>> chuck todd will be a big part of our coverage all day tomorrow and all night tomorrow night. chuck, thanks. when we come back here after a quick break tonight, a genuine tragedy on mount rainier. a park ranger, a young mother of two, shot to death and the frantic search for the gunman. >>> and later, messing with a classic and some of the other stories you might have missed while trying to enjoy the holidays. that's why you should always leave the news to us. y >>> if you have ever vacationed in a national park then you know the park rangers are true public servants. they are not in it to get rich. for them, their job is a calling to serve the public and work in a beautiful place. it was a new year's day tragedy atop mount rainier in washington state when we learned a park ranger, the mother of two young children, was shot to death during a routine traffic stop to check for tire chains. then came a massive man hunt for the gunman, a search that appears to be over tonight. our report this evening from nbc's kristen dahlgren. >> reporter: it's known for pristine wilderness, but

ron, thanks. >>> we want to go to our political director and chief white house correspondent chuck todd. chuck, after all of this, so much of the eye tension now comes down on mitt romney, a well-financed political machine with a lot of well-financed friends, but a man who still isn't the choice of so many of the people who will be caucusing. >> think about the theme we have had tonight. we talked about volatility. we talked about surging candidates. one candidate has shown stability. that's both a blessing and a curse. it's mitt romney. look at this. 25%. that's the number he got on caucus night four years ago. the first des moines register of this cycle in june, he was at 23%. our last nbc news marist poll, 23%. the last poll, 24%. he has one issue here. that is three out of four iowa republican party activists essentially -- and that's who shows up to these things -- are not yet sold on mitt romney. now, if we see more voters that come in and say, it's time to pick a nominee, somebody to face off against president obama, that's good news for mitt romney. this is about connecting to t

first, let's go in with chuck todd. chuck? >> well, good morning, david. we asked folks what is the most important quality in making your decision? electability, can beat obama 41%, and mitt romney has a larger lead over newt gingrich. but romney leads in all of the categories, and in fact experience to govern can beat obama more than a majority, and that's where mitt romney does best. this issue of electablility showed up in the poll. mitt romney performed best of the three candidates. but look at this. rick santorum does better against president obama than newt gingrich, and we saw the same thing in the florida numbers, and this long campaign is taking a toll on the republican party. look at this. all three republican candidates have a net negative positive approval rating there on the personal numbers, and that's an issue they will have to deal with in the general, and that's why mitt romney needs to wrap this up sooner than later. >> chuck, thank you very much. we'll see you of course in a few minutes. >>> joining me now for a special debate, former pr

it shows the message they're sending, this will be a long, rough, tough campaign. >> chuck todd, david gregory, andrea mitchell, all part of our team covering our lead story tonight. thanks to all. >>> now to italy where divers are back at work searching that giant wreck of the cruise ship costa concordia, for the 21 souls still missing. we are learning more about some of them. nbc's michelle kosinski has the latest from the scene. >> reporter: crews approach the concordia from above lowering searchers and equipment on to what it is now, a vast waterlog maid still holding its victims and thousands of tons of fuel. all at risk as the ship continues to slide. divers with explosives to break through the hull, were able to return today, feeling their way to areas where they expect to find more victims, where passengers had gathered for rescue. >> very difficult scuba diving. today it is 25 meter under the starboard. >> reporter: each day more families arrive. suzy whose 5-year-old daughter diana is missing along with the child's father, both last seen slipping into the sea. family of ameri

nbc's chuck todd is here with us to break down the numbers. we want to begin first with the reporting of peter alexander in florida. >> reporter: brian, good evening to you. make no mistake right now, mitt romney is the heavy favorite going into tuesday's primary in florida. the bitter back and forth between romney and newt gingrich continues. today, romney was attacked by gingrich as dishonest and romney mocked gingrich back as desperate. >> what a welcome. oh, my goodness, you guys are amazing. >> reporter: with less than a day to go and the polls showing him with a commanding lead. >> this is fun what a day this is. with a turnout like this, i'm beginning to feel we might win tomorrow, what do you think? >> reporter: a confident mitt romney is dismissing his rival newt gingrich. >> i know, it's sad. he's been flailing around a bit. trying to go after me for one thing or another. you watch and shake your head. it's been painfully revealing to watch. >> reporter: this morning on the "today" show, romney credited his campaign's new strategy to

that's an open question, lester. >> chuck todd. chuck, thank you very much. >>> brian williams moderates the republican candidates debate from florida tomorrow night at 9:00, 8:00 central here on nbc. >>> we learned today that one of the most legendary sports figures of the last half century has died. penn state football coach joe paterno whose legacy was forever stained by the scandal that cost him his job. he passed away early this morning after a short battle with lung cancer. and nbc's michelle franzen has reaction on the penn state campus tonight. michelle, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, lester. here outside the stadium, a steady stream of people have been coming to pay tribute all day, laying flowers and candles at the base of joe paterno's statue. this place and the man many say symbolizes the heart and soul of penn state. along with grief throughout the day, there was also a strong showing of pride for this legendary football coach. >> joepa was our father, like everyone. he brought penn state together, really. so

