"Face the Nation" transcript: December 4, 2011
Below is a rush transcript of "Face the Nation" on December 4, 2011, hosted by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. The guests are RNC chair Reince Priebus, Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs and a roundtable analysis from CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell, CBS News Political Director John Dickerson, CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, and Politico's Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, the Republican roller coaster claims another victim. He broke the hearts of the late night comics.
JON STEWART: I've already lost Trump. I can't lose you too.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But Jon Stewart will just have to get over it. Herman Cain made it official yesterday.
HERMAN CAIN: I am suspending my presidential campaign.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The one-time front-runner is out, so who knows what's next in a week, when Donald Trump signed on to moderate an upcoming debate, a new poll shows Newt Gingrich has surged into the lead in Iowa.
NEWT GINGRICH: I'm going to be the nominee.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And that's just the half of it. Ron Paul is running ahead of Mitt Romney who for all his problems with his own party remains the object of most of the criticism from the Obama campaign.
MITT ROMNEY: I don't know what they're afraid of.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Many Republicans seem to be asking the same question to the point that Time magazine's cover poses the question: why don't they like me? We'll ask the head of the Republican Party Reince Priebus the same question and get the other side from Robert Gibbs, a key advisor to the Obama re-election campaign.
Then we'll get analysis from Politico's Mike Allen and our CBS News political team, Jan Crawford, Norah O'Donnell, Nancy Cordes, and political director John Dickerson.
This is FACE THE NATION.
ANNOUNCER: From CBS News in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again and welcome to FACE THE NATION. Key players from both sides in the campaign with us this morning at the table. Reince Priebus who is the Republican National Committee chairman and then we will also be talking to Robert Gibbs who is now a top consultant to the President's re-election campaign.
Well, Mister Chairman, a brand new Des Moines Register Iowa poll is out. Newt Gingrich has now jumped into the lead with twenty-five percent. Congressman Ron Paul is now running second. He has eighteen percent. Mitt Romney follows with sixteen percent and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former candidate Herman Cain, he got eight percent and the rest of the field is behind them.
And that poll, Mister Chairman, of course, was before Herman Cain announced yesterday that he was dropping out. But I guess it showed what we all suspected and that is his campaign was actually imploding. So now he's gone. Were his problems becoming a distraction that took attention away from the other candidates?
REINCE PRIEBUS (Chairman, Republican National Committee): Well, I don't-- I don't know if they took attention away from the other candidates. I mean he had to make a decision for himself which is, look, the polling isn't going in the right direction.
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Are you glad he did?
REINCE PRIEBUS: I can't-- I can't raise any money. I'm-- I'm indifferent. I-- I really don't care whether he stayed in or he-- he-- he got out. It didn't bother me at all. I think the real issue here facing America is how we're going to get our country back on track and how we're going to get a President in the White House who actually makes a promise and keeps a promise. And I think that is what Americans in this country are starving for.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me ask you this and this kind of sums up this whole business. One week it's Herman Cain, before that it was Rick Perry, before that it was Michele Bachmann and now here's Newt Gingrich in the lead. Isn't it really about what's on the cover of Time magazine this week? Here's a picture of Mitt Romney and the question is, why don't they like me?
REINCE PRIEBUS (overlapping): Well, listen--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Why do you think they don't like him?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well I don't'-- I don't-- I don't accept the premise of the question, Bob. And Time magazine can type up whatever magazine covers they want.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But I mean he's never gotten above twenty-five percent. That means the majority of the Republican Party--
REINCE PRIEBUS (overlapping): This is nothing--
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): --doesn't care for him.
