gwen: if you like playing scrabble, this was your week, in politics, on capitol hill, and, soon, at the supreme court. it was all over the place. we talk about it all, tonight on "washington week." >> now is not my time. >> you don't need a title to make a difference in this country. i think that i'm proof of that. gwen: so that's who's out. what about who's in? herman cain is enjoying a boost in the polls. rick perry's raised $17 million in less than 60 days, and mitt romney is taking on the president on foreign policy. >> if you do not want america to be the strongest nation on earth, i am not your president. you have that president today. gwen: 100,000 new jobs created last month, but not enough, as the standoff over the president's jobs bill intensifies. >> the question, then, is, will

congress do something? if congress does something, i can't run against a do-nothing congress. >> nobody gets everything they want. gwen: and the supreme court prepares to tackle issues of religion, indecency, immigration, and the constitutionality of the new health care law. covering the week, dan balz of "the washington post," jeanne cummings of bloomberg news, janet hook of "the wall street journal," and joan biskupic of "u.s.a. today." >> award winning reporting and analysis covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capitol. this is "washington week" with gwen ifill, produced in association with national journal. corporate funding for washington week is provided by -- >> we know why we're here, to give our war fighters every

advantage. >> to deliver technologies that anticipate the future today. >> help protect america everywhere, from the battle space to cyberspace. >> around the globe, the people of boeing are working together to give our best for america's best. >> that's why we're here. >> additional funding for "washington week" is provided by prudential financial, norfolk southern, the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. all is now clear. two longed-for candidates have opted out of the race for the republican presidential nomination. and those in the race are starting to put all their

fundraising cards on the table. so the field is set, but the contest is not. first, to the opt-outs -- one a current governor, the other a former one. >> now is not my time. i have a commitment to new jersey that i simply will not abandon. that's the promise i made to the people of this state when i took office 20 months ago, to fix a broken new jersey. so new jersey, whether you like it or not, you're stuck with me. >> after prayerful consideration and a lot of discussion with the family, i concluded that i believe i can be an effective voice in a real decisive role in helping get true public servants elected to office, not just in the presidency. gwen: so that leaves the field to the candidates who are actually debating, raising money and preparing to challenge president obama, among them, rick perry and mitt romney, each gave high-profile speeches today.

>> our first order of business to getting america working again is sending our current president to the private sector. >> this is america's moment. we should embrace the challenge, not shrink from it, not crawl into an isolationist shell, not wave the white flag of surrender, nor give in to those who assert america's time has passed. that is utter nonsense. gwen: so who did more to set the stage this week? the people on the stage or the people who weren't, dan? >> it was a little bit of both, actually. the decisions by governor christie and governor palin ended this long period of the kind of will he, won't she get into the race and people looking more to the sidelines than the real candidates in the race so that helped to clarify clearly what the field is going to be. this is still a volatile race and we see it in the current round of polling. what we've seen in the last couple of weeks is rick perry, who surged to the top of the

heap when he got in the race in august, suddenly in a tailspin as a result of three not very good debates in september. in our most recent poll, he went from 29% in september to 16% this month. we've seen the rise of herman cain, the rise of michele bachmann earlier than rick perry. right now it's herman cain who picked up almost identityical number of points has rick perry lost so there's a question of what's going to with the republican electorate and in part, the tea party folks. and sitting steadily there is mitt romney, who i think people think is the person to beat, but who hasn't been able to grow his support while the rest are moving around. gwen: while we're trying to analyze all of this, looking for objective ways to decide who is up and who is down, one is polling, and one is who is raising money. how does that measure against the poll numbers? >> they show that perry and romney are clearly still the front runners.

they are the only two who raised money where they can really compete hard in all four or five, now, of the early primary states. ron paul, however, is also in good shape and he doesn't show in the polls but he has a very loyal following. >> raised $8 million. >> yes, he raised $8 million in the quarter where i think it's almost double what he raised in the first quarter. so he's showing strength as he moves along. so cain said he's been helped not just with new polling, but financially, but his number is unclear. we don't know it yet. he sent out a message saying he's having -- he had his best quarter yet. >> what's behind that surge? dan, you mentioned that michele bachmann had her surge and that's gone. but why herman cain, why now? >> part of it clearly is the decline, for now, at least, of rick perry. he's benefited from that. but i think there's more to it than that.

