who is somewhat out of touch with financial reality. some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the church of radicals. some like the u.s. for instance at least that's the new face of american foreign policy and they're ready to talk turkey with the taliban so after ten years of endless war is the taliban winning. the good evening it's wednesday january fourth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our t.v. well there's no turning back now the madness has begun for real now people are actually voting not just talking to pollsters and with those votes counted the results are in romney of course came in first place in iowa with thirty thousand fifteen votes were santorum got just eight fewer votes and ron paul in third place

with twenty six thousand two hundred and one thousand votes so in total about one hundred twenty two thousand people voted in last night's caucus the first real test of the voters well under twenty two thousand people isn't that much and when you think about iowa it's not only an extremely rural state it's about ninety one percent white according to u.s. census data it's also traditionally very conservative so if you put those factors all together it's extremely non-representative on the rest of the country and yet it's the reason one candidate michele bachmann has already brought out of the race and according to the mainstream media it's crucial to setting the path of this campaign well to talk about iowa's political weight earlier i spoke to conservative radio host t.j. mccormick as well as the director of grassroots political consulting l.l.c. daniel ferrazzi i started out asking t.j. why not make the political system a little more fair by you know changing up the order of the primaries every four years. i think it makes a lot of sense to you know sort of look at that but it's it's tradition it's

tradition you see the way these states all fight each other for that position as states pull in little last minute and again and then passing the different the machinations in their in their legislatures to to ensure that it's all goofy i had made and it's not very substantive at all but you know i want to be fair to you know rotated sure but it's old school traditional american politics old school american politics daniel let's talk a little more about this you know critics of the system argue that constantly having iowa first encourages extremists like for example pat robertson who did pretty well in one thousand nine hundred two and historically speaking doesn't often choose people who actually end up winning the nomination talk about this aspect of why iowa well i agree with t.j. talking about the tradition and health things or as far as the process is concerned and i don't see it changing anytime soon but there are also other examples more

legitimate when you had to dale's him with george w. bush you have two thousand and eight with barack obama so on both sides there also has been that candidate who has won but traditionally i would does not pick the winner and interestingly enough the process i have a problem with the caucus process is one that when you have that lackluster motivation not having a jeb bush paul ryan all the rest and here you just take a look at expenditure from two thousand and eight to right now mitt romney spent seven million on the air in zero eight among all the candidates five million was spent on the ground back in two thousand and eight you have a million and a half plus super pac expenditure from that one candidate alone this last time plus i can't wait to see what the analysis was of the street so literally in the caucus process if you don't have that. huge motivation for that really strong candidate

you could make sure you pay the right people to get in that room and oh did i know that it's so shocking that money can actually buy votes in florida right now. all right let's talk about what we saw last night i know one person certainly not pleased about the results was it newt gingrich speaking of money here's a full page ad he just took out in new hampshire is union leader new hampshire of course the next day it's called the choice and says only a bold reagan conservative can defeat president obama of course in bold colors and that romney in black and white t.j. what's going on it is this kind of the kind of campaigning that we're going to see from now on are they going to continue to throw a little bit. of chorus of course of course they are and you know and it's it happens republicans hate that part of the primary process when they see their own tearing each other up democrats hate it when when they were in there in the primary process it's unnerving for the electorate to watch this thing because at the end we don't want all this garbage out about our guy in terms of newt gingrich is

interesting gingrich you know the it's going to take a reagan conservative who's going to beat barack obama i think the thing about newt gingrich that has gotten any momentum at all was the idea that one conservative republican saw him in that first bunch of debates they all imagined that guy on the podium at a podium across from barack obama and literally vis orating him destroying him in a debate now cool lines which would have happened to minds have prevailed and now people are realizing newt gingrich is not going to get past that personal baggage he is not the most electable people are now starting to settle and they're going for the guy that will that has the best chance of beating him in terms of votes because also don't forget a lot of people don't always remember everything that they hear and see from a debate and it's real briefly dan i want to talk to you before the cameras turned on you and i were sort of talking about an interesting. part of i with a lot of people don't know that you can actually if you're iowa residents register

