a big speech at the university of michigan before 10:00 a.m. this morning. you're watching "the daily

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they are all there in miami courting hispanics voters today. you're looking at live pictures of newt gingrich speaking to the latin builders association of miami. both gingrich and romney are also speaking at the hispanic leadership network conference cochaired by former florida governor jeb bush. gingrich's performance in the new nbc news/wall street poll both he and romney would face an uphill climb in

november. it is sort of odd that the last policy had gingrich ahead. and a lot happened, but is this poll about new gingrich or about mitt romney. >> i love that you use big bold letters. >> and i think what this is about is that newt gingrich has constituency that is an inch -- is an inch wide and a mile deep. rom are rot new is doing well everywhere, and -- >> bill, one thing we learned about in the head to head that we did is, boy, there's a core

of the republican party that is the core base. it's tea partiers, it's southerners, very conservative voters. can you win a nomination only with that, on you do recall need other parts of the party. >> traditionally or nominee is someone who's acceptable to the conservative part of our party, but broadly okay across the party. i think speaker gingrich will do very well in southern primaries not florida. i don't think florida is really southern. i think or data would say he'll do well in the south, but the other part of the poll is if you're comfortable with each of these people. we're at a point now where with santorum, gingrich and romney, about three quarries of the republicans say, yeah, i would be comfortable. of course ron paul is not acceptable as the nominee, but this is what, as you say about romney, he is broadly acceptable

across the republican party in all of its different parts. >> we tested the negatives, two negatives on romney, one on gingrich. bain not a negative. romney's experience among republicans, 28% said positive, 13 necessarily tiff, but on the handling of his tax returns, it 17% negative. with newt gingrich and the marriages 3% positive and 30% negative. so the intensity there. reading these numbers, you said you don't know why ann romney is not on tv. >> what you have is a sense of real wealth and privilege. so he doesn't make that linkage. and the difficult is i think avn romney says comes across personal. that's jarring. we're trying to pay our

mortgages and people are saying i don't know -- >> plus or minus 50 million. >> yes. that's the difficulty. it is the connection point. ann romney i think is both human, overcoming an illness and dealing with that, it creates a warmth and a reality. i thought she in last night's deba debate. >> he description of her -- you can talk about the subtle negatives they could be launching, but why not put this story on tv. she's very good on the campaign trail. here's the republican front-runner, newt gingrich performing worse than rick santorum? >> first, obama has real trouble still. so we can't lose sight of the

fact this is a close election, but speaker gingrich has had a long history with the american public, and he starts with almost 50% negative on our survey, includes on our survey is a big number. archltsds big difference was women, there was a stunning statistic you told us yesterday, rural women normally very republican, actually pick obama over gingrich. >> a 20-point lead, and the difference, of course is romney is ahead with rural women, so you get the sense of what's there for gingrich, and that's he can't be is it trusted. gingrich takes down the whole

flotilla and at the end of the day the public doesn't trust him. that's the difficulty. >> you talk about how collectively all three republican presidential candidates with the overall populace have net negatives. and of course you've noted, he's even got a higher negative rating. who had been buffett highs in our polls, but not since we looked this up john mccain -- only john kerry had a net negative. those are the people that at a time when you want a primary, a nomination, you have these kind of weak blows where people look at your life, your family, and

we don't have weeks of flow. we have responsible journalism we live in the internet and capable age, and we're also in an era where stunning amounts of money, before until really the last nomination you took public financing, now we're spending $20 million in a week in florida and by the way, peter, i talking to some pollsters, but they have seen moves in tracking polls like never seen before, just stunning moves, 14 points in a night, seven points. before you would question your own methodology if that would happen, but that's clearly not the case. this is, what, the consumer digesting information that quickly? >> you take the tea party people, they don't hate romney, they just like gingrich more.

so suddenly they change and it's very easy to do that. it is the new world. >> another part of this story we can't get to is the story of congress, but -- every one of our polls it feels like there's three stories, we get to 1 1/2 of them. thank you, gentlemen. we just got the new gdp numbers showing how fast the u.s. economy is growing, how wall street reacts? slightly under expectations with this number. we'll tell you about it in a minute. the market rundown is next. later this hour, president obama will warning colleges to stop soaring attitude illustrations or face consequences. i think bill is paying some tuition right now and likes that idea. today's trivia question -- before jeb and george bush, who were the last brothers to serve as governors at the same time. the first correct answer will get a call-out from us. peter, you should nail this.