herman cain has come across, not only in debates, but in front of republican audiences, as positive, as likeable, as somebody who has something to say. he has a catchy tax plan, 9-9-9, which on first blush sounds interesting and attractive. so he's used the debates a little like mike huckabee did four years ago, which is to draw attention to himself but do it in a way that makes people like him. he hasn't drawn any criticism from the others at this point. that may or may not begin to happen in the next debate, next tuesday in new hampshire. 'll see how much sustainability he has and as genie pointed out, there is a question of whether he has the infrastructure and financial wherewithal to go a long anderson. >> i'm curious, jeanne, where this sounds like a lot of campaigns where we've seen where there's always someone who excites the crowd and for a moment they seem exciting to the

base but what happens then? do they have the infrastructure? >> absolutely. and there's very little evidence that herman cain has built any kind of operation in iowa, which is expensive, because it takes a lot of people to make iowa work for you. you have -- and there's no evidence that he has enough money to buy ads to play in new hampshire or most importantly florida, now that it may move up. gwen: and the straw poll? >> the florida move-up is so important in terms of the finance for candidates because to win in florida, candidates spend as much as $20 million. you say move up, they moved the date to? >> they moved the date to january 31st. so, but it can cost $20 million to just work florida, so estimates at the beginning of campaign season where that you needed $50 million to get through the first set of

primaries, well, that's true, and now you have to raise that $50 million a lot faster. you have to have it in the bank and you can't necessarily hope for a bounce out of new hampshire which could be two before florida to suddenly fill your coffers. >> the schedule of the primaries has moved up so much. we'll see debates and campaigning around christmas time. does that favor one or the other of the candidates? what impact does that have on the horse race? >> it certainly favors someone who's been through it before, which is mitt romney. it favors someone who has the money right now to begin to put up the advertising in whatever states. but beyond that, this calendar is a little bit trifurcated, i guess, in terms of who's advantaged. mitt romney is not really playing in iowa this year. he may in the end go in and try to steal something there but he hasn't put in place the kind of organization that he did last time. that state is now a state that

rick perry has to win, but so does michele bachmann. so we'll see what the competition is there. in new hampshire, governor romney's in great shape right now. he's at 37%. the next four or five candidates add up to 37%, so there's nobody close, but the history of new hampshire is one that can change dramatically and turn against a front runner. gwen: governor romney told my colleague on "newshour," who knows, maybe president obama will be primaried, the term this cycle for an incumbent drawing a challenger. maybe that's wishful thinking, but how is the president doing in terms of fund-raising and structuring himself as opposed to the republican field. >> he still is going to be way ahead of him. his campaign is not released its third quarter report but have not backed off of their estimate that they would raise a combined $55 million between the d.n.c. and the candidacy.

that would mean obama's take would be somewhere in the $25 to $30 million. and as it is right now, perry, who is going to be the fund-raising king of the third quarter for the republicans, has announced he raised $17 million, and romney is expected to come in at around $13 million. so the president will remain way ahead of the other side. >> let me ask you, then, getting back to the republicans and looking ahead to the general election, is this a stage where the republicans actually now they have their field set, do they look at them and think about who is most likely to beat obama or are they still thinking about these candidates like, more, what kind of republican party do we want to be? >> i think right now there's more of that and that's why there's been this volatility, particularly when you look at the internals of the polls of the tea party supporters. they've had a different candidate for the last three months and they're moving around so there's a little bit of

head/heart tension going on within the republican electorate. as you get closer to the iowa caucus, new hampshire primary, south carolina, nevada and florida, at that point, electability becomes a bigger factor in people's minds. we've seen it in the past. john kerry in the 2004 democratic race overtook howard dean in large part, i think, because people felt in the end he would be a tougher general election candidate against president bush. >> and i think that some of the volatility in that primary is contributing to something we're not seeing, which we typically do around the third quarter fund-raising figures, and that's when the field will clear out. gwen: nobody's dropping out. >> nobody's quitting even though we know they cannot compete. there's only maybe three or four of them on the stage who will have the financial resources to actually compete. gwen: but if you're rick santorum, a couple of weeks ago, you were sitting in the men's room talking to herman cain, both complaining that no one called on you in the debates. now herman cain is getting his

