well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture seventy members of congress have told wall street to back off but they try to bring down the rising presidents also today maybe super tuesday but is the time republicans write off the presidential election and listen quietly if you're careful you can hear the support being circle right out of the limbaugh empire.

now the other big news of the day super tuesday is here and couldn't come any sooner for the republican party establishment a new n.b.c. wall street journal poll is out showing that this primary season is taking a toll not just on the individual candidates themselves but on the republican party brand altogether forty forty percent of americans say the primary has given them a less favorable view of the republican party and when asked which party they like to see running congress next year forty six percent of americans so the democrats versus forty one percent who said republicans that's right it's up just fifteen months for the republicans to we're out there walking in congress even barbara bush the last of the republican primary saying this on monday. and i think the worst campaign i've ever seen in my life i just hate it i hate the fact that people think compromise is

a dirty word. and then there's joe scarborough this morning wracked with a spear over the choices confronting his party. basically. three choices. they can vote for a guy they basically drafted obamacare something that they have campaigned against for three years. and my guy wants a debate about contraceptives. or newt gingrich is newt gingrich. that's all i get to say. it's almost in tears so given the hating coming from barbara bush and joe scarborough the republican establishment is hoping that tonight when eleven states take to the polls and four hundred twenty four delegates are up for grabs that a clear nominee will emerge to put an end to the republicans being forced to tell the american voters their real agenda is and the guy likely to be the nominee is mitt romney is expected to win at least four primaries tonight plus

a lot of victory in ohio the most important state up for grabs tonight even if romney is the guy he's damaged goods to with an approval rating of just twenty eight percent now the lowest for any politician who went out to claim his party's nomination so just how super is today's tuesday anyway and is it about time for republicans to write this year's presidential election off as a loss and move on to protecting their majority in congress by changing the question away from their religion to profit ties in medicare selling off our roads water and reels your offer their takes jeff poor reporter with the daily caller and karl fresh progressive strategist syndicated columnist and partner will fight strategies gentlemen well it took so it looks like a game has taken georgia and so now people can just pull up to the pump and. just i mean i guess for two fifty as well use is going to have to do a little more than just take georgia to see the gas what's what's going to the

magic the magic. and he does have a big night tonight i think it's at the southern strategy but then so what happens . that mississippi alabama so. it looks to me karl like this is this is going to be in its night. this is when my re favorite reality show of the season g.o.p. survive i think it's coming and it's also one of his big kicked off the island i've kind of been chomping at the bit i'm not sure any of them are going to kick off the island right now regardless of how well or how poorly he does or whoever does well in whatever state there's no incentive for any of these candidates to get out of the race number one thousand nine hundred two jerry brown went on to win states well after the field had you know left the playing field for clinton so these candidates most of them have won of at least one state and there's no there's nothing to keep them from staying in mitt's not going to make them his vice president he's going to put them in the cabinet because they're all tarnished if he should win the only thing they get out of this is to continue selling books maybe

get a fox news contract and bolster their credentials for a second obama administration when they can go around the country massive when piles of money whether it's doing television radio writing well this is the other thing that they get out of that mess the same thing jerry brown got out of it when he was following bill clinton around and that is he was pushing jerry brown is pushing bill clinton left these guys are pushing this rock mitt romney the right now getting him to take positions that he's going to have to hold to where he's going to grow grover norquist it's not quite and it's a good thing because he's not being pushed to the right he's already been on the right it's just that at one time he was also on the left so that's a little different to those these candidates all vast majority issues probably have the same positions and except for ron paul they don't want to really stay in the race to kind of push these candidates a certain direction is ron paul so you know that spot at the convention in tampa that's just about to put you know he thinks he's going to be a kingmaker i think he will and i. will tell supporters lined up behind a guy i can't see that happening i mean i can see ron paul supporters falling in

line like that either does that mean that he's going to be but you know is he there in this to support his son is he in this. to have an independent voice or is he just in it to make a statement he said to make a statement i think the part with him and assad is more of a thing where he's not going to interfere in the process after it's already settled to run as a third party i think it is and then i think this statement is more of a whisper at this point i mean we were told months before the elections got going and just after the initial iowa caucus new hampshire primary south carolina that you just wait ron paul is going to come from behind he's the king of the caucuses it's all about organization caucus after caucus after caucus it looks like it's probably going to have a good night in virginia because there's nobody else on the ballot i think romney yes the number three number two but i don't know what that's worth i mean this is stupor tuesday we've all we've all been watching this drama unfold and one thing has become clear this negative campaigning these tens of millions of dollars in corporate money and candidate money. paid towards negative advertising has done one

