that mitt romney is not acceptable to the conservative base of the republican party according to eric ericksonf anybody knew more than talk radio show hosts, which eric also does that, more than a lot of other bloggers on the right, eric erickson knows the base of the conservative movement in america. and he says, mitt romney is not acceptable. >> and that leads to a question that you raised earlier in the show, john, which is if you take eric's premise that mitt romney will be the nominee, what do conservatives do then? are they really going to stay home and allow barack obama to have another four years to sit out in protest of mitt romney? >> i think they will. >> this is, what is interesting is -- >> let's face it. one of the things that was attractive about cain was his personal narrative. none of these guys has a narrative that anybody can get jazzed about. at least the guy was a self-made businessman who was soon to come out of nowhere and there was a narrative there that was kind of very attractive. the problem with huntsman as with romney is the personal narrative is just so -- >> okay

not eric erickson, but most of them. now we saw eric eric erickson's review.his is getting. i was embarrassed about this weeks ago. i was embarrassed that that man that can't answer a basic question is representing my party. that em bar rased me. it didn't embarrass a lot of people. guess what, i think they are embarrassed now. >> they have to be. >> it's a flawed field. it is uncomfortable and it is embarrassing for the par tito have someone not only know the answers to the question but to say, the president doesn't really need to know. >> what about becky, becky, becky -- that's being brought up by foreign leaders. >> but he's running against gingrich, ron paul, mitt romney and rick perry. >> he might have had a brain freeze about what happened in libya and then not to have any opinion about even the president's overall stance in the middle east so he couldn't even come up with a response that spoke to america's attitude as a result of president obama's stellar leadership. i think this president has excelled in the foreign policy arena. for herman cain not t

. >>> i do want to get to mitt romney's response to eric erickson yesterday. but an apparent open microphone now exposing a private conversation between president obama and french president nicholas sarkozy. according to several journalists who overheard the exchange, sarkozy shared his thoughts about israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu calling him "a liar" and saying he could no longer stand him. president obama apparently replied "you may be sick of him, but me, i have to deal with him every day." the remarks were confirmed by the "associated press" and reuters whose journalists were among those who overheard the conversation. the white house yesterday had no comment. >> and yesterday other jewish leaders very concerned about the statements. that doesn't help the peace process along. what else do we have? >>> for the first time, the ongoing debate in washington, congressional republicans have signaled willingness to compromise on new taxes. yesterday, republicans on the debt reduction supercommittee offered to raise federal tax collections by some $300

let's bring in bob strom and eric erickson. okay. good to have both of you here. eric, let me start with you. the poll taken after the allegations surfaced, but it was still a few days ago with can cain sustain this lead? >> no, i don't think he can. in fact, i've been on the phone this afternoon with people who work directly for herman begging me to -- i'm close to herman. begging me or people i know to have an intervention with him to fire some of his staff. these people say they're making it worse. if you take the average of the polling over the last three weeks, you've seen gingrich and perry going back up as cain's going down. the biggest shocker is that mitt romney has still flat lined. he's frozen in the polls. >> bob, let me ask you about that. what about this rise of newt gingrich? >> look, they've been look for the un-romney for a long time. eric wrote a blog the other day that i wouldn't agree with him on issues, but completely right in its analysis of romney. he's not authentically conservative. he's out there trying to become president according to a b

cnn contributor eric erickson has written about the koches on his conservative blog redstate.com.w, everyone on the left and right likes to have a boogie man. they like to have a face to put to something bad. so for the right, for the longest time it was george soros. on the left, it was richard melon scaife for years, going after the clintons. no one knows who he is anymore. now it is the koches who are the boogie men. >> reporter: erickson says this is nothing more than david and charles koch getting in the net of conspiracy theorists. do you believe that they're working behind the scenes in some stealth manner to further their interests? >> there is nothing secret there. i think people believe in conspiracies. it is like the nuts on the right who believe in the birth certificate conspiracy. you've got nuts on the left who believe the koches are involved in every bad thing that happens. >> reporter: david and charles koch are both in their 70s. they rarely do interviews and our story was no exception. in march, charles did respond to criticism in this op-ed. he wrote, even when

