alex moe joining us from sioux city. good morning. >> how are you? >> i'm great.essage he is trying to hammer home in the last week? >> speaker gingrich is making a final push in warks, the third event of the day and 75 people approximately here and this is simple. he has the experience to rebuild the economy and make washington work again. >> is there any feeling among the campaigners of disappointment that he was so far ahead and positive talk about him a few weeks ago and he seems to have fallen behind. do you feel there is rearranging of how they handle things? >> not really. they are optimistic and saidç reporters that finishing in the top three or four is good enough for him. south carolina is the must win. he feels optimistic and still pulling a lot of large crowds. we have a lot to see if he can do well to finish in the top here. >> alex moe covering the gingrich campaign. thanks so much. in five days the first republican votes of the 2012 presidential race will drop in iowa. a state poll shows a surge behind rick santorum in 30 behind mitt romney and ron

alex moe is there and joins us by phone. how is he handling the slide in the latest poll?> the campaign is being pretty positive. the campaign is about to pull up in northwest iowa where they will continue to talk about the economic plan and has been telling warks that tell ing iowa even if he finishes third or forth which is where he is polling, he can be successful going forward. >> alex moe, thank you so much. let's go to the ron paul campaign. we have all the bases here in io.ñ on the phone with us, she on his way to atlantic iowa. ron paul has a new high profile endorsement at the cost hereof michele bachmann. >> he is expected in council bluffs and the former manager here in the state of iowa. they are rolling in now to show that the support is increasing and i met another woman who claimed he was in the county and cease momentum going towards january 3rd. congressman paul has rallied against the status quo and the establishment republicans and saying voters can send a message on january 3rd to show the country that people are coming his way. >> voters are okay on is

let's go to alex moe with the newt gingrich campaign.am. >> how are you? >> i'm good. thanks. >> bring us the latest of what's going on today, especially with a little bit of controversy oveç some of the things that newt gingrich said yesterday. >> i'm actually on the newt gingrich bus right now headed to our first event of the day. he has four events. he kicked off his bus tour in iowa yesterday morning. we're going to be doing all -- everything north of des moines over the next couple days. he's doing 22 stops here. like i said, he's going to be doing four stops today and we expect him to talk a little bit more about, you know, how he plans to win the iowa caucuses and, you know, possibly talk about some of the attacks that some of the other gop candidates have been hitting on him. >> you know, we're getting down to the wire here, and there's a chance that things could go any way in iowa. what if he loses badly in iowa? any word on what his next step would be? >> well, i mean, they're not necessarily saying that they're going to finish

alex moe was there. the latest poll that we were showing, he is in fifth at the moment and 35% of like lie caucus goers saying he would not be acceptable as the gop nominee. >> that's right, richard. newt gingrich was not himself today. he had an event today in des moines and he was rather flat and not as enthusiastic. he told a few jokes, but giving that typical stump speech while here at java joey's. he had an emotional moments with memories with his mother. he was written off as dead back in the summer. we have seen him overcome these things before, but we are going to have to wait and see if caucus goers will get past the negative ads they see here in mitt romney and the super packs and rick perry and ron paul. we will have to see if caucus goers are willing to allow them to go forward and see how he does in the early states. >> alex, thank you so much from java joe's. do mennico joins us now. let's talk more about that poll and we were just discussing newt gingrich and the huge plunge of 15 points f

. >>> alex moe, thank you so much. >> thanks. >>> president obama meantime is going to the map for theroll tax cut. in the critical week for congress, obama will deliver a major economic address tomorrow. part of his plan to step up the pressure to renew the tax cut set to expire on january 1st. nbc news correspondent kelly o'donnell joins me now. kelly, good morning to you. senate majority leader harry reid expected to unveil a plan on the tax cut. >> we know that it's not fully formed yet, chris. senator reid will have a conference call in a couple of hours to talk about the broad outline of what he's looking to do. it would extend the payroll tax cut and expand it to 3.1%. it's just 2% this year. there would be some elements taken from the super committee, ways to try to pay for that. things like selling off some government property. things that might appeal to republicans. it would still likely include some sort of sur fax on high earners and -- surtax on high earners. that would not appeal to republicans. it's not really a full compromise because we don't know of any republican su

