Panelists Discuss the GOP Presidential Debate in South Carolina; Candidates Face-Off in South Carolina; Battle For South Carolina
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, my goodness. All right, everybody. Welcome. We're coming to you live this morning. Our "Starting Point" is in Charleston, South Carolina, and we are once again at the Bear E Patch Cafe. Here's where we're starting and there's lots to talk about. Newt Gingrich is gaining momentum. He is rising in the polls. And, many people are saying what happened last night, his performance at the debate was a game changer. Herman Cain back on the campaign trail. He's making an endorsement. Who is it? The answer confused me. I got to tell you, Mr. Cain. We're going to talk about that. I know you will.</s>O'BRIEN: We get you open (ph) please. Rescuers are suspending their cruise ship search now. The rough weather is moving in, of course, making very difficult for them, and there are some fears that that ship could now sink into deeper waters. We're going to update you on what's happening on that story as well. "Starting Point" begins right now.</s>O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. We are back, as I said, at the Bear E Patch Cafe where they have been feeding us all morning and giving us lots and lots of coffee. Specialty of the house we talked about yesterday, which was that French toast and seafood grits thing.</s>O'BRIEN: That's a lot to talk about. So we're back with lots of dishes. We're back with our panel, of course. Herman Cain has agreed to join us as a panelist. It's nice to have you, sir.</s>HERMAN CAIN, FORMER (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's my pleasure, thank you.</s>O'BRIEN: We also have Ron Brownstein and Will Cain, nephew of Herman Cain.</s>HERMAN CAIN: Brother from another mother.</s>O'BRIEN: Roland Martin is shaking his head.</s>MARTIN: Oh, my goodness, way too much soul in here.</s>HERMAN CAIN: I haven't seen him since the family reunion.</s>O'BRIEN: We have a lot to talk about this morning. We have former New Hampshire governor John Sununu is going to join us. The RNC chairman Reince Priebus is going to be here as well. Former -- we're going to talk to you about this big announcement about who you are endorsing, which honestly confused the heck out of me, so you're going to have to walk me through that. Virginia Governor Bob McDonald is going to be with us as well. South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn is going to join us. We're going to talk to those reporters who broke the news on the Marianne Gingrich controversy, they'll be with us as well. And Fareed Zakaria will talk to us about the president and his foreign policy.</s>HERMAN CAIN: Slow morning.</s>O'BRIEN: Nothing going on. Nothing at all.</s>O'BRIEN: First, though, let's get to some of the other stories are I happening. We're going to start in Afghanistan. Alina Cho has an update on that story. Hey, Alina, good morning.</s>ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Soledad, good morning to you. The Taliban claiming responsibility for shooting down a NATO helicopter in Afghanistan. Six members of the peace keeping force were killed. It happened late yesterday in the southern Afghan province at Helmand. NATO says there was no enemy presence in the area when the chopper crashed. The Taliban has claimed responsibility in a text message to CNN. This is the worst crash since August of last year. That happened in eastern Afghanistan. And 30 soldiers were killed in that attack including 22 elite Navy Seal commandos. To the cruise ship crash in Italy, you're looking live at the Costa Concordia. Rough seas and weather has officials now worried about an environmental disaster. Right now the ship is about 60 feet below sea level sitting on a rock ledge just eight feet from a 200- footdropoff. Now, if the ship goes over that ledge its gas tanks could rupture from the pressure, spilling out some 500,000 gallons of fuel. And this is brand new video into CNN. It was shot from the deck of the cruise ship, and you really get a sense of the chaos. Just listen.</s>CHO: You can hear passengers panicking, waiting to get into life boats and screaming for their loved ones. Another big development in this story is that a mystery woman has emerged. She is a 25-year-old woman, a hostess for Costa, but she wasn't working at the time of the crash. Now, the ship's cook says the captain was dining with her after the crash happened, nearly an hour after impact. She admits ding with the captain before the accident, but she says after the ship hit the rocks, she went on deck to help translate for evacuees. Mission complete -- a Russian tanker finished delivering more than a million gallons of fuel to ice-locked Nome, Alaska. It took eleven days for the tanker to get there with the help of an ice breaking U.S. Coast Guard ship. The voyage was the first ever attempt to supply fuel to an arctic Alaska settlement through hundreds of miles of sea ice. Nature's latest assault on the pacific northwest, my neck of the woods, ice storms have knocked out power to a quarter of a million homes in the Seattle area, and parts of Oregon are dealing with severe flooding. The FBI and Justice Department websites are back online this morning after being