on the evening of the iowa caucus no matter what party you're with that right correct as a democrat or independent and vote republican for the evening and i'd like to see a lot of the after analysis to see i mean there is a lot of motivation for many in the democratic party if they wanted to get into the influencing this to make sure that romney pulled off that victory in iowa and ironically to i i'm not as convinced on the field being settled here he had seventy five percent of the republican electorate going against the presumptive nominee who spent multiple millions of dollars in two elections in order to secure victory and i what i want to talk now about ron paul of course last night's results left a few people surprised that a lot of people thought he would finish first or second but it also showed this is a candidate who is extremely well organized you know as usual you know when i was in covering the straw poll over the summer people drove from near and far just to

shake ron paul's hand and you still have that. ron paul thinks he can garner support from young people and that he draws excitement t.j. ron paul says he's taking his campaign all the way to the convention how does this feasibly have. well i guess he could take a bus to the convention as a non. but i look you're you we could we could summarize ron paul in the first part of your of your. love of the of the paragraph you just said ron paul is extreme leave it there leave off the l.-y. and everything else ron paul is extreme he's even wanting to sound a bit extreme. knowing is all according to this people right here you know he's a guy with a lot of his libertarian stuff his his bring him home save money and the fed that resonates with a lot of regular people but you know when it comes down to national security let's forget it so what if iran has a nuclear weapon so what if iran has it that alone would sink them before we even

got out of the carolinas and let's talk a little bit danielle about something that happened with ron paul again we talked about his organization he had people that actually you know one of the tactics included getting his supporters not only to cast their votes for him but to stick around afterward to become a delicate delegate for the republican convention in august and apparently a bunch of them did is this kind of normal now he has some of the most motivated volunteers and apparatus nationwide out there he also ironically has the funds and the sustainability of that network and that movement to be a major factor in this election not saying that he'd secure the nomination but to be a major factor in this nominating process and in the election of itself because the caucus is not are non-binding so if he gets these delegates to go and show up at the convention and vote for him that could possibly there are a lot of scenarios that could play out also we're watching you know another factor

for him which will be interesting to see is when this selection gets down to south carolina now that rick perry decided to stay and we look just like we did back in zero weight when huckabee and fred thompson split the vote and it up with mccain as the nominee whereas if there were a little fewer people in that field you could have seen a rudy giuliani huckabee race in five seconds or less t.j. mccormick who wins new hampshire. hillary clinton no i think i think i think romney i think romney takes the day he's got is that's where his machinery is and has been for months that's where romney romney romney will have to see and leave it at that conservative radio talk show host t.j. mccormick as well as the director of grassroots political consulting daniel for watching. well it's been a broken record since long before last night but mitt romney is the only candidate that's moderate enough that smart enough that can connect with the largest number

of people to actually have a shot at beating president obama in november but here's something you're not hearing about i mean you may know this but how much of you really thought about this mitt romney is a millionaire not a few million or ten million mitt romney and his wife are apparently worth more than two hundred fifty million dollars and despite attempts to you know fit in with real america flying southwest airlines hanging out in nascar pits and wearing jeans that romney is one of the wealthiest men to ever run for president certainly to have a shot at winning the nominee remember this this is romney's twelve million dollar ocean front property in san diego that he's in the process of expanding actually quadrupling in size but i'm not begrudging him just simply reminding you the american people who live in a country with a near nine percent unemployment rate when i ask you this is america ready for a multimillionaire to become president of the president obama or former president

bush didn't have money but romney is a little bit of a different ball game and it's not just personal wealth now is also a good time to talk about the role of money in politics overall and this process which let's face it folks is just beginning and an article called iowa was a meaningless side show begins rolling stones and that's why even writes this congress marks the beginning of a long rigidly controlled carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things weed out dangerous minority opinions and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests and matt joins me now hey they're mad let's talk about this how can mitt romney with all this wealth even begin or pretend to represent establishment interests. well he does represent establishment interests. or tends to represent the interests of ordinary people is