alex moe, our nbc force.>> thanks. >>> up next, is there a republican rift in the house? >> any republican who will not admit to this or confront it and discuss it head-on is not dealing with reality. >> we're going to talk to a republican congressman who is calling out members of his own party over the debt debacle. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. makes sr smartphone's most powerful trading app ? total access - to everything. from idea to research to trade. including financials, indicators and real-time streaming quotes. whether you check your investments every day or every minute, our app can take them from thought to trade. at scottrade, seven-dollar trades are just the start. try our powerful mobile app. it's another reason more investors are saying... i'm with scottrade. . >>> good morning and welcome to "morning joe" my contacts are so annoying. i can't wait to take 'em out. [ male announcer ] know the feeling? try acuvue® oasys brand contact lenses with hydraclear® plus for exception

. >> many thanks weighing in alex moe.ulitzer prize winning author. she's on a biography of teddy roosevelt. i asked her where our political climate ranks throughout history. >> we hear about the partisanship and all the epic levels of this right now. nothing is getting accomplished, nothing moves forward and there seems to be true animosity from one side to the other. do you think there's another time in history where we have it at this decibel level? >> certainly, if you look back at the 1850s when congressmen and senators are carrying revolvers on to the senate floor and hitting each other over the head with such damage that one senator was out for two years. but in the last 40 or 50 years, however, i've not seen it as bad as it is now. i think what happened is it's got a lot to do with campaign finance. because these cache terharacter for dollars and go home -- it used to be they stayed in washington on the weekends, they would play poker together, form friendships across party lines. their wives stayed in washington.

alex moe, good to see you. >>> in the season of goodwill, the discovery of a gold ring in a salvationeer in spokane, washington, found it wrapped in a dollar bill and could not believe it. >> we could not believe it. is this real? would someone really do that? i must admit i thought, this sunday real. we took it down to the ju ewell and they was say that it was repayment that the salvation army gave her grandfather years ago. that's a great story. >>> hello, a good saturday to you. i'm bill karins. a nice quiet weekend for a forecast. a few showers through san antonio and florida and maybe a sprinkle or two in seattle. it's not even that cold anymore. we're beginning to warm things up. chilly around chicago and the great lakes and we start to warm up in the midwest tomorrow. have a great weekend. there's no charge for the bag. thanks. i know a quiet little place where we can get some work done. there's a three-prong plug. i have club passes. [ male announcer ] now there's a mileage card that offers special perks on united, like a free checked bag, united club passes, and priority boar

. >> alex moe, thank you so much. >>> if president obama's going to win re-election, he may have to dothout the support of a key group voters but can he? >>> it's time now for "office politics" and this week we took our cameras to concord, massachusetts, to visit doris kearns goodwin, pulitzer prize winner, and now at work on a biography of president roosevelt. to get into the minds of her presidents, she surrounds herself with walls of books. >> this home has history to it. you have built history into the walls of this home. is that inspirational for you? is it just natural for you? >> what the house really became was a house of books. we moved from another house to this house because we had too many books and they were floef flowing the other house. once we got here we decided to build extra rooms on so that books could be sort of organized. so, the room that we're sitting in right now became the library for abraham lincoln, for history, for biography. and then there's another whole room that's justification. it's actually organized from "a" the author to "z" the auter and a baseball

. >> nbc news campaign alex moe is following the story for us. good morning. his campaign director compared this to pearl harbor in 1941. they've got to be surprised here. what does this mean for the campaign practically speaking? >> i'd say, richard, the campaign said in a statement on facebook that this wasn't necessarily a catastrophic blow to the campaign, but like pearl harbor it was an unexpected setback. and the campaign manager said they're going to be able to regroup and refocus after the holiday. the campaign barely made it on the ohio ballot a couple of weeks ago and told the press they were on track to meet the deadline in virginia. obviously they weren't able to get 10,000 signatures verified. now only romney and paul are on the ballot and some are saying this is going to make virginia irrelevant as one of the front-runners isn't on. but it seems that the bigger story that then gingrich story was not able to get on and haven't put together the national campaign just yet. >> what are his options right now? there's legal, also an appeal, can they do