taken off line by the activist group anonymous. The hack attack was said to be in retaliation for the Fed's leveling criminal charges against the content sharing site megaupload.com. Minding your business now, U.S. stock futures pointing to a mixed open. DOW futures down at the moment. NASDAQ and S&P; 500 futures are trading slightly higher. And thinking about refinancing? Mortgage rates, listen to, this just keep dropping. The average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is down to the lowest rate over at 3.88 percent according to Freddie Mac. And if you haven't thought about it or if you haven't done it, Soledad, you may want to check into refinancing. Meanwhile, I'm going to go get that breakfast you catered into the studio here in New York while you enjoy that diner food.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes. And then you should make an appointment with your cardiologist immediately afterwards, because it's not all that healthy. But we love it. Alina, thank you. Here in South Carolina the race is now closer than ever, of course, ahead of Saturday's primary. Newt Gingrich is gaining momentum. American research group is showing a dead heat -- 33 percent of likely Republican voters are backing Newt Gingrich, and 32 percent say they back Mitt Romney. And the debate last night may have helped Newt Gingrich win over South Carolina voters. It opened up with a very strong response to question about his ex-wife's claims that he wanted an open marriage, and he turned what could have been a very negative entry into the debate into a positive debate moment for him. Listen. Here's what he said.</s>JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Your ex-wife gave an interview to ABC news and another interview at "The Washington Post," and this story has now viral on the internet. In it she said you came to her in 1999 at the time you were having an affair. She says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage. Would you like to take some time to respond to that?</s>NEWT GINGRICH, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, but I will.</s>GINGRICH: I think -- I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.</s>O'BRIEN: So here is what Gingrich's ex-wife, Marianne, told ABC last night.</s>MARIANNE GINGRICH, NEWT GINGRICH'S SECOND EX-WIFE: I said to him, Newt, we've been married a long time. And he said, "Yes, but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn't care what I do."</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was he saying to you, do you think?</s>MARIANNE GINGRICH: He was asking to have an open marriage. And I refused.</s>O'BRIEN: So senior political analyst David Gergen said last night that Gingrich's response at the debate to those claims has become a complete game changer. Listen.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC 360": Speaker Gingrich got a standing ovation in this auditorium for saying it was basically a completely inappropriate question.</s>KING: And he also scored points in the Monday night debate by attacking one of Williams' questions. I had a conversation with the speaker, look, you've moderated these debates. This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't. It is a story that's making the round in the campaign. Is it an issue I'm happy came up in the last 48 hours in the South Carolina primary? Of course in the. Is it an issue that voters in this state are talking about today? Is it an issue that he before the debate talked about in a very calm manner --</s>COOPER: He talked about it today earlier in a much different manner. But you knew -- how much of this was debate theatrics on his part, and did you know he was going to have that response?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I knew he was going to challenge the question. I don't read minds. I don't want to make a judgment about the speaker's response. I've been covering politics for 25 years. I understood that if I asked the question he was not going to be happy with it and he was going to turn on me. I knew that coming in. Again, you make the judgment call. Is it an issue in the debate? Might not be a great issue or an issue we want to talk about, but it is an issue in the debate. Voters are talking about it in the state. It was my judgment, my decision. Let's not try to smoke it in the middle of the debate somewhere. People at home either agree with that or disagree with that. You make a decision, you ask the question. This is politics. He's trying to promote himself and his agenda. Of course he's going to attack us. I didn't take that personally. We had a nice conversation afterwards. We don't always get along but I get how the business works.</s>COOPER: Panelists, what do you think?</s>DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Let me talk about this. It was one of the most explosive moments we've seen in debate history.</s>COOPER: In debate history?</s>GERGEN: In debate history. It was also one of the harshest attacks we've had on the press that I can remember in a long, long time. Very personal in the beginning. And as a political matter, I think Gingrich saw a fast ball coming and referring to this audience he smacked it out of the park. There is a reasonable chance after talking to people here tonight he could win South Carolina based on that answer.