REINCE PRIEBUS (overlapping): This is nothing peculiar. This is not peculiar as when Dukakis was the nominee back in '88 or when Bill Clinton was the nominee in 1992. Hey, listen, I think primaries are pretty tough but primaries work. You look at all these Republican governors across the Midwest, Walker, Snyder, Kasich, Christy, Corbett--every one of these guys in blue states came through very difficult primaries. And guess what and they won. Look at the President in the White House. He and Hillary Clinton nearly gouged each other's eyes out in a primary before June, before their convention, before they had a nominee. And guess what the President won pretty easily. He took a super majority in Congress with him. Sixty votes in the Senate. And guess what we're all living with the policies of that crowd. And it's not going so well.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, why is it if all those people are so popular and (INDISTINCT) don't your point, why didn't one of them run for President?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I think, obviously they have other things on their mind. I mean, you've been in office for a year, some of these guys want to wait a little while before they actually run for President. It's not-- you can't have the whole world running for President. I think our field is very strong. And I-- and I think that what we're going to have is a very intelligent, articulate alternative to a President who woke up this morning and wished that his poll numbers were as good as Jimmy Carter's. I mean he's doing miserably around America and people know it. So, they're looking for an alternative.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, but why-- but why do you think it is that-- that Mitt Romney seems to generate so little excitement? And I'm not talking about the electorate in general. I'm talking about Republicans.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I don't think-- I mean again, Bob, I don't accept that. I mean, you-- you have a huge field of candidates. And he's been polling consistently pretty well. And reality is, you know, it's not as the job of the RNC chairman to start picking out candidates and refereeing this debate. My job is to make sure that we have a functional, operational Republican National Committee, that we're well funded and that we can get along the way of making sure that we make Barack Obama one-term President and save this country economically. And listen, Americans aren't happy with the direction that we're going. That's the issue. The issue is, the-- we have a President in office who, if he was an employee of any business in America, he would have been fired a long time ago. And that's where Americans are at.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, why is it? How do you think it is that Newt Gingrich is now leading in the polls out there in Iowa? I want-- I just want to quote from you what The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted this morning. She said that Newt Gingrich "swims in a sea of duality" and offered this paragraph. She said, "He didn't get whiplash being a serial adulterer while impeaching another serial adulterer, a lobbyist for Freddie Mac while attacking Freddie Mac, a self-professed fiscal conservative and a whop while he had a whopping Tiffany's credit line, and an anti-Communist Army brat who supported the Vietnam War but dodged it." Now, why do you think Newt Gingrich winds up leading the polls for your party right now?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I mean, why is he leading the polls? Because people are supporting him. I mean, I-- I don't-- I don't think there's any issue with that. I mean-- and that's Maureen Dowd's personal opinion. I mean, she's entitled to her opinion. A lot of columnists have different opinions. I-- I happen to believe, though, at the end of the day what this race is going to come down to is whether or not Barack Obama actually fulfilled the simple, very few promises that he made, like cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, didn't do it. Get the debt under control, didn't do it. Put people back to work, didn't do it. I mean, the reality is the President has to run on a record. And he-- he wasn't the great uniter that he promised to be.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you--
REINCE PRIEBUS: He's become the great divider of this country.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you--
REINCE PRIEBUS: That's the issue.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think Republicans might actually go into this convention with no nominee? An old-fashioned brokered convention where they wouldn't choose the nominee until they got to the convention. Do you see that as a possibility now?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I mean, I think it's highly, highly doubtful that that happens. And I'll tell you this. No matter what happens, we are going to be unified because this President needs to be fired. We need to save this country economically. And we need to put someone who is real and authentic back into the White House.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Priebus, thank you so much for joining us.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Thank you, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I really appreciate you coming by this morning. And we're going to turn to the other side of the table now. And there sits Robert Gibbs who--
ROBERT GIBBS (Obama Campaign Advisor): Good morning, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: -- heard-- heard all of this. So what do you-- how do you respond to that? Mister Priebus says finally, we just ought to fire the guy. He hadn't done anything.
ROBERT GIBBS: Well, look, let me answer the question that Chairman Priebus didn't want to answer. I-- I think the reason that Mitt Romney-- people don't like him and why he hasn't caught fire is if you hear what he says today, it's likely to change tomorrow. I think there's great skepticism. He's a political gymnast of the highest order. He will say virtually anything to get elected to any office. Just last night he was in New York on a Mike Huckabee show disavowing climate change and environmental-- and the Environmental Protection Agency despite the fact that just a few years ago, he was bragging in Massachusetts about all the steps they were taking to combat climate change. The-- the one thing that is certain in this Republican primary, if you don't like where Mitt Romney is today, just wait until tomorrow. It's a little bit like the weather.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this part. The President is often running on campaigning. I think he's had sixty-two fund-raisers so far. They're talking about somewhere down the line he might raise a record billion dollars. But, Mister Gibbs, the question I keep hearing from both Democrats and Republicans is, why does the President continue to sort of hold himself above the battle as far as what's going on with his day job being President? I mean, how could he just sort of sit there and let this supercommittee fail? Just fall on its face as it did?