chuck todd, let's talk about the president who seems to be traveling a stop on ahead of the gop primary schedule. >> he's got a bunch of stops next week, too. he was right here in florida in orlando. it was an "unofficial" visit to promote tourism. but his campaign, this is what makes this day amazing, another big story today was his campaign went up with their first ad and it was not a "morning in america" ad, that things are great, it was a defensive ad, a response ad to an outside group hitting the president on those cylindra bankruptcy. the message is this will be a long, rough, tough campaign. >> chuck todd, david gregory, andrea mitchell, all part of our team covering our lead story tonight. thanks to all. >>> now to italy where divers are back at work searching that giant wreck of the cruise ship costa concordia, for the 21 souls still missing. we are learning more about some of them. nbc's michelle kosinski has the latest from the scene. >> reporter: crews approach the concordia from above lowering search and equipment to what it is now, a vast waterlog maid holding its victims

msnbc's joe scarborough is here, and doris kearns goodwin is here as well as chuck todd.'t have homework today. it's what's right here is what is most important to me. it's beautiful. ♪ ♪ tle ♪ emotional hetlretl?tl aren't you getting a little industrial? okay, there's enough energy right here in america. yeah, over 100 years worth. okay, so you mean you just ignore the environment. actually, it's cleaner. and, it provides jobs. and it helps our economy. okay, i'm listening. [announcer] at conoco phillips we're helping power america's economy with cleaner affordable natural gas... more jobs, less emissions, a good answer for everyone. so, by reducing the impact of production... and protecting our land and water... i might get a job once we graduate. >>> we're back with our political roundtable. joining me the political director for nbc news, chuck todd, and doris kearns goodwin, and host of msnbc's morning joe scarborough, joe scarborough. and the race is 42% to 27%. how has romney done it? how has he put himself in a position to make florida the rebound state for him? >>

this year, of course, an election year, our political director, chief white house correspondent chuck todd has more tonight from the white house. and chuck, this is supposed to be a pretty lofty occasion. but let me ask it this way. how does what has been happening on the republican campaign trail and all these debates almost one a day we've been seeing, how does that affect the tone, tenor, content of tonight? >> what's interesting about this speech and everything we've learned about it is that there's a little bit of a tone. you're going to hear a populist president obama deliver a populist state of the union. aides tell me it's not necessarily a campaign speech, but it's certainly a setting of the political agenda. here's one excerpt. i will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place. no, we will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits. tonight, i want to speak about how we move forward and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last, an economy built on america

our chief white house correspondent and political director chuck todd, also in new hampshire tonight, has more on the news today out of washington. chuck, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. what happened here is, of course, chief of staff bill daley, who had already seen some of his duties trimmed back. he's been chief of staff one year and three days, but after the entire debt ceiling debacle, budget negotiations that never came to fruition, he had a deputy chief of staff take over the day-to-day duties. i'm told bill daley, home for the holiday, decided maybe it was time to go now. he already said he was going to go at the end of 2012. maybe time was now to issue that resignation. he did it. the president at first refused it last week, then bill daley said, no, he wanted to leave, so they announced it today. we don't know the motivation why they wanted him to stay, if it had more to do with not having one of these stories go public. replacing bill daley, the budget director jack lew who will not be involved in the campaign, but doing more of the management of the govern

for that we go to our political director chuck todd in manchester, new hampshire. chuck, good evening. >> reporter: well, good evening, brian. most of the republican candidates spun the new jobs numbers about the same. happy about the growth but critical of president obama saying his policies are slowing that growth. it's a crucial weekend ahead. this might be the last chance for republicans not named mitt romney to make their best case for what is now a race for second. seemingly confident of his chances in new hampshire, mitt romney started his day on the trail in south carolina. >> this president's failed the american people. >> reporter: he ignored gop foes and focused on president obama's jobs record, even as the new report showed some improvement. >> this president i don't think understands how the economy works. >> reporter: two new polls out today suggest romney is pulling away. in a brand new nbc news marist poll of new hampshire republicans, romney enjoys a 20-point lead. ron paul in second with 22% and rick santorum third. even in the more conservative so

we'll check in now with our nbc news political director chuck todd about what we know about why this race is so close right now. chuck? >> well, as you know, our boiler room down at 30 rock does a lot of different modeling and based only on precinct modeling. if you just get rid of the entrance polls. on the data that has come in, 0.3 of 1%. okay? separates first and third. and based on different models depending on what happens, any of the three appears it can win. we can also report that the entrance poll did overstate ron paul not by some significant of a margin and that is why you've seen some reporting people following on twitter feeds about where paul was and this or that. as we're seeing the actual data come in it's showing that romney and santorum were under represented in the entrance poll and paul was over represented. now remember, it is an entrance poll. and because it's an entrance poll it is possible people went in thinking they would vote one way and got talked into it. the other thing to keep in mind is the most organized campaign gets people there early and in this ca