thing for these candidates it is ruining them in the eyes of independent voters that are going to be necessary to win the general election which raise it romney thought it was hard to beat these guys wait until he faces obama well this raises a really important question and that is if all of this you know. gingrich was riding high comes into town spends a couple million bucks and all of a sudden gingrich gets trashed santorum is riding high romney comes into michigan outspent them six to one suddenly santorum gets crashes is that mean that when obama is riding high and romney comes in and he's got thirty forty billionaires behind him out of wall street and he's already he's already raised you know had fifty eight thousand bucks in a super pac run at over thirty million i mean you know will they will will that work is he going to be able to track obama's travel more and more tools and to watch to deal with. pain into a box not the super pac two or even not two but i think i think we'll see what

we're watching right now i think you'll see these these candidates sort of unify not just processes but here's the thing that mazes if you look at. at the at the primary the hillary clinton barack obama everybody was saying this made both these candidates stronger candidates and the reason why was because they were talking about the issues and saying well i want national healthcare no i want national health care medicare party you know i want to single payer you know if they were trying to one up each other in the beginning which is the negative on each other person well but i'm going beyond that they were they were laying out the issues classic traditional democratic issues and saying i'm better at this no i'll do more of that i'll do that more that the republicans are doing the exact same thing with republican issues privatized medicare all in all i'm going to privatise so security why don't you read both up oh i'm going to privatized the schools i want to privatized the road so i think we should project their water systems and you know they're telling truth i mean these are the republican issues and the american people are horrified doesn't this tell us something about about you know the state

of republican politics that when people hear the actual republicans saying they're actual truths which is what happens in primaries that other than the base everybody goes oh i think it might be a little bit of exaggeration what happens in these campaigns i mean these primary fights as they do you they gravitate toward whatever ideological edge of the spectrum they're on and in a more or less once a settled moderate come to the middle and that's where you'll that that's that's where the voters will start tuning in and this will be like a distant i can't imagine what it would be like for something like stentorian to moderate in a general election i think it probably just decide to talk less about gay people than i do and i'm a gay man and that would be an improvement for him but he has done that actually in the past you know when he was running for the senate he was he was when he was really running he was trying to be the moderate he was trying to but he pulled it off but the economics that he proposes are not in slightest moderate and i think you're right that this thing gets dragged to the right so much that it exposes

especially the longer it goes it exposes this to the best number of voters who may not even to be participating in the primaries these people are not. republicans that could vote republican for a general but are going to vote republican primary scene this fundamentally though one of the reasons that mitt romney has been able to survive as all these other candidates have gone up and down is because of the professionalism of his staff a lot of professional republicans who go in and run top notch campaigns have sat out the cycle before work for romney so you've got a cast of bumbling fools who have second tier campaign organizations who can't quite get it together so they don't know how to harness a wave when they get new support they don't know how to fight back when they're under attack romney's campaign has been able to do that and that's why he's been able to stop the hemorrhaging but never writes he's always been at twenty five thirty percent popularity within the party and that's why he'll never go above it with the base they'll vote for him out of an obligation to the party just like they do when they pick their nominees since one thousand nine hundred eighty four there

were only good two republican nominees that did not run at least once for president george w. bush and barry goldwater that's very interesting and jeff. today senator lisa murkowski. said. that she regretted having voted on the well what's the point they're going to thank you. and she's in no she's like talking about rush limbaugh and all this but in the context of the republican war on women you know that she she feels really bad that she did this she said the wind shifted republicans didn't have enough sense to get off of it you think that this that that limbaugh is damaging the republicans and i just think this is a distraction i think i will get to the general campaign season we won't we will remember now in my view why should the obama camp jeremiah wright after the first idea came around we might be wise for the obama campaign to keep us alive you know

these social issues alive but i i don't think the rush limbaugh thing it takes you know where we have every right should keep it alive and it should be kept alive this is the kingmaker of a. republican party this is a man who took credit for electing george w. bush george h.w. bush in one thousand eight hundred eight and in one thousand nine hundred four republicans took congress he was made an honorary member of congress by the republican freshman class he has every right to be kept alive on this and the examples that people have given for his attacks on sandra fluke are at the top of the iceberg i went back in the archives and i found hundreds of examples of him saying sexist things about not only hillary clinton but the shell obama even lisa murkowski said he must she must go to the same boat talks doctor that nancy pelosi goes to or at least they're sharing needles this is a man who was unrepentant and the only reason he's apologized this week is because he saw his advertisers leaving him and two stations dropped him the only way that republicans will get around this issue is if they confront this head on he's a leader in their movement and the best that these republican presidential candidates could muster was i wouldn't use those words i mean what was romney going

