do you turn that into a father of a former f.s.b. officer poisoned in london six years ago says he was mistaken when he accused. of being responsible for his son's death. the story firsthand from alexander litvinenko. the u.n. considers a new draft resolution on syria with a softening of demands for president assad to step down following criticism from russia and china diplomatic sources also say the motion is unlikely to have references about an arms embargo removed from the text. more than six hundred people have been injured in clashes in the center of egypt's capital cairo as police fired tear gas at protesters this comes just a day after a riot at

a football match in the country on wednesday left seventy four dead. you're looking at live pictures right now from square where there are still many demonstrators despite the clashes with the authority. over the headlines up next our debate show cross talk with. lonely and welcome across a computable cause the us presidential campaign become a horse race incumbent barack obama against republican mitt romney if this is

really the case what are romney's chances in november obama may not be a president of substance but few doubt his ability to campaign and maybe even when . you. cross out the u.s. presidential race i'm joined by john mchenry in washington he's a partner and vice president of ayres mchenry and associates also in washington we have doug there now is a senior vice president at s k d knickerbocker and in dallas we cross the katrina pierson she is the executive director at watch the vote dot org and a board member at the dallas tea party or at crosstalk rules in effect folks that means you can jump in anytime you want between if i go to you first i mean after florida we have mitt romney again for the fourth time seen as the frontrunner for the republican nomination is going to stay that way. i don't think it's going to stay that way actually and what we are experiencing is this huge up and down

rollercoaster. you know newt gingrich is receiving endorsements right centaur i'm is receiving endorsements i think this race is going to stay divided for quite some time i do see this going all the way to the convention as it should be done what do you think about that i mean there is mitt romney got the big mo is he going to be able to sustain this. well right now he clearly does but i think the next month and it's going to be a challenging month for the other candidates because there's only one debate and we enter into the next contests three out of four of them are caucuses so you could you could see a situation was situation where someone like a ron paul who has a good organization does well and these are states that mitt romney did well in. four years ago but you know katrina is right only five percent of the delegates have been allocated we're a long way from this being finished and i think if there's anything that we can you know that that this contest has shown us is you know anything can happen and you

don't count i don't think you can count newt gingrich out at any point he just kind of has you know he just keeps coming back to life ok it's interesting john if i can go to you i mean mitt romney has a lot of money he has a good war chest and newt gingrich is struggled in getting money but he's you surprised that sometimes is money going to be the be all important factor like in this election for the for the republican nomination or is our other guest who said he could go either way still. well mitt certainly the favorite at this point partly because of the money and also partly because of the organization that he has he also has a very favorable schedule he's you know like a football team that has a bunch of patsies waiting in front of them he's got nevada which he did very well and four years ago that has a high mormon population that we would expect him to win and he's looking at michigan this month which is a state that his father was governor of and he's got the organization to do well in some of these caucus states ron paul obviously will target the caucus states and

try to do well in those but you know as the other guests have said anything can happen this year the last thing you want to do is go out and try to predict this but mitt certainly has a lot of momentum heading into these february contests katrina and for your political taste romney conservative enough for you. no absolutely not i don't even consider romney a conservative i consider him a moderate slash liberal who is running as a conservative which many tea party people have experienced in two thousand and ten and here's the problem that romney is going to face that he's never even grass any of the grassroots movement out there he has shunned that movement the republican party in some areas have shunned that movement and unfortunately for him that's the movement that gets the vote out ok i mean it's one of the interesting things is that when we look at the demographics of all of it romney it's still very problematic i mean he's mormon and a lot of evangelical christians would say agree with his religious outlook and in

the katrina is absolutely right in many ways i mean the grassroots you know that's where the the the voters are is he is he's strong enough with his credentials and his well documented flip flops that we'll talk about the november election if he gets the nomination i mean what is it i mean what has traction and remember we have an international audience here what is the attraction that republicans have with mitt romney because personally i watch him and he looks like a piece of cardboard. yeah he looks like something out of central casting right and the reason why he's doing well and you know john knows this probably better than anyone he's a pollster but you know in the polls right now they're showing that he's the one the republicans believe can be you know is their best chance to be president and that's the top criteria for a lot of the primary voters but once you get below that when you compare mitt romney to the other candidates on leadership qualities on some character issues

