joe sestak. bob herbert, longtime "new york times" lump mist.beginning. important note. all right. you just had a really fascinating conversation about the very contested piece of legislation called the stop online piracy act. and -- the reason that i think it is sort of relates interestingly is that it is a piece of legislation in which on each side of the battle there are very large interests. commercial interests. on one side, it is sort of -- oversimplify it, pits northern california versus southern california. silicon valley tech sector versus the l.a. content movie studios. these battles get waged in congress. and where people are lobbying. and one of the tools that they use in their lobbying -- they can raise money. so we have been talking about money and politics with jack abramoff, knows a thing or would about the topic. latest fcc disclosures in the final three months of 2011, president obama raised $42 million. $220 million for 2011. romney supporting superpac called restore our future. crossroads plan to raise hundreds of millions mo

. >> it's interesting, junas you know, jimmy, joe sestak has been through this show a few times and aot of other places, arguing that the military is imperiling us not just in excess of the spending, but the excess of spending and the blasting and the bombing around the world. he's an advocate of hot spotting, if you will, in the military apparatus, which is, use the counterintelligence, over allocate to the very specific issues, and don't just randomly order, as karen said, 40 of these, 70 of those, and 55 of these. do you get the sense that this particular proposal of the president is drifting in the sestakian direction? >> sestakian, i love that. i don't know if it's something is that sestak would like or not like. but what i can say is we are here in 2012, i can't believe that, but we have a military for the 1980s. and it's a bloated. it doesn't mean it's not a great military. it's a great military. we have the best military in the world. but i don't want to see us building, you know, so many bombers or planes, et cetera, etc. i would rather us build the computers that do those th

i'm joined by former pennsylvania congressman joe sestak and eleanor clift.ood to be with you. >> representative sestak, i'll begin with you. how is santorum's national campaign being received in pennsylvania, your state there, where he began his political career more than two decades ago? >> well, i think there's a bit of pride, you have someone doing well from pennsylvania. but he didn't do well in his last snoral race for a reason. a lot of respect for rick santorum because he ask things in a ras grassroots way. he can look a person in the eye and make them feel he's listening. but his ideology, particularly social conservative issues, culture issues, didn't bode well in pennsylvania. it's not going to on the national scene, particularly after south carolina. i have respect for the man. but it's not what americans are looking for today. they're actually -- i really believe, alex, they're looking for someone a bit more pragmatic, willing to make government work in their minds and willing to reach across the aisles in a compromised way. he won't believe afte