ROBERT GIBBS: Well, Bob, the supercommittee was a creation of Congress for Congress to do its job. They're the appropriators. But understand what Barack Obama did for the supercommittee. He laid out a plan that would have easily restructured our long-term fiscal picture and gotten our debt under control. He got members of his own party to support that. And he rallied the country around his plan and they supported it. That's what a President has to do.
But, Bob, the President can't fix any of the problems that people have in this country or that Chairman Priebus outlined, without a Republican Party that actually wants to do it. Look, we're having a debate in-- in Congress right now about whether we're going to extend the payroll tax cut. A hundred and sixty million Americans are looking at a tax increase at the end of this year if Republicans and Democrats don't work together to extend it. And the truth is, the Republican Party simply doesn't want to extend the tax cut for middle-class families. They're far more concerned about protecting the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But--
ROBERT GIBBS: That's not going to get our economy working.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I keep thinking back to people like Lyndon Johnson and-- and to think that Lyndon Johnson would have been sitting there in the Oval Office just watching this happen, and not trying to push these people, not calling them, not doing the--
ROBERT GIBBS: Oh.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --direct lobbying. I mean, is-- is--
ROBERT GIBBS: Let me tell--
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): --the President doing something we don't know about or haven't heard about?
ROBERT GIBBS (overlapping): Can I-- can I tell-- can I tell you, Bob, if Barack Obama had the Republican party that Lyndon Johnson dealt with, I have no doubt that we would make progress. Look, Barack Obama sat with John Boehner, who's largely, no offense to Chairman Priebus, the titular head of the Republican Party. Nothing is going to get passed in Congress without getting through John Boehner, right? And-- and Barack Obama put out a plan that would say, if you make a lot of money in this country, you're going to pay a little bit more, but we're going to get our fiscal house in order. And John Boehner went back to his House Republican caucus and they said, we're not going to do it. Regardless of the fact that for time after time, day after day, they say let's not saddle our children with debt and deficits. The President outlined a way we could do it. And John Boehner and the Republican Party simply walked away from doing that. Look, if we could recreate Lyndon Johnson's Republican-- the Republican opposition, I have no doubt that this President and many other Presidents could work with it. We just have something that's fundamentally different and you have Republican presidential candidates that quite frankly are way to the right of even some of the Republicans in Washington.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this question. Who would you like to run against? Would you like to see the nomination go to Mitt Romney or would you like to see it go to Newt Gingrich? I notice--
ROBERT GIBBS: Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --you're still directing your fire at Mitt Romney as if you think in the end he's going to get it.
ROBERT GIBBS: Well-- well, I think-- well, I-- Mitt Romney provides a lot of material for people like me on any given day because, quite frankly, Bob, as I said earlier, if you don't like what he says today, all you do-- all you have to do is just wait and his policy positions are likely to change. I think each one of these candidates brings very different strengths. I think Newt Gingrich is, look, somebody who has been a party favorite of the Republican Party going back to the mid '90s when, you know, when he wanted to do certain things like have Medicare wither on the vine--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
ROBERT GIBBS: --and provide tax cuts for the wealthy. I think that-- what's interesting is when you boil this down, you have one different-- you have a very different political philosophy. You have a philosophy that says let's let the well-to-do continue not to pay their fair share. And for middle-class America, well, we're just going to close the door to greater and greater opportunity. I think that's the defining debate in our country right now. And I think the President has a plan for strengthening the security of the middle class.
BOB SCHIEFFER: In the end, you think Romney will get the nomination?
ROBERT GIBBS: You know, I don't know. I got to say I think a lot of people in-- inside the Beltway and outside the Beltway woke up today to a very different political environment and one in which Newt Gingrich is-- is very much for real. And I think-- again, I think there's great skepticism.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And does that make you happy or sad? Let me get at it that way.