i'm not going to hold bill responsible. we'll be right back. ♪

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[ bell dinging ]

well, we're just minutes away from the opening bell. becky quick is here. the gdp number under 3, that's to be disconcerting to some. >> it was. it came as a bit of a negative surprise. the futures sold off pretty quickly on this news and right now it looks like dow will open down about 50, 55 points. now, it wasn't a terrible loss at this point. you're not talking about anything -- and it was the so that that's the good new, but people say this is not great.

one of the real strengths you saw was people and companies building up their inventories, but it means they may not be buys as much nevin attorneys in the current -- this is the actual -- up only 0.8%, so a bit of also some for, well, we'll be watching. thank you, becky, have a good weekend. >> you too. >> before we go to break. we have gotten bigger. we want to introduce you to the newest member of the political unit, caleb penny murray. born yesterday afternoon. mark murray and his wife sasha.

mom and baby are doing well, we're not sure about mark. we're very excited. sasha, wait until you hear the story on that. the kid will never hear the end of it. we'll be back in 30 seconds. a few other stories made headlines, activists in syria are reporting a huge -- mortars and machine guns were used to

killed at least 30 people. afghan president hamid karzai will meet with nicolas sarkozy to convince him to not pull troops out. he suspended all training and support operations after four soldiers were killed last week. france is due to pull out in 2014, but sarkozy is threatening to speed up the process. more fall out between that intense discussion caught on camera the governor says she felt disrespected. the president says the whole thing is overblown. >> i think it's always good publicity for an argument if they're in an argument with me, but this really was not a big deal. the by closes a legal loophole regarding drug

smugglers who use small planes. it was her final legislative act before she resigned on wednesday. well, it was an energized mitt romney who showed up, not willing to give newt gingrich any breathing room. that prompted rick santorum to insert himself back into the debate. >> can we set aside that newt was a member of congress and used the skills that he developed as a member of congress to go out and advise companies? and that's not the worst thing in the world and that mitt romney is a wealthy guy because he worked hard and you guys leave that alone and focus on the issues. >> michelle bernard is here, and ann kornblut, and -- welcome all. i want to start out with the basics of the debate. do you think mitt romney --

>> i say game on. i have to give it to romney. finally we saw fire from both of them. excellent debate last night. >> the consensus seems to be the one guy that didn't do well was newt gingrich. i thought he just didn't have the plan. >> the bar is always set high for him, because he's done well in previous debates. for him it was terrible, he really needed to do something with extra voom, he want able to rile the audience or take on the media. he did seem like he was phoning it in. >> you guys certainly have your sides on this, do you think this guy is getting to become a better debater? >> he's a pretty good debater and pretty good throughout this process. i do think the big question last night was whether newt gingrich would rise to the occasion, because he's phased 24 to 48 hours of really massive

conservative assault. he didn't answer the questions that were posed to hem. in south carolina he was facing some challenge, and he really took it on. he doesn't take anything on yesterday. >> he seemed to mentally hold himself back, like he was afraid to totally be nude. it sort of felt lining a sense of doom. i don't know if that's what he was sensing from the audience, but i was going to say i think mitt romney has been a terrible debater until last night. i thought last night was the best he's ever had. >> he just look tired. i think he's been overscheduled. a lot of people have been saying that. florida has a lot of traffic. you know, he still is struggling with certain things. first of all on health care,

santorum i thought pup meld him on this issue in a way we haven't seen him on the defensive. listen to how she defended his plan, and butted up against something president obama has said. >> there's no government plan, and if you don't want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill, because under federal law, if someone doesn't have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. we want no more, no more free riders, we're insisting on personal responsibility, either get the insurance or help pay for your care. >> health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program. >> so, anne, there was other language in there too that's even more familiar. this has been an issue for mitt romney and yet he really hasn't faced criticism until last night.