moment. why drop out if you're rick santorum? >> i think that's exactly what's driving the phenomena in this cycle. and that is that bachmann had her moment, perry had a moment, now cain has a moment. if you're rick santorum, think, hey, i'm next. >> or gingrich or jon huntsman. look and say there may be a path for me if things break the right way. gwen: i have to ask, where is michele bachmann now. she was a big deal a minute ago. >> she was, and she is now -- in our post abc poll, she is at 7%. she's taken a tumble although she didn't drop much over the last month. she peaked the day she won the iowa straw poll and has gone down since and she's staking everything on iowa. if you talk to her now, she essentially says iowa is the game. gwen: and she's losing staff as she goes along, shedding people, which we assume is a money issue. thank you both very much. it's safe to say, none of the

republican presidential candidates are fans of the jobs bill president obama has been pushing these last few weeks, but neither the president's insistence, nor a new round of tepid, but not disastrous, jobs numbers, seem to be breaking the political log jam. one senator thursday week it's precisely the politics causing the jam. >> i remember well one time when i was very little and i was fighting with my brother, every other minute, and my mother put us in a back room and said don't come out until you got it figured out. we stared at each other for a while but came out friends. gwen: this is not quite the same thing. she's talking about the super committee she's on, their ability to make work something out, but is that possible anymore on capitol hill? that everybody gets in a room away from the cameras and work things out? >> yeah -- the smoke filled back rooms just don't exist anymore. if they did -- i don't know whether they did. things have really kind of

devolved into a political brawl here that i got to say, call me naive. when the jobs bill debate started, i actually thought something might come of it, because when you looked at the time, in early september, congress came back from this recess and the public was hopping mad about the way they dealt with the debt limit. the economy continued to stall, and obama's proposal, when he came out with it in early september, it actually wasn't a totally in-your-face partisan bill. he pulled on ideas republicans might support and the seemed to be on their best behavior so at the outset it looked like something could come of it and it's completely unraveled since then. this week it really became clear, you know, eric cantor, the majority leader, said it wasn't going to come up in the house. it will come for a vote in the senate next week but everybody not going to pass. and everybody's focusing on the things they disagree on rather the things they agree on. gwen: if indeed they're playing

chicken, waiting to see who blinks, what are they basing this on? as you pointed out, everything we know shows people have lost patience with this kind of standoff but maybe they know something we don't? >> no. i think part of the problem is that, you know, unlike the other deadlines we've seen congress work up against, like the debt ceiling and the government closing, this is one that kind of nobody really knows what the solution is, i mean, there isn't a lot of confidence on either side in what their proposals are. so there's -- it's -- i mean, i think they've gotten to the point where they just think that they have more immediate impact in blaming the other side than in actually trying to get any one particular thing done. >> speaking of one particular thing, are there pieces that could be broken out that could help people throughout that maybe there could be unanimity on? >> yes, well, unanimity is a little much. >> majority. >> there are parts, i think once they get through this really partisan phase. they have to have their up or

down votes and blame each other for a while, there are parts of the obama proposal that republicans might be willing to support. there's a payroll tax break we're all benefiting from this year that expires at the end of the year and i think it will be hard for congress to allow that to lapse. obama proposed extending it and if they don't, we get a tax increase. >> one of the interesting things about this is there's division within the democratic party about the president's bill. why is that? >> there are different reasons for disliking different parts of it and democrats bring those things up. there are some conservative democrats who think that the overall proposal, which is $447 billion worth of spending and tax breaks, was too big, too reminiscent of the 2009 stimulus they have gotten hammered for. that's a small number of democrats. there are others who didn't like the proposals that obama put up to offset the costs, which were tax increases they didn't like. instead, they've replaced that with one monumental tax

increase -- i mean, one single act increase, a surcharge on millionaires as opposed to the little menu of tax increases that obama proposed. >> the president said at his press conference this week that he wasn't -- he didn't have a problem with that particular approach. gwen: he didn't exactly -- >> but he didn't say he'd veto it, either. did they only put it in to just take care of the piecemeal tax breaks that were in there that the democrats objected to? or was it political, that they changed the funding to be -- to turn it into a fight? >> there were two things. they wanted to maximize the number of democrats who would vote for the bill when it came to a vote and people from states with oil and gas didn't like raising taxes on oil and gas companies so they got rid of that. but the other thing is that there's a school of thought among democrats -- chuck schumer, the senator from new york, is the leading proponent of this, is you get a cleaner