ROBERT GIBBS: I-- look, I think this is a tremendous process. I-- I-- you know, I disagree with the chairman. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren't gouging each other's eyes out. They were having a debate about the future of our party and what we were going to do about this country so much so that Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. I think it's a tremendous process, and it's a lot of fun.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Thank you very much, Robert Gibbs, for being with us.
ROBERT GIBBS: Thanks, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: When we come back, we're going to bring in the whole political team for a round table on what they think about what's happening right now in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And back now for a little analysis. Joining me today political correspondent Jan Crawford; Politico's Mike Allen who has just authored the first political book of the campaign, The Right to Fight Back; Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes; and on the other side chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell and our political director John Dickerson. So I got to go to you first, Jan. You were there yesterday when Herman Cain hung it up. I mean, did he really hung-- hang it up? I mean, he said he's suspending the campaign.
JAN CRAWFORD (CBS News Political Correspondent): No, it's over. I talked to Cain and his wife Gloria after the event yesterday. And he said he had made the decision on his own before he got back to Atlanta Friday night, that he couldn't put his family through this, his wife through this anymore. Gloria Cain told me that she would have supported him no matter what he decided. A part of her wanted him to stay in the race because she believes him. But the-- the allegations of the harassment, the affair, it became too much. But, you know, Bob, the establishment never took Cain seriously. But he tapped into something real with Republican primary voters who think that America has serious problems. And they saw Cain as the man with solutions who was not a part of Washington, and who had this inspiring message about America's greatness. Out of all the candidates on the trail I've covered, no one could talk about America as that great shining city on the hill like Herman Cain.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So what happens now, Mike? What's-- what's the immediate fallout you think.
MIKE ALLEN (Politico): Oh, Bob, it looks like the Gingrich wave could turn into a tsunami. We're told by a Cain advisor that Cain will definitely endorse before Iowa, before the end of the year. And he's most likely to endorse Newt Gingrich. Already looking strong in an interview for this e-Book, Play Book 2012: The Right Fights Back Gingrich told us that he is trying to test a new model for campaigning. And that is depending less on traditional organizations, less on advertising, of necessities, depending more on the internet, on grass roots and he says substance. So this week, we're going to see him giving a big Middle East policy speech, we're going to see him giving a big speech about inner city poverty and reducing that. And he says unlike anybody else in the race, he's going to stay totally positive. He says everybody else running is his friend and he is not going to attack them.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So, Nancy Cordes you were out with Newt Gingrich all week and you were down in South Carolina. How will this play out down there do you think?
NANCY CORDES (CBS News Congressional Correspondent): Well, he's doing very good about South Carolina, Bob. He's ahead by eleven points in the most recent poll in that state. And so what he's really planning to do is try to hang in tough in Iowa and New Hampshire. He has got Ron Paul with a really tight organization in Iowa. Then you've got Mitt Romney who really owns the ground game in New Hampshire. But he's hoping that if he can just do well in those two states; get to South Carolina where it's more of an even playing field. Nobody really has a huge organization there. He feels good because he's from neighboring Georgia. He feels like the voters know him there. It's a southern state when he feels like they can really understand his message. And he thinks he's going to win.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Lets' go over to the White House where Norah O'Donnell hangs her hat these days as our chief White House correspondent. Norah, they still seem to believe that-- that Mitt Romney winds up with the nomination. Do you-- does anybody over there want to run against Newt Gingrich or did they think he will-- he will get the nomination?
NORAH O'DONNELL (CBS News Chief White House Correspondent): The Obama campaign has made the decision that they believe Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee. And they have trained their fire on Mitt Romney. They're going to launch a new offensive next week. They believe they were successful painting Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper last week. And so they're going to lay out a new attack. This morning already David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs were given the opportunity to go after Newt Gingrich and they declined. They don't want that as a story. They want to keep up the offensive on Mitt Romney, plant the story early, define him as a serial flip-flopper without a core; and define Mitt Romney before the wholly electorate.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So this serial flip-flopper--
JOHN DICKERSON (CBS News Political Director): Well, it's like there's a chronic fatigue syndrome about-- about Romney in the Republican Party. I mean, the-- the voters just do not want to move to him. And what's extraordinary about the Gingrich rise is both that he's come back to-- to live here. But it says something about Romney's weakness. If Gingrich is the nominee, and the fact that he's ahead, he is going against two fundamental tendencies of Republican politics in recent history that we had the Tea Party which doesn't like establishment politicians. That's what Gingrich is. Social conservatives, another major force in Republican politics used to say the moral character of the candidates was fundamental to their being President. Well, we know Gingrich has a past. If he is the nominee, he runs in the face of those two major trends of Republican politics.