</s>O'BRIEN: You just laughed out loud, Herman Cain, who has joined my panel when he said he smacked it right out of the part. Do you think that Newt Gingrich sealed the deal heading into Saturday with just that first answer to that first question?</s>HERMAN CAIN: He sealed the surge but not necessarily sealed the deal. Secondly, he basically re-established what the American people really want to hear about. They don't care about what happened 15 or 20 years ago. That's the same kind of crap they leveled against me.</s>O'BRIEN: Yes, but you dropped out of the race because of it.</s>HERMAN CAIN: I dropped out of the race because, quite frankly, with all due respect, the media wouldn't get off of it even though they were false. To go back to pull this up that happened that long ago to try and say it is significant relative to his moral character I think is irrelevant. And the reason he got a standing ovation is because most of the American people would rather hear about how are we going to fix stuff, not what happened 20 years ago.</s>O'BRIEN: It's interesting. I was in the audience. Afterwards I went through a bunch of different folks, some in the Romney area and some in the Santorum area. People said they loved Newt Gingrich. He was funny. He was on last night. And they said they were happy to boo the media. But then he also said when I get home I'm going to Google that, because I have questions about character questions are important to me in my vote. I had a number of people -- a small number, I didn't talk to 1,000 people -- a bunch of people, who said that the character question is something, but they are also happy to boo the media.</s>HERMAN CAIN: Character questions are important and, yes, you want to have a president, a senator, a Congress person that has good ethics and has a good character. But the point is, relative to what's important right now, today, I believe that the American people are less interested in that. They may go and check out and see what's truth to the story. But here's the other thing. What about the timing of it? Three days before the South Carolina primary, which is a critical primary, voila, here comes this interview.</s>O'BRIEN: Roland Martin is at the of the table doing this.</s>ROLAND MARTIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely, because, look, when you talk about the issue of being the president of the United States, when you talk about having the level of character, yes, you can attack the media, got it. Anybody gets a standing ovation on that. Chris Rock talked about it in his comedy skit. Everybody dogs the media. But the reality is you stand there -- it was interesting to me, here in South Carolina, party of family values, the bible belt, and all you have to hear about talking about the right folks, Governor Sanford issues that we he had and to say that somehow that's not really that big of a deal? I disagree. Trust me, female voters out there watching are saying, a little bit arrogant when his own wife is saying I've got a problem with that.</s>O'BRIEN: Do you think that now the other campaigns pick up on this? Do you think -- right now we have seen the super PACs go crazy when they feel like the race is getting tight. You have to assume something's going to happen with the super</s>PAC. RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: I think last night at the debate you saw that candidates were reluctant to go too far in that direction on the stage. But certainly hate to -- one step back. I was talking to a senior official on one of the campaigns yesterday doing Republican presidential politics since 1964, since Goldwater. He said it yesterday it was the single most tumultuous day he can remember in 50 years. All of these events coming together at one time, as you say, three days before the primary that is historically decided the Republican race since 1980, an extraordinary set of developments. If kind of put it all together and it probably looks like on balance Gingrich's momentum continues. Romney I thought had another miserable debate.</s>O'BRIEN: You thought it was miserable?</s>BROWNSTEIN: Very week. Tough time on his answers on taxes again. But the good news for Romney is that Rick Santorum had a strong debate.</s>MARTIN: Nobody would know that.</s>O'BRIEN: We'll talk about it this morning a little bit.</s>BROWNSTEIN: That one asset he's got in South Carolina where he clearly seems to face a ceiling of support is the prospect of divide and conquer on the right. Gingrich last night, very strong performance on the outset. I think he has a shot at pulling an upset and taking this away.</s>O'BRIEN: Does that tell you something else we're doing historic is I'm going to get up in the middle of the show and go over to another guest because, look, this is Governor John Sununu. It only gets better. Hi, governor. Thank you for talking to us. They haven't fed you here. That's unfortunate.</s>JOHN SUNUNU, FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR: That's All right. How are you?</s>O'BRIEN: I'm really well. Do you believe that with his debate performance last night, Newt Gingrich, as some of our panelists believe that he is able to seal the deal and really capitalize on his momentum with his response to the very first question about his ex- wife?