>> he's faced criticism on so many other fronts. and i think you're right, he hasn't come up with an answer. what you played just now could be another conservative advertisement against him. i suspect that's the least of their worries. this worries pretty is behind them. it's only really a primary issue. >> let me ask you this. why does the administration seem to struggle to not just defend their health care plan, but actually proactive talk about it? >> i do think the president, you know, speaks about the particular benefits of the law, and that's important. >> but it's always like paragraph 4. >> i think the issue with the health care laws has become polarized. so, you know when the president talks about it, polarizes more, and i think the challenge for mitt romney is facts are facts. it was based on massachusetts, it's virtually the same.

i do think the challenge for romney in the general is that health care will be defused as an issue if mitt romney is the gnome near. there's no daylight between them, and that issue will not be one which conservatives can rally around, so in that way it would be helpful. >> though we have to wait to see what the supreme court does. >> that's true, though i'm optimistic on that one. >> another couple moments that i thought romney didn't do well. this wealth issue, he certainly struggling to talk about his wealth. listen to this montage we put together when he was defending himself on freddie mac. >> what my trustee did is in a blind trust, managed by a trustee. trustee that manages my investments in a blind trust. that's sofuls would avoid any conflicts of interest. that trustee indicated. >> okay, trustee, blind trusts, and then we heard newt talk about the swiss bank account.

it is one of these things that is hard to connect. >> he is having a difficult time figuring out how to message this point. i think he said "trustee" seven times. and i think what mitt romney has to figure out is how to explain his success as part of the american dream. he is horatio alger, he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of, and he just doesn't get that yet. i don't think that helped his cause at all. but i think the real story, possibly penultimate, the calvary hca cavalry has come in. picking fights with staff, bob dole sent out a letter, i mean it was extort of like the stop newt brigade was everywhere. i have to play a back and forth

between a congressman and press secretary for gingrich, which is so bizarre to me. >> do you own any stock in freddie mac? do you lobby for them? where do you get your information? >> this is really what you have to do right now? is this really what you're doing? i'm sorry. i'm happy to answer questions for people with press credentialing, but -- >> you know i don't understand why he agreed to do it. >> it's only fair that gingrich said he would follow obama around at the town hauls, so to have romney people stalking gingrich on the trail. but you're right, this is the establishment rising up. i think they never thought they would have to, and nobody was all excited about having to rally around mitt romney, but when the prospects seemed real, they decided they had to do it. they have some loud megaphones to do it. >> this is the big question, though. we've gone through this before

and newt gingrich has actually been effective at making as outsider/insider argument. i represent the tea party, this debate -- >> it's a fine line. you want to push back, but not too much. >> yes. that's what's really at tame. it's like who speaks for the republican party, the tea party or the moderates. stick around, we might be coming back, we might be coming to the president. we're waiting for the president to step up to the mike. it's hits last stop on a five-state post state of the union tour. this is the president's second visit to the university of michigan. hi delivered the commencement address there in 2010, and i have to tell folks, you should go back and read that. it was the most fascinating defense he's made of government that he's ever made during his presidency. this time he'll focus on college affordable. before we go, before jeb and

george bush, who were the last brothers to serve as governors at the same time? the answer winthrop and nelson rockefeller, between 1957 and -- we'll be right back, but first got to give you the white house soup of the day, at least it's got an interesting name. i don't know anyone would want to eat this. coke numb sweet potato. -one. -two.

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>> reporter: that's right, education is the topic of discussion today, expanding on a number of proposals that he mapped out during the state of the union address, so today a couple proposals that he's going to talk about specifically including shifting federal aid away from state colleges and universities that don't keep tuition costs low, to those that do. also within that proposal, increasing the amount of aid that the federal government gives to colleges and universities from 1 billion to about 10 million dollars. another proposal is to channel about a billion into a college-level race to the top like program which would essentially incentivize universities to make sure they are providing a quality education to their students the another big proposal today will be to double student work programs, to essentially say that students are willing to