to say instead harlot we have to see we have just thirty seconds of democrats want to run against rush limbaugh more power to them i don't see how that's a winning strategy to win the white house i think if you run against rush limbaugh you run into all kinds of problems but you still got romney over here who could probably pull away from us why is it he's been able to they want to make this all about it that's you like a loser we'll see how it plays out and i think jeff your point that november is an eternity away from the source of what your view is so there's a lot of love to go jeff carl thank you both for being with us tonight my take on super tuesday and later tonight stately take. after the break the real story about rising gas prices congresswoman jan schakowsky joins me in just a month. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and she told the truth. i

mean i mean. i love that. because he is a liar and. he was kind of the jester. i'm very proud of the world without you she has her place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

for. getting to know this in a press conference today at the white house president obama was asked about rising gas prices here's what he had to say what i have also said about gas prices is that

there is no silver bullet and the only way we're going to solve this problem. over the medium and long term is with all of the above strategy so we're going to look at a whole range of measures including by the way making sure that my attorney general is is paying attention to potential speculation in the oil markets we have asked him to reconstitute a task force that's examining room when it comes to oil speculations roll and rising gas prices however seventy members of congress are not waiting for the attorney general act this week a letter was written to commissioner scott o'malley i'll be commodity futures trading commission calling on him to have mediately put into place regulations to curb excessive oil speculation on wall street a lot of red we have a responsibility to ensure that the price of oil is no longer allowed to be driven up by the same wall street speculators who caused a devastating recession are working families are now experiencing that letter was signed by seventy members and of congress including one joining me now from capitol

hill congresswoman jan schakowsky representing illinois ninth district congress one woman welcome thanks tom glad to be here thanks for joining us what's the real story behind the rising oil prices and gas prices well let me tell you what it is it's not it is not about supply and demand the supply today is greater than it was three years ago when oil gas prices were a dollar ninety cents a gallon and the president has actually quadrupled the number of wells that are operating right now and production is at an eight year high and demand is actually down it's at about a seventeen year low. right right now and so it is speculation has a lot to do with that those conclusions come from the likes of goldman sachs exxon mobil a analyst from oppenheimer and company anywhere between they estimate between

twenty two and thirty percent of the cost of gasoline is due to speculation people who are. not going to use the oil but are just all street gamblers like we saw in the housing market and and so that means that as someone who owns a small compact car could spend as much as seven dollars and thirty cents more at the gas because of the speculation when they fill up their tank when most americans hear about speculation you know their eyes roll whereas the slogan drill baby drill is really easily understood i mean it's a basic bumper sticker slogan how do you win this debate when your. bill or democrats in general when this debate when you're using you know logic and truth but you're using words that aren't so familiar and the other side is using slogans that the people think they understand well because that when you talk now about wall street speculators i think people get enough of the sense that that's what's

going on that somebody out there is out there just betting on things that are making them pay that the higher price so so i do think that that people understand that it's not just drill baby drill that when you talk about wall street speculators their eyes don't glaze over they know that they have been abused by wall street before congresswoman i my understand of the dodd frank bill is that it said you know there were some specific laws or or pieces to it and there were a lot of pieces that were sort of yet to be written and some might be written by congress some by be written by by the c o t c and others are you asking the commodity futures trading commission to enact a law that was already passed by congress as part of god frank or are you asking them to use an authority that they have under dodd frank to to begin a process and if so what is that which which of those two is though the dod frank

bill the bill that regulated wall street may have dated. the s c f t c actually sat a limit on how much speculators can invest in. oil in oil trading and it said that one trader can't invest more than twenty five percent of the available market which seems very high and bernie sanders things that's a bit too high he's the one who initiated this letter so they're already have that authority and in october of two thousand and eleven they set up a limit but they have not moved further to and nack this proposal that they made that many months ago and we're saying step dragging your feet let's get a good regulation let's limit the positions that these speculators can take and not a left let them get in in