another question i think you know what he's going to really run on i think there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the way that government is run romney's going to come in and say i've been. sort of. a leading proponent of efficiency in my entire life my company being capital it's helped streamline corporations my entire life so i'm going to do the same thing to the federal government i don't know if that's how convincing that is but that's going to be the way he's going to try to appeal to ordinary people it's true and if he does become the nominee it's ideas like this president obama may press hard upon not to mention as you just said at romney's time at bain capital which of course the daily show so humorously it touched upon let me play this really quick matt. in the previous big narrative about mitt romney being an out of touch multimillionaire and now a kid but throughout pictures like this one wrongly run the buyout capital

everything about romney tells the tale of a man who just do you old dad. so john oliver there of course painting that. romney as scary evil businessman but i want to put some real figures up just you know to remind people according to the two thousand and ten census data forty six point two million people americans live in poverty that's fifteen percent of the total population these are the highest poverty numbers since one thousand nine hundred three and currently as we see there the median household income is about forty nine point five thousand. so again i mean i think it's important just to show people you know this candidate who will probably become the nominee. you know what they're getting into here you know absolutely i mean mitt romney a lot of ways. you could plausibly argue that use the architect of the modern american corporation. with his consulting firm they kind of pioneered this idea

companies should not necessarily be in the business of employing a whole lot of people and making products what they're really designed to do is create profits and drive profits upstairs to upper management and cut out its value extraneous employees as possible so you know the sort of modern movement we have in america where you don't have judge gannett companies like g.m. that employs that hundreds of thousands of people but the study of small companies that make enormous profits of drug goes to a very small group of senior executives that's mitt romney really the guy who pioneered that idea and is he's behind a lot of the unemployment right now i know that you outlined in your piece how many hundreds of thousands of dollars candidates get from the wealthiest in this country goldman sachs taking more. citigroup etc and i think a lot of people would be surprised about this i know that you showed some stats from two thousand and eight when it comes to wall street donations it's not really about which candidate they agree with most or which party even it's about the

candidate they think will win and therefore have the power to make decisions i want to talk i want you to talk about this reality in two thousand and eight and how you think that this is affected what we've seen so far under the obama white house. well wall street historically donates generously to both parties. usually close to a fifty fifty split although if you go back to the early ninety's the democrats have actually gotten slightly more money from wall street than the republicans have but what they typically do in an election season is they. had their bets they're essentially professional gamblers anyway and they decide who is more likely to win than the other and they donate accordingly i think last in the last election cycle in two thousand and eight the consensus on wall street was that obama was more or less a shoo in to defeat any republican candidate which is why you know they basically called him as a seventy three favorite which is what he got seven hundred thirty three million

dollars and john mccain got just over three hundred million dollars so they give to both parties but they had their bets if they think one guy's more likely to win the other than they're going to get more money that to that guy but it has nothing to do with ideology it's entirely about who is likely to be in there and who they're going to influence more but what do you think has been the impact of this giving obama got so much money from these corporations do you think that he's sort of acted in such a way that that makes them that should make us feel like he's kind of in payback mode over the last four years oh absolutely i think the most obvious. well first of all there was absolute continuity with george bush's bailout programs you know the same guy who was the architect of bush bailouts which is bailouts tim geithner was retained. by obama but more importantly there were no sweeping prosecutions you know one when f.d.r. came in after the after that great depression you know and one of the first things it is that when they danced he did stronger reforms and they and they cleaned up wall street but obama did exactly the opposite of that is treasury secretary tim