joining me now is eric erickson and dana lash. that's the question.rst nbc/"wall street journal" poll numbers out tonight that suggests it's beginning to have a harmful effect. here's the favorable results. 24%. he says media rules. he says media rules that we want him to speak out. it's not just we in the media. bill bennett, former education secretary and drug czar just posted this on cnn.com. if herman cain cannot stand up to these charges, if he refuses to, then he should step out of the race. a man big enough to run for president should be big enough to have a full and candid press conference on all of this. wants us to elect him president after all. he's asking us to trust our lives and the country's life to him. is bill bennett right? >> i think in this instance he is. that's been one of my criticisms of some conservative candidates. whenever you were charges like this regardless of whether it's legitimate and you have charges brought against you, you have to fight back. newt gingrich didn't do that. it had a hugely negative effect on his popul

david fromme and eric erickson.when i was in iowa last week you had not noticed fallout and you were gaining ground, that's when the sexual harassment allegations against mr. cain were in play. in recent days, he couldn't come up with quite an answer on libya, he had a clarification on collective bargaining. a lot of people are saying that the -- he's beginning to lose ground. do you see that on the ground in iowa? >> so first of all if you look at two polls that came out two just this week, the bloomberg poll and another poll, both still have herman cain up in iowa. after 14 days of mostly negative stories from the national press, and he's still leading in iowa, to me that's a headline in and of itself. >> let's show the bloomberg numbers. conducted november 10th through 12th. like lie iowa caucusgoers. you see right there, herman cain 20, ron paul', mitt romney at 18, newt gingrich at 17, and governor perry at 7. on and on down in there. david, when you look at this, steve has a point, the sustain ability after al

joining us to continue the conversation, penny nance, ceo for concerned women of america, eric erickson, a democratic strategist, a pollster for the obama 2012 campaign. women voters are important in the campaign, specifically iowa. you issued a statement talking about sharon bialek saying this woman is now the face of an i've that continues to grow and be a distraction for mr. cain's campaign. mr. cain needs address new allegations head on, unlike anonymous allegations miss bialek appeared credible and i was disturbed by her characterization of what happened. >> first lit me say concerned women of america said during '96 during the clinton scandal that character counts. it's important for us to weigh in on the issue as much as we can. i don't think all of the facts are out yet. i don't -- he was emphatic but yet you saw he left the door open for other women to come forward. we've seen several women, up to four, perhaps five that have come forward, and so until this is all hashed out, i think that we've all got to continue to wait and see. but it's very disturbing, very troubling and it

cnn contributors mary madeline and eric erickson are here tonight. want to start with gloria cain. she has not been heard from in the campaign. they decided they need to have her out in the public sphere. she did an interview with greta van susteren of fox news. will that help him? >> yes, particularly coming on the same day as the boyfriend at the time of the allegation is validating it. and she is such a lovely woman, yes. that's very helpful. but i don't think it's determinative, because people have already made up their mind one way or another on the substance of it. the larger problem is where you started. he did not perform on saturday night. and he doubled down on his nonperformance today at a wisconsin editorial board. and he just -- he's worn out that place where people were giving him slack for being a nonpolitician. and his vague answers and his lost answers are the likes he gave today in wisconsin are a bigger problem for him in the long run than this recent unpleasantness i think. >> in an editorial with the milwaukee newspaper, he was a

. >> and just circling back briefly to mitt romney, eric erickson wrote about romney. mitt romney is not the george w. bush of 2012. he's the harriet miers of 2012. only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us he's conservative. his campaign will be a disaster for conservatives as he takes the gop down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process. do you agree or disagree? >> well, i agree that mitt romney is not as conserve of a as eric ericsson. but he's a lot more conservative than barack obama. and i think that if he is our nominee, conservatives will unite behind mitt romney basra back obbarack obama is the grea uniter of lots of independents and moderates who think our country is going in the wrong direction at warp speed and they know we've got to change the direction of this country. even if it means electing a president who is not as conservative as i am or not as conservative as that voter may be. >> any regrets that you didn't get into this? >> not really. you know, i've lived my life, andrea. make a decisio