views on issues as katrina pointed out and so you know conservatives are very concerned about his past flip flops you know he's very thin and i think for democrats it into a general election you know we feel like we can contrast very well with the president and the president and mitt romney has taken different positions on health care on taxes on gay marriage. i mean it goes all the way down the list and for voters in uncertain times i think they want someone they think is going to shoot straight with them and the other thing i'd point out is this long primary so far as really hurt him polls have shown recently with independents in his favor ability numbers have dropped quite a bit with that key voting bloc in the overall electorate as well so mitt while winning florida has taken some serious damage and some serious incoming to his overall standing with the electorate that's not something he can be rehabilitated but it's going to be hard for him ok john i'll this show my political tasted

opinions ok and everyone can disagree with me if you want it's not even germane to the debate here but i mean these doing well because the rest of the people running the other contenders the republican parties are borderline before. that that might be a little bit harsh but i mean you tap into it but you tapped into something important us katrina is romney conservative enough and he may not be conservative enough for her but he is conservative enough for most of the republican primary voters in the sense that the appeal he has whether he looks like cardboard an out of central casting he seems like the safest choice and republicans see this year as a vitally important day you know that the evangelicals you talked about with the mormon faith and questioning that they see the fate of the free world riding on beating president obama in the fall you know it's vitally important to them to override the health care law that was passed in two thousand and ten and they will do they will nominate whomever they think gives them the best chance to do that and

mitt romney despite his flaws yes there was only has said he would not do the go ahead jump in. now i was just going to say that something that romney's said he can't do and he won't do i mean he's in the thing about the health care bill do you can do you can you know debate whether you like it or not but for mitt romney to have a debate with the president on the health care reform bill it's going to be laughable because the bill that the president signed into law was based almost entirely on the bill that mitt romney signed into law in massachusetts the individual mandate was in exchange and slowly i think he's not going to be able to make katrina jump and. you're right he's not even going to be able to make that argument and the question earlier is is a conservative enough i mean how could anyone call him a conservative when he himself has called himself a moderate the real deal here is the republican party trying to get the conservative grassroots to support the guy who lost to the guy who lost to

obama and so there's this endless cycle of you know it's your turn that's being shoved down the grassroots throat he's been running for five years he already has organization set up and all the states plus the backing of goldman sachs and the republican establishment and the guy still can't break fifty percent i don't think he would do well in the general ok john if you for the sake of the perfectly positioned he's perfectly positioned to be a general election candidate though because he is a little bit more centrist now maybe that's not my flavor maybe that's not katrina's flavor but he is better positioned. to a lot of republican primary voters as the man who they think they can trust to run the campaign as rick santorum said in the debate about a week and a half ago you're not going to go well and pick up the newspaper and say what new do today you know mitt romney's not going to go out and say i think we ought to establish the fifty first state on the moon and let's have a moon colony with thirteen thousand people there so that's the thing that you know

john you know this. is. i was just going to say the one thing that i've noticed in the last month or so is that mitt romney has not been as stable of a candidate as i think people had predicted you know he has made a number of verbal gaffes he was totally unprepared to release his tax returns he was called blindsided by his you know by explaining his experience at bain capital you can say what you want about that but his campaign wasn't prepared for it his campaign wasn't prepared for south carolina and the wapping in the in the defeat he took there from newt gingrich you know he lost iowa so if you look and if you look at jet and if you look at the current national polling in the republican primary. mitt romney is only up by four or five points on newt gingrich so you know the idea it's i think there is a chattering class inside of washington that wants to shut this thing down very quickly they don't think it so they don't want to they don't want to go on much

longer we are sensing that there's a lot of damage that's being done to romney but overall i mean i think if you look if you listen to katrina the grassroots doesn't want to shut it down right now let's listen to good training here. let me let me go to training or i should new drop out for the sake of the republican party or stay in to actually give romney. given it's a test for him because you know debating with and newt is hilarious ok because you never know what he's going to say and you sharpen your skills that way which way would you go newt stay in the newt go. oh i say new it stays in all the way to the convention what people don't understand is this is not a fight for our country against barack obama this is a fight for our country against the people versus the establishment elites and you see that when you have to drop eighteen million dollars into a state just to try to change public opinion of a different candidate and set of propping your own self up and i'll give you another couple of examples that most republicans don't want to admit that mitt romney is going to have to deal with in the general and it is

a simple fact that he is the poster child for the one percent in this country and judging by his latest gaffe yesterday about not worrying about the poor people that will haunt him in the general ok john you want to real quick before the break. well we've got a couple issues in there to talk about but the part about whether we should continue on for a couple more weeks a couple more days you know all the way to the convention before yesterday's gaffe i think it was pretty easy to say that mitt romney has been a much better candidate because of the hardening in the debates the fact that he really had to fight for to show that he really wanted to stand up to new push back on them a little bit he's really been a much more candid or i'm going to jump in here we're going to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the u.s. presidential campaign state pretty. much any.