geithner has said openly that if they had pressed too many fraud prosecutions that it would have created quote unquote a run on the bank in other words other. investors around the world would have fled the american markets because they would have been frightened off by all the corruption so i think they they intentionally did not press forward with with sweeping fraud prosecutions because they were protecting those markets and that's so wall street got what they what they paid for they got a guy who did not put them in jail and let's talk about the prospect the potential of even more people getting what they paid for and what we saw recently with citizens united the u.s. supreme court case that you know in a nutshell found that that corporations can be people and that money can be speech talk a little bit about you know how this might affect what we see in the next election . well. you're never going to completely eliminate. corporate

money in politics that matter what they did you know if they. had somehow reform campaign contributions in the opposite direction and made it harder for people to give money they still would have found a way i mean that's that's that's sort of the montreux of washington is whether it's soft money or hard money or political action committees or or democratic national campaign committees. the money is going to get there but the problem is the citizens united case made it incredibly easy for companies to give virtually unlimited sums of money to the two parties which which means that in the lex next election cycle. there's going to be basically no way for a small independently driven candidate to compete against a major party candidate a final question for you just your predictions i mean you money in politics is such a subject that seems to be pretty near and dear to your heart what is the one thing that you think people really should know that americans should understand and that

you think really really isn't quite out there yet regarding this topic i think most americans don't understand. most of the major campaign contributors in this country give to both candidates i think still. even the people who supported the citizens united decision and there were a lot of people among the tea partiers who did that they did that because they believed that companies were practicing free speech by supporting one or the other candidate or one or the other policy what they didn't realize is that that's not exact that's not what goes on these companies give money to both sides because purely because they hope to influence whoever wins so it's not an ideological start it's not an ideological contest it's just an attempt to influence the outcome right now great wonderful reporting as always the rolling stones mantei even joining us from new jersey thanks so much thank you. so how does the general public feel about that too close for comfort relationship between money and politics we are in

washington after all but these are all important things to think about when deciding who to vote for whatever your state's primary is so we want to get a sense of what people are talking about on the streets so artie's own adriano said i went out to the streets of d.c. and talk to some of the people who often know best about these things. and so are americans ready for millionaire mitt well as the race for the white house heats up so i decided to hitch a ride with a couple of d.c. insiders to get their point of view how long have you been here in d.c. oh i've been driving kathy hansen ninety eighty four eighty five president clinton . did you know andy did you know did you think americans would be ready to have mitt romney as a president you know to my delight you know yeah people usually when in politics do you think that money plays a big part in politics here nancy it's. just the death of the dose show you know

they don't. know yet why not just but you know i mean mitt romney to win now but a lot of money is over i just played all the time you know the people who only vote don't go for rich people they don't have rich reporting married i always think. it was jolly don't like it but. you see what they do most of this research people who are contributing a lot into his company and yeah if i were a politician i wouldn't care whether a guy's in my party or not if i don't buy he's proposed this right always good for the nation oh go for it well there you have it will make make it well only time will tell but one thing is for sure. once you're here in the nation's capital sure to take a couple of tips from a cabbie after you give me yours from washington i'm adriano said o r t so it's in gears now to what was considered at one time the one thing that would never happen

would never even be considered but now it appears that leaders from the united states are negotiating with members of the taliban the reason is in part a desire to end the war in afghanistan but what else is at stake here as our correspondent liz wahl reports this new approach could actually be a major victory for the taliban. though she aiding with the taliban something the u.s. under president bush vowed never to do some seem to believe that we shouldn't go with the terrorists and radicals as if some ingenious argument were persuade them they had been wrong all along. worse we've heard this foolish delusion before when i said no negotiations i meant no negotiations but that's exactly what's happening today after more than a decade of trying to defeat the afghan fighters the u.s. has reportedly agreed to release high ranking taliban prisoners from guantanamo bay

and an effort to start peace talks those sets of be released include mohamed fossil the former taliban deputy defense minister accused of commanding forces that kill thousands of shiite muslims as part of the deal the taliban will open a political office in qatar a safe haven for talks i think this this marks that point or there is a mission maybe not openly that we're not going to achieve that military overwhelming dominance of the taliban. so with the u.s. giving in to their demands to be seen as a victory for the taliban i think the idea of releasing these individuals without understanding what we're getting in return we being the united states i sat it's not really a good idea and i think it's almost an act of desperation so how does the average citizen feel about releasing the terrorist suspects either out of high profile. to be. right so i would say that they need to be. detained