political message if you say i am raising taxes on millionaires. it's simpler than saying for people who make $250,000 a year or more, we're going to limit your deductions on -- gwen: if you're going to do class warfare, go all the way, not that i'm saying it's class warfare. >> no, it's math. gwen: it's math. if you wanted any more evidence that autumn in washington is off to a rock 'em sock 'em start, look at the issues headed for the supreme court -- challenges on immigration, indecency, the healthcare law, warrantless searches, religion in the work place and the death penalty. and who better to preview it for us, what is it, drugs, sex and rock and roll, everything at the supreme court. joan biskupic. >> we find rock 'em sock 'em in many opinions these days. just think of what they already have. we have can the police afix a g.p.s. device to your car without a warrant and follow you around? what about cher and some of her

fleeting expletives that she blurted out at an awards ceremony, can that be sanctioned? we have a good case having to do with whether jailers can strip search anyone who comes in, even on a traffic offense. so we have a very good slate already of good cases and marching in the middle of the court's docket in the election year are two hot ones, one having to do with the constitutionality of the obama sponsored healthcare law, and the arizona immigration debate. both of those cases are likely going to be taken up by the justices in this term with rulings coming in june of 2012 as they head toward the election year. gwen: let me ask you about the healthcare one. that's not there yet. >> the appeals are there but the justices haven't yet agreed to hear it. gwen: so this would deal with both the obama administration and the states challenging this law, they both want them to

hurry up. >> they're saying take it up in the normal course of things and the justices have essentially until about january to set this term's slate of cases, and with both parties, as you said, coming in asking for it, especially the obama justice department saying, no more appeals in lower courts, let's come right now, i think the justices will take it. >> can i follow up on that, in that the appellate courts have split on this. is there any early tea leaf reading on what the supreme court may end up doing on this? or is it too difficult to anticipate? >> well, here's the deal, there is plenty of case law to support this mandate being held constitutional. as everybody knows, it's the individual mandate that says everybody has to buy health insurance by 2014. there's law out there that that the justices have ruled for that would support it but like everything else at the supreme court, you can find case law on both sides.

i actually think this might not be as tough for the court and could be upheld. we just don't know, with these nine justices who are so ideologically split. >> what about, the arizona law is just as politically hot as healthcare and with the new law that passed in alabama recently, we have states doing lots of different things on immigration. is the court consistent on that issue? >> that's a tougher one but i should tell you, jeanne, that's coming to us not as a straight constitutional matter having to do with racial profiling. she's referring to the law in arizona that was signed into -- i think spring of 2010, by republican governor jan brewer there, saying that if police suspect that somebody might be undocumented, his or her papers can be checked, and what the obama administration says, this could lead to racial profiling but the actual court case has to do with the division between state and federal power and what happened in lower courts is that

they blocked the effect of that law saying we think that the obama administration has some support on the merits, so if it comes up to the supreme court and they take it, it will be on a little bit more of a procedural one than racial profiling, so i think they could side with the obama administration on that, too. >> up on capitol hill this week, there was an unusual hearing where several of the justices actually came and testified at the judiciary committee and we don't see that very often. what did you think of that hearing? >> i was thinking about you when i heard justice scalia say, learn to love the gridlock, because he said, hey, in his way of saying, hey. gwen: janet already loves it. >> that, you know, face it, the framers of the constitution thought not everything should get passed. so, but it was -- senator patrick leahy and the senate judiciary committee had justice scalia and justice stephen breyer up there to talk about

the role of judges under the constitution and it turned out to be a lovefest, frankly. there weren't fireworks. gwen: but it's unusual for justices to testify. >> the scene of the crime is the senate judiciary committee when they're trying to get through the process and only a handful of times have justices returned to testify on something so we thought it would be a terrific moment. gwen: they're comparing who got the most votes out of the senate and i think it was scalia. we'll talk more of this. the conversation has to end here for now but we'll keep gabbing on the web. you can find our "washington week" webcast extra online at 11:00 p.m. eastern tonight and you can go into our vault and view our program from 10 years ago this week when president bush launched the war in afghanistan. find it all at pbs.org. keep up with daily developments on the "pbs newshauer" and we'll do our best to make sense of it all next week on "washington week." download our weekly podcast and

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