MIKE ALLEN: Yeah. But, Bob, this passes very much in our mind and Norah made a great point about how the establishment feels about Newt. But I think we're seeing a real inside the Beltway outside the Beltway split on his chances. We all know him. Norah covered him. Everybody here covered him. And so we can't believe that he's going to take hold. We can't believe that he's being taken seriously. In the country they don't remember that. Of course, they're about to be reminded.
NORAH O'DONNELL: That's right.
MIKE ALLEN: So I think one thing we can say if that Romney and Gingrich are both praying for is American amnesia. They don't want voters to remember what they've said before.
JOHN DICKERSON: But those two forces are out in the public. And when-- when Herman Cain says he wants a non-establishment figure and his movement is not going to be like the establishment, if he's then going to go over and throw his endorsement behind Newt Gingrich I mean, you can't pretend Newt Gingrich is not a part of the establishment.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think, Jan, is it your sense also that-- that Gingrich is the most likely to get the supporters that were from Cain, Herman Cain--
JAN CRAWFORD(overlapping): From Cain, I mean, a lot of the Cain supporters yesterday I talked to were obviously devastated and not ready to even think about--
MIKE ALLEN (overlapping): Too soon.
JAN CRAWFORD (overlapping): --anyone else. I mean even try. I mean people were just shell-shocked yesterday. But I think most of them will go at some point to Cain, although a couple of people I talked to said that they were not ruling out Romney. They liked Romney. But what's going to happen now with Cain out of the race, with the distractions of the harassment allegations and the affair is that the focus will go--I agree--right on to Gingrich. And there is money. The other candidates have the money--
NANCY CORDES (overlapping): Right.
JAN CRAWFORD: --to start those attack ads and that's where we are going to see--
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Nancy, a-- a-- a Republican advisor kind of a wheel in Republican politics said to me last night, said the real danger for Newt Gingrich is when he always tends to step in it is when he's running ahead. Oh.
NANCY CORDES: Right. And you saw that this week in his comments about poor children. And-- and I-- I think what's helping him right now is that Republican voters are really hungry for a fighter. And they don't mind if you make a few mistakes. If it shows that you're willing to just go there and go after the President. And he's really being tough on the President right now, being aggressive, and-- and he thinks that that's going to play well with the Republican primary of course.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right, I wish we could go on all afternoon, but we can't.
I'll be back in a minute with some final thoughts.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally today, my friend Tom Friedman passed on a story to me the other day that came to him from an advertising guy who had been at a seminar for ad people and someone had asked the question, why didn't Burger King ever really go after McDonald's? In other words, why didn't they get dirty, go negative, try to take down the industry leader? The answer came back, first rule of advertising, never destroy the category. It's not worth destroying the hamburger industry just to take down your most successful competitor. The more I thought about that and the sorry state of American politics these days, the more it made me wonder. In their effort to destroy each other, are the Republican and Democratic parties on the verge of destroying the category politics, the whole political system? We are not there yet, but as I watch our campaigns begin earlier and earlier and as our government becomes more and more gridlocked, unable to do anything, we may be close. Remember when campaigns were the interval between governing. Now governing has become the brief interval between campaigns. And not just campaigns that are vicious but as meaningless as they are mean. It is no longer a question of what has the government done for us lately. The answer is nothing. But the looming and larger question now is just how much damage has all this done to the system itself and can it be repaired before the whole thing blows apart.
Back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that's it for us today. And we'll see you right here next week.
ANNOUNCER: This broadcast was produced by CBS News which is solely responsible for the selection of today's guests and topics.