eric erickson. and sherry jacobs, columnist for "the hill." president of capital strategies p.r. david, on immigration, if you listen to speaker gingrich's answer there, he's taking a gamble. he's looking past the primary and past tea party voters, and we expect mitt romney to focus on the general election and barack obama, a risk for speaker gingrich, no? >> certainly sounded like it. and eric will have a much better sense of how much damage he may have done for himself by going soft, so to speak, on immigration. how much damage he may have done among conservatives, the conservative base, especially in places like iowa. but i think as a general proposition, john, that newt gingrich is trying to reintroduce himself to the american people. he's been out of the limelight for a long time. he was seen as a bomb thrower in his earlier days. effective, yes, but a bomb thrower. and i think he's trying to introduce himself as a person who has grown, become more mature. and perhaps more empathic. with those who have had problems in the past. after all, this is a man asking voters to forgi

. >> eric erickson, redstate.com. not a fan of mitt romney.h john mccain last time around. you both heard governor romney acknowledging he changed his position on the abortion issue. he says other people are taking him the of context. i want to use one example. here what happens governor romney said in our national security debate a few days ago on the illegal immigration. we're not going to have an amnesty system that says people who come here illegally get to stay for the rest of their life in this country legally. they can stay. if they came illegal le, they can't stay. here what happens he said in march 2006 i don't believe in rounding up 11 million people and forcing them at gun point from our country. with 11 million people, let's have them rej sterds, they are here paying taxes, should begin a process towards application for citizenship as they would from their home country. he went on to say they shouldn't have special treatment. to say in the debate people who come here illegal don't get to say here and then in 2006, let's register th

. >> eric erickson, you're in georgia, you probably know or at least heard of lin wood, a high-profileia all red is a high-profile lawyer, lin wood has represented famous people, including rich jewel. richard condit, john and the late patsy ramsey. you're familiar with him. he's got a high profile lawyer right now. what does that say to you? >> yeah, you know, it says to me, looking at the representation that lin wood has had in the past, people who have been wrongly accused of doing things, gary condit in the chandra levy mat, richard jewell in the olympic park bombing and now herman cain. i wonder, though, wolf, i mean, i understand how emotions have got to be raw in the campaign, but he said repeatedly he had never met sharon bialek before, there's a picture, i think it came out yesterday, the two of them earlier or last year together with arms around each other. i think you know, they had ten days before this story came out originally to get their ducks in a row and it seems like they're rushing trying to get ahead of the story. they see the poll trends going down but they might sh

eric erickson halfway through the debate said this was an absolute disaster for herman cain and it didn't cain even more than the scandals. >> i think that's true. a lot of people had this expectation that there was a lot of hype about his inability to perform, particularly on this subject. you have the venue and the question that was straight forward. right the first question out of the box it was a lame answer. people got the sense that this is not going to go the way it should go. he didn't really answer the question. >> we will get to the second in a second. voters can read through saying i will bring the best advisers on after the 30 or fourth time you say it. he said i will lend myself to good people. what are you going to tell them to do? >> you have to have a policy plaid form. these were the major issues. there were not gotcha questions that came up and they had a minute to answer. he couldn't even really fill a minute. it was painful. >> george w. bush and the first debate in "saturday night live" back in 2 thousand 4 when he asked for extra time and had nothing to say. is it a

. >> you know, by the way, willie, you know eric erickson at red stay. >> sure. >> over at cnn. >> yeahative, god-fearing guy. he wrote a hate-filled tweet. i think he's cheering for lsu this weekend. >> oh. seriously? a louisiana guy? >> he must be. are there no true conservatives left in america? >> we ask this question every day. >> ron paul's here. >> coming up. >> and you're here. where did you come from? >> well, i thought i'd roll in. my dad's coming, so i wanted to say hi. >> and of course, the great bob woodward straight ahead. 3 days, it's been 3 weeks. so, i used my citi simplicity card to pick up a few things. and i don't have to worry about a late fee. which is good... no! bigger! bigger! [ monica ] ...because i don't think we're going anywhere for a while. [ male announcer ] write your story with the new citi simplicity card. no late fees. no penalty rate. no worries. get started at citisimplicity.com. to bring you a low-priced medicare prescription drug plan. ♪ with the lowest national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on medicare prescri