work, we're going to double the amount of work programs that they can do while they're also studying. a number of these proposals require congressional approval, check, so there's no guarantee these are actually going to pass. of course this is all in response to the rising cost of tuiti tuition. according to recent estimates, the average public education tuition $17,000. that's an increase of about 8.3% over the past year. as you know this is going on against the back drop of the president's reelection campaign. yesterday he did an interview with abc news. he was asked what the first lady thinks about his reelection. here's what he had to say. take a listen. >> michelle is very enthusiastic about campaigning for the next nine months. that hasn't always been the case. this puts a strain on families, but i think she feels very

strongly that we're moving the country in the right direction. what she's told me is, you know, we should finish the job and we've got more work to do. >> reporter: now, chuck, my inbox has been filled all morning long with e-mails from republicans saying this is just another campaign stop. the white house has pushed back those times of claims saying this isn't just for campaigning, the president is rolling out a steve union message, but what's interesting is i covered the president a bit back in 2008, and we're hearing a lot of the same songs that we heard back in 2008 when he was campaigning, including -- >> the soundtrack has been the same for a while. in their defense, that soundtrack doesn't change at all. i assume we'll be "signed sealed and delivered" at some point. kristin welker, we'll check back in. you know, can i just -- one rant about what he's talking

about here. nobody took advantage of easy credit and what the banks are doing with easy credit more than colleges and universities who ridiculously raised rates. >> and it's backfiring. there are a lot of studies and articles that have been published about large numbers of american students actually going to the uk for college, because prices in the united states are just absolutely ridiculous. you can get a very similar education for a third of the cost. >> but i really think the connection needs to be drawn to this easy credit issue. when there was so much to get, the universities knew they could pass it off on loans, or get parents to get said mortgages. i can't tell you how many members of my family have them, for college tuition. >> i think the real challenge is that there has -- there's been easy credit and colleges actually raise tuition, because they knew that students could get loans.

so the problem that families are facing now is that in a squeezed market, a lot of students can't art college, dropped prices. >> tuition is skyrocketing. it's unbelievable what families have to pay. anna and i -- >> the connection. no connection to the real world. why other things went up with normal cost of living. >> it's far fast normal class of living. i think the challenges, i mean, this isn't a big concern for middle class families. president's trying to address it and people on the republican side are talking about landing on the moon or mars and the president's talking about college. >> nothing wrong with space. you know -- we're going to try to squeeze it. not just that. we're going to squeeze in a break. be right back. waiting on the president to deliver a speech at the university of michigan. you can't pass mom's inspection with lots of pieces left behind. that's why there's charmin ultra strong.

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and we're waiting on the

president. schedule said 9:45. but it's natural these things run a few minutes late. he's going to be giving a speech, talk about a plan that the government can incentivise colleges and universities to lower their tuition or stop raising at absurd rates. all three days this week has been a different topic to push from his state of the union. manufacturing the first day, energy and now today, education. just happened to be in five battleground states. let's bring back the panel. all right. going back to this republican, the numbers had to do with the fact that all three candidates had negatives. of all the ones, all the recent nominees at this point in time, only kerry had a net negative. mitt romney appears to be sustaining damage and he needs to end this early.

he needs time. >> he needs to end it in florida. he really needs to pull out ahead. >> even if he wins it, i think the incentive for santorum and gingrich are not there to get out. >> not yet. what we're seeing from romney, who are it is, they need to end it quickly. the better he can do in florida, the better things will be for him. it's going to take a long time, particularly if the country turns back to health care. he's going to need the full nine months. >> what's the incentive for gingrich to get out? >> very little. or none. or santorum for that matter. what job is he going to go back to? >> if gingrich, in many ways the best way to help romney -- >> stay in. >> quickly, how important was ending early for john kerry? he needed six months to fix it. >> it's hugely important. what's interesting about the race is how viciously negative. >> shameless plugs fast.

>> national school choice week. i want to congratulate thousands of parents all over the country. >> "the washington post" has a new article about ron paul's racist newsletters. >> and think progress yesterday broke the news about how romney has investments that foreclosed on florida. >> i'm going to have a week of not traveling. that's it for this edition of "the daily rundown." have a great weekend. stay tuned. the president speaks any minute now. chris jansing and company will take the baton from me.

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