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this thing is not over, brian. >> stay on the story, chuck todd in south carolina, thanks. >>> today in washington the secretary of defense addressed what some are calling an epidemic, rape inside the u.s. military. he promised new steps to fix one of america's shameful secrets just two days before a new documentary on the subject premieres at the sundance film festival. we'll get more from jim miklaszewski at the pentagon. >> reporter: it's a startling statistic, women in the military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than attacked by the enemy. a powerful new documentary "the invisible war" captures the horror of military sexual assault. >> i remember holding the closet thinking, what just happened? >> a month later, i found out i was pregnant. >> reporter: there were more than 3,000 reports of military sexual assault last year. since many go unreported the pentagon estimates the actual number is a staggering 19,000. defense secretary leon panetta. pledged today protecting service members from sexual assault is a top priority. >> we have a moral duty to keep them safe

we turn to our political director chuck todd in our d.c. bureau. gingrich seems to be winning over the republic at-large in the party right now. >> reporter: at least republicans nationally. we matched them up in a two-way race with mitt romney. his lead actually grows to 52/39. let me explain why he does it. his advantages are among the core of the republican party. among conservatives that call themselves very conservative, he leads by 39 points. among those folks who call themselves southerners, it's 37. tea partiers, 35-point lead. our poll shows if gingrich is the nominee, he's got a huge hill and perhaps mountain to climb to match up against president obama. he trails 55-37, an 18-point gap. even rick santorum matches up better to president obama than gingrich. mitt romney trails obama six points. the big reason for this general election gap is women. among the general election with romney, he's actually competitive. gingrich actually is 13 points lower among women than romney himself. finally, there's some suggestions in our poll that this p

also there for us tonight, our political director and chief white house correspondent chuck todd and from our washington bureau, david gregory, moderator of "meet the press." chuck, we'll start with you. if you're mitt romney -- we just looked it up -- he got six fewer votes this time than four years ago. locked at 25%, four years apart, millions of dollars in expenditures apart. what is the lesson? what's the takeaway from iowa last night? >> well, they do look on the bright side and they see it this way. number one, a win is a win. they won in a place that they lost last time. always important when you're running a second time. number two, they are kind of happy their chief conservative rival is not rick perry, is not newt gingrich, but is rick santorum for the very reason andrea brought up in her piece. he lacks resources. he may not be able to put together a national campaign. while it's still clear mitt romney has a base problem they think over time that they can overcome this and eventually woo conservatives to them, possibly by the south carolina primary, but even if they lose

chuck todd and others talked about what happens next. i think, you know, the battle lines have been drawn pretty clearly. you have a establishment, elite candidate in mitt romney supported by the washington beltway crowd and newt gingrich supported by herman cain who will be on the show and sarah palin and rush limbaugh. that is an ugly fight going forward for mitt romney and he has got to, if he will have that group, if he is the nominee, he has to figure out a way to appeal to them in a positive way, not just approve that he can beat newt gingrich into submission. >> thank you for the herman cain tease. thank you. coming up if mitt romney joins florida, can party afford a drawn out battle, we will break down the delegates. next on "now ". an accident doesn't have to slow you down. with better car replacement, available only with liberty mutual auto insurance, if your car is totaled, we give you the money for a car one model year newer. to learn more, visit us today. responsibility. what's your policy? to make baby food the way moms thi

our chuck todd is joining me from new hampshire. we had audio issues coming off the top of the show. michele bachmann was riding high once she won the ames straw poll. now her popularity obviously has gone down. now that we know she is officially ending her bid, we have to ask the question, is texas governor rick perry going to follow, since he, too, chanced his events in south carolina today. >> no, it does -- it does seem as if that rick perry is getting advice from some of his texas aides that maybe it is time to pull the plug, maybe it's not worth going on and trying to move on. but they have not made a final decision on that front. as for michele bachmann, her campaign was doomed the day she won the iowa straw poll because rick perry, the other guy we were talking about, announced that same day, took away any chance she had of sort of getting some momentum out of there and any hope she had of becoming the national conservative alternative, the leading conservative. it went away then. she couldn't recover. she never figures out