</s>SUNUNU: I think your panelists are as clumsy as the questioner was last night. The biggest problem I think in the debate last night was when Rick Santorum identified the grandiosity that Mr. Gingrich perceives himself to be.</s>O'BRIEN: We had that sound bite for folks who didn't get a chance to see the debate. Let's play that, Santorum on Newt Gingrich.</s>RICK SANTORUM, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich. I don't want a nominee that I have to worry going out and looking at the paper this next day and worrying about what he's going to say next.</s>SUNUNU: You know, we're not auditions for a debating team. We're auditioning for the president of the United States. You can't have somebody that's really as irrational and perceives himself as Winston Churchill or the equivalent of Margaret Thatcher or Charles de Gaulle. And I think Rick Santorum put that in context as being one of Newt Gingrich's biggest problems. The fact is, is we are electing a president of the United States to solve the problems that President Obama has left us. And I think last night, once again, as he focused on the issues, Governor Romney, contrary to what your panel thinks, Governor Romney focused on the issues that America cares about.</s>O'BRIEN: How come that's not gaining ground? When you look at the poll numbers, he actually over the last few days and even weeks, has been sort of declining in the various polls, and I know you have declared yourself as a supporter of Mitt Romney. Why is that message not taking hold if he's the candidate as opposed to the winner in your mind?</s>SUNUNU: Well, the primary process has to go through. Everybody thinks that this is going to be settled in one state or two states. This is a long slog. And the way the rules are structured this time it's going to take a long time. We need 1,143 delegates in order to win the nomination. Governor Romney is ready to take this forward.</s>O'BRIEN: He got booed - he got booed last night when he was asked about his taxes. And I think we have a little clip of that as well. Let's play that.</s>MITT ROMNEY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know how many years I'll release. I'll take a look at what the - what our documents are. And I'll release a multiple years. I don't know how many years.</s>O'BRIEN: Why has this been such a struggle for him to get his message out about the taxes? Because it's been stumbles, it's been booing, that was another - another low point in the debate, I thought.</s>SUNUNU: Well, look, Ron Paul last night said he's not going to release his taxes. Santorum said he's not going to release his taxes.</s>O'BRIEN: No, that's not what they said. Santorum said my taxes are on my computer. I haven't been home. I filed them myself, and everyone laughed because it gave the sense he was the common man. And Ron Paul said he doesn't make enough money he thinks it would be embarrassing is what he said for his personal income tax.</s>SUNUNU: Then the net - the net outcome of those two cute comments are that Ron Paul is not going to release his taxes, Santorum is not going to release his taxes. Gingrich released one year. And Mitt Romney said as soon as this year is done he's going to release them in multiple years. You tell me which is the most transparent of all of those, multiple years.</s>O'BRIEN: But there are many people may say, well, why not do it now before he becomes - if he becomes a candidate?</s>SUNUNU: Because he wants to make one single package release and when this year's are done in April you'll get them all.</s>O'BRIEN: Or you could just release them twice. I mean, you realize that I think - the question about the taxes has kind of gone on and on.</s>SUNUNU: But that's ridiculous to release them twice. So the two guys can dribble stuff out for three or four months. The idea is to nominate somebody who's going to be president of the United States. Are you going to be surprised seeing that Mitt Romney was successful in his taxes?</s>O'BRIEN: No, he said it several times in the debate last night, I'm proud of my success.</s>SUNUNU: So what do you think you're going to find in his taxes? The most important thing is to find things that could be an October surprise problem.</s>O'BRIEN: Who do you think is going to have that?</s>SUNUNU: Newt Gingrich has a serious problem with the package that the Ethics Committee had when they fined him $300,000.</s>O'BRIEN: And you said he should release that now?</s>SUNUNU: Yes, absolutely. That's more important.</s>O'BRIEN: Bring out the towel (ph) I think it's the word he used.</s>SUNUNU: Bring out the laundry. That's more important than anything else. Nancy Pelosi was on that group. If Nancy Pelosi knows, President Obama knows. We ought to be able to know now.</s>O'BRIEN: John Sununu, nice to have you. Thanks for joining us.</s>SUNUNU: Thank you. Nice to be here.</s>O'BRIEN: We appreciate your time. It's a pleasure.</s>SUNUNU: Thanks very much.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. We're going to take a short break. When we come back on the other side of the break, we're going to continue with the RNC Chair Reince Priebus joins us right here in the diner, the cafeteria this morning. We're back right after this. Stay with us.