should the u.s. be negotiating with taliban and i don't think so. well i mean they bombed our country and. they should pay for their for their sins so to speak i think their everybody's come to the conclusion that valid taliban was there to stay so if we ever expects the ability in afghanistan they've got to be part of something the deal can be seen as one of the biggest breakthroughs in the ten year conflict in afghanistan but the fact that the u.s. is still trying to negotiate with the taliban shows that the u.s. is far from declaring. victory and washington liz wahl r.t. so i want to talk about the agenda in afghanistan and look at the fact that the troops are of course now gone from iraq and will someday be gone also from afghanistan journalist and writer neil shea just returned from there and spent some time watching as u.s. troops told some of the villagers they should get ready for this impending

departure i spoke to him a short time ago and asked him about their response and also about the taliban's role there today while i was there most recently don't remember i would ask. citizens how they felt about the impending departure of nato forces and most of them told me that they were virgins certain about it. they felt. almost without hesitation that as soon as nato forces left the taliban would be able to sleep back in because they didn't have much confidence that the afghan government would be able to handle things on their own so i think there's a lot of worry among afghan citizens about what will happen when those troops begin to leave when we talk about nato and the u.s. leaders negotiating with the taliban and to me at least on one hand it makes sense trying to be diplomatic and speak with your enemy as opposed to just trying to kill him but some say this as you know a total capitulation on the part of the u.s.

government want to get your thoughts on that well i think capitulation is the wrong word because you know that serve a victory in the very traditional sense so we killed all of the enemy and now there's no one left to fight and really when was the last time that happened in any war western powers don't fight that way any longer and particularly in afghanistan where the taliban movement has shown an ability to sort of reform itself and grow back even after our so-called military victories you have to begin to work with a power like that in a different way and that's what the u.s. has really been doing for the last two years trying to find a way to talk with the taliban and reach a settlement that doesn't depend total victory i mean i think that's an important point to bring up when you're not simply talking about winning and losing but afterall i mean when we think about who the taliban is what they stood for it's pretty significant that leaders would be you know talking to them i mean these are

people who swore to continue to fight against the u.s. people who claimed responsibility and victory for the terrorist attacks of nine eleven. and they've even been known to terrorize their own people their women so i guess my question i mean is this a sign to the rest of the world that the u.s. is tolerant to that kind of behavior. absolutely not i think that's really kind of a big leap to make obviously those things are not conditions that we would allow to stand in the united states itself but really the u.s. hasn't been saying that it's been trying to turn afghanistan into sort of a miniature united states for a long time let's talk about some of the other sort of aspects of this deal afghan insurgents will open up sort of an embassy like office for peace negotiations in qatar and in return the u.s. is releasing or has released as several high ranking taliban officials so talk about these sort of aspects of the deal what will this office for peace

negotiations actually be youth for why is it in qatar and what is all if mean i think one of the reasons that this office has been opened up is to give that to if we just say there are two sides that nato side and the taliban side a legitimate place to meet and talk about these ideas. you know the the united states and nato have been trying for a few years to reach out to the taliban but they've been in some cases fooled by people who posed as taliban intermediaries who work actually working for the tell about and then we've had cases where taliban. suppose a taliban members came in and actually were hiding suicide bombs in their clothing as we so the assassination of burned and burned rubble dhani back in september so i think that this office will give the legitimacy to the taliban government or to the

taliban officials in any case and that was journalist and writer and they all say that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we cover go to our to dot com slash usa or you tube dot com slash r t america will be back at eight pm. practically a ghost town. squandered money. than . what is now. more than sixty square kilometers i mean why move from the mistakes. and those who are still surprisingly alive i'm finding we're just. getting bad out here. but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know.