thank you for jog >>> joining me now, senior political writer for politico, maggie haberman. thanks for joining me, maggie. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to read to you, i love the way serious republican world is going crazy about donald trump. i want to read to you what the editorial board of the "national review" wrote this morning about trump and gingrich. "as a serious contender running a campaign with maximal in its own seriousness, gingrich lowers himself by association with this consummately unserious man. romney should renews to follow suit. the nominating process must be about which candidate can lead the country back to fiscal and economic reality, not about which candidate can best truckle with a reality tv star." maggie, is there any chance that mitt romney would be smart enough to read that guidance from "the national review" and actually score some points with oldline conservatives by shunning the donald trump debate? >> no, i think it is virtually impossible that mitt romney doesn't do this debate. mitt romney is the candidate whose campaign said debates ma

to talk more about this, let's bring in "politico's" senior political writer maggie haberman. , maggie. >> good morning. >> okay, so, herman cain says he's going to meet with his wife face to face on friday and make a final decision. your best guess as to what that decision might be. >> my best guess is that herman cain is not going to be staying in this race. you know, he has said all along that he would leave the race if it became too much for his wife. it is hard to see how this is not too much for his wife. that having been said, one of the odder things about these last few days has been watching herman cain quite literally publicly muse about whether he's staying in the race. that does tend to dampen your support at a certain point. a lot of strategists have said this. it's not a novel concept. i think herman cain's campaign is in a lot of trouble, whether he drops out or not. >> well, the odd thing, he released this campaign ad in iowa. he's not campaigning in iowa itself, but he did release this campaign ad that's going to start to run in iowa. >> yes, he's -- well, so t

well, chris cillizza is managing editor of postpolitics.com and an msnbc contributor, and maggie habermanr for politico. i want to start with maggie. maggie, it's very interesting to try to find the power in the republican party. you know, in the previous cycles, i'd refer to it like a lot of us, sarcastically, as the white boy's club, a group of governors, perhaps, who would meet somewhere, at some club somewhere, and sort of give the official okay to whoever the candidate was, particularly george w. or someone like that, or his father. now the power vortex seems to be coming either from radio in the voice of rush limbaugh or this manhattan project of donald trump. i mean, where is the republican power base today that seems to be, well, influencing the selection process? >> well, you know, what's very interesting is you're seeing, i think, that power in places like "national review" and certainly you're seeing karl rove go on fox news and say what he thinks. i think that's where you're seeing the power structure. you have republican elites urging mitt romney not to take part in this trum

. >> mike, maggie haberman writing paul gears up for long primary slug. is time could be different for ron paul. why? >> this is fascinating. ron paul announced yesterday he was opening states in five -- opening offices in five states that are coming up. he's going to be strong through super tuesday on march 6th. maggie says he has enough organization in place to ensure he will be a player at the republican convention in tampa. and a little sneak peek from playbook for you here. on sunday, george will raises the strong possibility that ron paul is putting in place the ability to run as an independent if this nomination thing doesn't pan out for him. george will does the math to show that ron paul running as an independent makes it much easier for barack obama to get elected. >> 20-point leads in the early states. ron paul is climbing, right there with mitt romney in every single one of those polls. >> absolutely. before i left the rnc, put in place a real dynamic effect here. my hope was for a broken convention, quite frankly. i think the idea of the base

let's turn to politico, politico's maggie haberman. good to have you in studio. >> thanks for having me. >> we're talking about third party run. could there be a third party candidate? is it picking up steam, a, and, b, is it a possibility at this point? >> it is. they're not disclosing, but they have gotten on the ballot in 13 states and they're making a push to get on in all 50 states. they got on in california, which is pretty tough. if they nominate someone conservative, that could help the president. if they don't nominate someone conservative and they talk about centrists and finding someone in the middle, that could end up being problem mat i think for president obama. we do hear this, right? about every four years. there's going to been an independent run and it's going to change everything. mike bloomberg was going to be it in '07. what does make it different for me, was when they did a briefing with reporters a couple of weeks ago or a week ago, they talked about this. talked about americans elect. they'd clearly looked at it