old means of protection can be used. when global supremacy. between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine u.s. is spent fifteen billion dollars in the price to pay for the entire program that we are dealing with right now here in two thousand and eleven is another one hundred fifty billion dollars that's larger than many country's entire military budgets went on things because the best for. its. own.

to. see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then. you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you. are welcome to the big picture.

market. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my far no holds. headlines. welcome back to cross talk i'm talking about the november face off.

ok katrina let's talk about the general election here let's assume on this program for the time being and i agree with you we've seen a roller coaster with this this campaign and with the republicans but let's assume that romney is the nominee ok number one well the democrats the republicans come out and. go vote for him even if they don't like him too much he's he's not conservative enough and if he's strong enough to beat barack obama what do you think. well i'm not sure right now if the election were today it's possible but i think with mitt's recent behavior and the debates towards conservatives it's probably going to turn some people off we do have contended senate and congressional races out there it's been the chatter that i hear that people if mitt romney becomes the nominee they will go and support those other races so i'm not so sure he would get help in that side and if he did become the nominee we have to look at one of the differences between mitt romney and barack obama with the

exception of brock wants to reform wall street and mitt romney wants to prop up wall street other than that they both support tarp they both support stimulus they both believe a manmade global warming they both agree and a timetable of troops withdrawal i mean i'm trying to figure out if i'm out there and i'm trying to figure out who to vote for next year i want to vote for the guy whom i already know and what he's going to do or do i vote for a guy that's going to come in into a world where everything is in chaos civil unrest in countries all over the bashar al assad instead it is about to explode and do i really want someone in there with on the job training especially if the economy is taking up since mitt romney's one big trick pony issue is the economy who when i support him the question is i simply don't know very articulate very interesting don't what it what about you i mean is this is going to say is very very interesting to me there's similarities between

the two candidates is that but at the same time barack obama if this is the case and i think it's a good analysis we want to vote for the real thing why that was vote for him pasta romney he's changed his opinion on so many things look at me were the same about four more years. well i think the president is going to be able to make some very sharp contrast with with mitt romney i think you have a you have two candidates one candidate you know you have the president who you know put forth has put. ford a plan that really do deals directly with the middle class and i think mitt romney there's a perception out there that you know his focus is on you know really the top one percent protecting tax breaks for them for the for corporations he had this huge gaffe yesterday where he said he didn't care about the very poor people he has you know history and i'm not casting aspersions here on the private equity world but you know he does have a history there he has accounts in the cayman islands all these things that make him seem

a little bit unusual i think to most voters. in these people and like that ok feel free to write a lot i mean along with i think record you know he was forty seventh in job creation in massachusetts so he's going to have a really tough i think a record to explain himself but look the bottom line is we're a very divided country and this campaign is going to play out across you know eighteen twenty two battleground states and i think it's going to be very close and the president needs to be very prepared i think he is but i i do think in the last month or two i think democrats have got you know the the concern about mitt romney has been reduced a bit because we've seen over the course of this primary that you know he's not as he's not as powerful as i think many people thought he would be you know john i get the impression sometimes that obama's not so much worried about someone like me but he's actually more worried about people that are he's disillusioned from two

thousand and eight to the president a lot of i mean we know that there was a lot of enthusiasm form when it when he was elected during the campaign campaign and i've seen a lot of that enthusiasm dissipate and particularly again i have an international audience here obama's foreign policy looks very different very little difference with the bush foreign policy actually even more neo-con for again outsiders looking in. sure and one of the ironic things about the obama presidency is that people thought he might be fine on domestic policy and would be an absolute nightmare on foreign policy i think most conservatives in the country and a lot of independents would say it's been quite the reverse that they're not happy with obamacare they're not happy with dodd frank which is the financial regulation bill but they've been very pleased with the way he's continued to keep it movin for the noncombatant detainees or for the combat detainees he's you know he was the one who called the shot on going and getting osama bin laden so most independents would