a place where they can manipulate the market actually raise the price hold back some of the oil and wait for a time when the prices go up you know it was a time when only about thirty percent of the actual investors were speculators the rest were end users like airlines and truckers that actually use the the gasoline but now seventy percent of the investors are speculators wall street speculators and they're making up they're making a bunch of money while the rest of us are paying the price at the given the wall street speculators i mean that that free. and that reality are probably if you were to do a poll they'd probably rank right up there with pornographers in terms of popularity why is this not a bipartisan issue why are the republicans not going after the wall street speculators like you are. and you know it seems like you are near to their benefit

to be seen as standing up for the little guy well you would think but let's let's. remember that these are the very same people that would like to repeal all of the dodd frank bill the tried to prevent this the housing collapse that we all face that brought down almost brought down the entire economy and our part of their crusade is to absolutely repeal about legislation it's quite remarkable we have seen that the. the the republicans have been the side of the oil companies and now the speculators wall street all the time all the way and and so it's really not that surprising that we can't get the republicans to join us in saying let's get the wall street speculators they'd rather claim barack obama they'd rather say it's about drill baby drill even though we're drilling more were importing less we you know have greater supply than that than we actually need

right now and so i'm not surprised one bit you know so they're just playing politics congresswoman in the half a minute we have left do you think that the sea of t.c. is going to respond favorably to your to your letter well i think so i think that the pressure that we're putting on them will will have an effect and you know we all agree there are there are lots of things that we could do we could and we could restore the. investment tax credit for wind power there's a lot of things we could do to fulfill the president's budget that all of the plan for. energy in our country that speculation is a big part of it we're not giving up on the spite it's great congresswoman jan schakowsky thanks so much for being with us and for the great work you're doing thank you you know we need to end predatory capitalism like this and make wall street once again a boreen and reliable industry. crazy

alert maybe they were trying to find me mo researchers from new york university have discovered that robotic fish are just as capable of leading schools of fish as the real living things in nature nature fish at the front of a school beat their tails at a greater rate than the rest of the pack voting with their tail movements more vigorously for a particular direction of movement so the other fish you don't have such a strong opinion follow about the robotic fish used in the experiment took on a leadership role with a school of fish in their tails at a greater frequency like will fish based on this finding scientists when they hope to use robotic fish to help lead real fish away from environmental disasters like oil spills and rumor has it the robotic fish are actually from the planet aqua nude the sister planet of xenu looks like the fish are teaming up with the pigeons to take over the earth.

your take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments ranson observations about anything we talk about here on the big picture or during my radio show our first comments and i comes from an anonymous caller on our viewer rant like he had some less than friendly comments regarding the rush limbaugh situation take a listen. baby who you should rope. please please you can brush away twenty five years is she right is this a history the right is you know you have no talent to pay. you don't get rushed you cancelled eight years what happens he's got ten more sponsors why you left wing. bill boy you showed your baby out.

anybody says a you don't like you go for the throat you go for it it's part you our feel good that we can't rush here you know worry about getting your own education and a lot of how much you turned out just like. you seem to have an opinion frankly i'm not interested in getting right i think russia is doing a fine job of getting and sell and i'm one of the people who has not called for people to stop advertising on the show i you know this is this is the free market this is the this is reality this is the business that we're in and we'll see how this plays out but i think that what you're seeing is the american people seen the face what at one point was called compassionate conservatism that it's not so compassionate i. don't call them your final count of the night also comes from our viewer rand line steve brought up a different way to think about the birth control debate here's what he had to say

why is nobody bringing up the overpopulation problem and encouraging birth control is good for all our planet has reached a tipping point because of overpopulation and we need to encourage reasonable perth control it sure beats a right wing nutjob way of killing by denying health care and financial aid to children and people in need. ok here's the point the availability of birth control is a smaller dimension of a larger issue which is women having our women having power over their own bodies women having power in society well what you find when you look across the world is that those cultures where women have relatively equal power with men population stabilizes in those cultures where what women even with a veil birth control or women have very little power relative to men population explodes this is really a power issue overpopulation by the way it and of and and not just

a power issue but it's a demonstrates the need for us to empower women around the world and educate girls around the world or population is a topic i talk about my book with tom hartman we're going to send it autographed copy so you can learn more about it that's it for your take my take the night we like your comments and questions for in the segment a big picture and would like to have a chance all right to get one of our books listen up we want to know your take send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two to three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off its all welcome remember that your comments may be used on the air.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. think you understand it and then a glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize that everything is. welcome to the big picture.