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the news man, chuck todd. when you look down this as an expert and look at the money in the hands of romney and the support for endorsements officially at this point and the money in the hands of the other candidates and their positions, is there any real chance he hasn't got this locked? >> sure there is a chance. he still hasn't won a primary where conservatives put him over the top. he went from weak front-runner to a strong front-runner, but not the nominee yet. he has to win south carolina or florida to be the defector nominee. that makes him a stronger nominee going into the process and it does weed out the candidat candidates. let's put an affect risk on new hampshire. this is the most nonconservative that the republicans will face. maybe hawaii is more moderate. once you get to hawaii republicans, look at the exit polls and how a majority very much call themselves mod rail on a lot of the social positions. you are not seeing that. look at the next four. two this month. south carolina and michigan and a

chuck todd, thank you for that. >>> we are again covering violent weather tonight. as you watch this, keep in mind it's january after all. we are talking about tornados in the south again on top of a pounding already. look at that front, that weather system today was texas in the crosshairs of an enormous storm system. weather channel meteorologist jim cantore with us with the latest. jim, when you and i meet up after a bad weather event it's the spring, summer or fall, but it is rarely winter. >> yeah. when you take a look at this month and add the five tornados we had today, brian, this will be a top five january in terms of numbers of tornados. all fresh on people's minds, especially in alabama what happened tuesday morning. let's take a look where we go from here. on a positive note though, we are going to see potentially half the drought wiped out in texas. tomorrow morning it's new orleans, jackson, mississippi, the potential for high winds. possibly an isolated tornado. by 4:00 in the afternoon, it looks like it's going to be birmingham once again down into t

also with us here in manchester, really live from a few feet where we are tonight is chuck todd, our political director, our chief white house correspondent and chuck, let's talk about what's next. south carolina, so the victorious romney campaign rolls into that state, fresh from back to back victories and what happens there. >> and that's what we've got to remember. i put a little asterisk on new hampshire because none of the other primaries are coming up. two more this month, two big ones next month, none of them will be this moderate. none of them will have this many independents there will be much more conservatives voting in this primaries and that's what romney still faces, the big conservative test. where does he win? where do conservatives put him over the top? one thing we know that's coming in south carolina -- a sustained attack on television. mitt romney has been attacked on debates, but we have not seen him have to sustain attacks on tv. and if it's on bain capital, brian, you know, these are economically depressed states coming up, south carolina and florida. they might

to pay a visit to chuck todd. host of msnbc "the daily rundown."he race for president. in the little time he was able to give me, i asked him how inevitable is a mitt romney nomination or is it? >> if mitt romney wins south carolina, he can't win there supposedly daze he is not conservative in social issues ocket win therhe can't win there. newt gingrich said to knee in an interview. i said what it fit splits? he said if he wins south carolina by a couple of points, he wins. how do you justify he will have all of this momentum? you will see a rally around romney effect. and then what it will do is he'll cement it ten days later by winning florida. >> you mentioned your interview with newt gingrich. in general, the attacks from the gop on mitt romney, are they helping him out at all? are they getting him prepped for what comes in the general election? >> that is the glass is half full approach that the romney campaign is trying to take, right? well, at least we are learning how to do this now. apparently they have -- they will take the bain argument

>> chuck todd in des moines, iowa for us. thanks. >>> let's check in with the moderator of "meet the press." david, you know the story as well as anybody, can mitt romney hang on? how strong a showing in this wild race so far? >> you said it. he sets the tone tonight as he's done throughout the campaign. if mitt romney wins here tonight, he sets the tone for what could be a march toward inevitability. he's favored in new hampshire. he could somehow become a stronger front-runner. up until now he's been a weaker front-runner. if he doesn't do as well, shows up in the top three lower percentage. there would be some blood in the water. maybe it's the moment that there is a viable alternative to romney. maybe it's santorum. regardless of whether he wins or doesn't, the super bowl for social conservatives is still going to be south carolina. we have a ways to go. this is the start of something, brian. >> south carolina, florida, seven media markets there, a lot ahead of us. david gregory part of our team tonight, thanks. >>> we wa

our political director chuck todd, several feet away from us in the same room, andrea mitchell and david gregory. andrea, the race for second place really is by all provable accounts, true. you have a guy who's a homeowner here, governor of massachusetts. but second place becomes everything leaving here. >> absolutely. and we remember that bill clinton in 1992 came in second but made it sound as though he won and had the bragging rights going forward. even more important with those big super pacs. you've got three or four big money people watching to see who has the goods to go forward. one of the most important ones ironically is jon huntsman's billionaire father. if jon huntsman father who came out of nothing and contained the clam shell -- >> the big mac container, that's right. >> he only put up $50,000 for his son's race in k zk. if he sees his son does well tonight, he might put more money in the super pac. mitt romney already put $1.9 million in south carolina. newt gingrich has $1.6 million, but his backers will be looking to see how well he did. santorum only has $164,000 in sou