probably say that he's done better on foreign policy. but one of the groups that you talked about that it seems like they've been disillusioned or for him just did a survey of hispanic registered voters in florida couple weeks ago with resurgent republic and they in in obviously very important state florida typically determines the election forty six percent of hispanic voters who voted overwhelmingly for barack obama fifty seven percent of them supported him in two thousand and eight in florida forty six percent said it was time for someone else forty five percent said he deserves reelection and that's a key group that if he doesn't do better with hispanics i don't see much chance for him winning reelection between if i go to use talk about another candidate i could be right his. head in that i want to talk about ron paul i was just going to say. just going to say john john's right hispanics are a key group but you have to also remember. barack obama wasn't matched up against mitt romney there and i think mitt romney you know many of the you know the way in which he has been very hostile i think to the hispanic community perceived

hostility towards them you know he has no real immigration reform plan that has that will play a role in the general election the republicans being against the dream act opposing sort of my or you know there are a large number of issues that are important to this man a community that when they're pitted when he's pitted against a living breathing human being you know those numbers will i think dissipate he may not do as well as he did in no way as long as they any republican is going to do to well. john you well as if we look back at two thousand and four george w. bush won forty four percent of hispanics now a lot of change since then but part of the problem for president obama it's not just enough to say well look at me compared to new look at me compared to romney. those people just might stay home and that's a key problem for him if the young people are disillusioned and they stay home and hispanics stay home to any significant degree then that puts him in jeopardy even if he still continues to do relatively well among those who turn out ok when you

guys always read the same to george very. good point everyone agrees with what happens between if i go back to dallas let's look at ron paul here because i've watched some of the debates on you tube and when he when they introduce him i mean there's a really charged crowd small but loud ok who's more afraid of ron paul romney or obama. let's say he goes if he goes only runs i'm only a third party you know an independent. right if he does i mean see i don't think he will because then that would hurt rand paul in the senate so i we can probably be very comfortable that ron paul will not run a third party but his supporters could indeed determine who the actual winner of the primary is if it does go down to the convention and that's very important because his people have been waiting on this day for a very long time they've paved the way to put up ron paul or rand paul and ron

paul's place when his when his dad finishes and they have delegates they are the ones who are going to those caucus states positioning themselves to be delegates so even though rick santorum might have won iowa my i bet you ron paul has the most delegates out there so i think mitt romney should be really worried about ron paul if he decides to throw his delegates to someone else at the convention what you think about the. play and the rest of the campaign here. well it's going to be really important i think if mitt romney becomes the presumptive nominee it's going to be very important how he treats ron paul supporters you know there's a i think you know i look at this contest and i look back to two thousand and four where you had a insurgent candidate howard dean who had a lot of support and love from the grassroots and then you had a kind of a you know you had the kind of the candidate of the of the part of the kind of the party bosses in john kerry and it's very important to you know it was very

important how john kerry reached out to at that time to bring them into the fold i'm not sure if he did a very good job but that's the sort of you know it's an analogy to this time where i think it's going to be very important how mitt romney makes those overtures and there's a chance that they may stay home i mean you know look they clearly have a gender that i don't think really is in line with what mitt romney wants to do and there's not a they don't necessarily go to obama either i think many of these people or a neighborhood with ron paul his message is a very strong libertarian message and it doesn't really fit with what mitt romney is saying about you know protecting huge tax cuts for you know huge corporations and millionaires and billionaires ok i tend to think that the republicans and democrats. i would like to add to that though. not only that but i think you might say the ron paul people get engaged if mitt romney is the presumptive nominee simply for a couple of reasons the political landscape is very very different and you have had

republicans out there campaigning to expand the terrorism the war on terrorism which is strange if the war is over and the troops are coming home they have passed the bill to legally detain a united states citizens indefinitely and mitt romney said he supported that and i don't know they may come out against him ok john i'm going to give you the last word on this program and maybe you can make some history here we had soccer moms in the past i mean is there a category out there that you are looking at that is coming. deploy you know that you know uncle's to drink beer i mean what is there a category out there that you think that can swing things one way or another that uncles who drink beer is a pretty broad category that it's almost like saying men. one of the interesting things that we found in our polling is we you know we've talked a lot in the past about how union workers people who are part of a union support democrats overwhelmingly. what we've seen in the last year

especially through the two thousand and ten cycle now into two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve there's a very distinct difference between the union workers who work for the government typically teachers oftentimes other government employees versus the private union workers who work for a car company and work in a factory those folks those blue collar folks who are private union employees tend to are more likely to vote republican this year than they have been in the past and i'd say you know the republican nominee probably does very well among that group if they split up between really the right and up on those loans very interesting discussion we'll keep our eye on the campaign many thanks to my guest today in dallas and in washington thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember. anything. you want to.

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