‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 12, 2007

MR. GREGORY:  You did a straw poll on the Daily Kos Web site that had her losing to Edwards and Obama.  She is, according to national polls, a going away front-runner at this point just in, in the national polls.  Have you changed your opinion of her?

MR. MOULITSAS:  Well, I think, clearly—I mean, let me start off by saying, you know, she’s one of the warmest politicians I’ve ever met—I’ve said this, I’ve written about this—in person.  And for some reason when you see her in these public—in debates, you know, she comes across as colder.  And I, I’ve never been able to understand why that is.  You know, I am afraid that her advisers are really hiding the, the human being behind, you know, behind that suit.  Because she’s an incredible human being, very accomplished.

They’re, they’re making strides.  Yes, absolutely.  I think they’re realizing that this isn’t a movement—we’re talking hundreds of thousands of millions of people.  This isn’t something you just toss aside or dismiss.  And she’s making great strides in giving this community proper respect.  Again, it’s not about me.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. MOULITSAS:  You know, I could care less whether I like her or not.  She doesn’t care if I like her or not.  But what I’ve done is create a forum where she can go talk to directly to these people.  And she was at 9 percent in the last poll.  Nine percent of a million people on the Daily Kos is still about 90,000 committed, hard-core activists working on her behalf.  I think any candidate would kill for that kind of support.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman, final point here.  Is your primary message that compromise is going to be inevitable if Democrats want to win the White House?

REP. FORD:  Merging of factions and recognizing that our agendas are far more in common than there may be in variance.  The reality is our real challenge is developing a coherent, cogent platform that a majority of Americans can rally around that will not only give us a political victory, but will give us a chance to do something that George Bush and up to, up to a year ago most Republicans weren’t able to do in the House and Senate, which is to govern and govern effectively.  If we cross the three hurdles of national security, values and an ability to manage people’s money through taxes and fiscal discipline properly and in a smart way, we will not only advance the progressive cause, but we will give an opportunity to bring to life and to bring to fruition so many of the things that Markos and I care deeply about. And I dare say the millions of people on his Web—that, that follow Daily Kos, and there’re millions of people that subscribe to him and what he does, and I dare say there’re millions that subscribe to the DLC, and more importantly the country.  That’s what this is about.  And that’s what we’re about.

MR. GREGORY:  Quickly, your final thought.

MR. MOULITSAS:  Yeah, no.  I mean, I’m, I’m looking forward to hopefully merging factions.  Everybody else in the party coalition has come together. You’re the lone holdout.  I hope that’s not the case next year.

REP. FORD:  We’ll be there, and I hope you are as well.

Thank you.

MR. MOULITSAS:  Thanks.

REP. FORD:  Good meeting.

MR. GREGORY:  All right.  Harold Ford, Markos Moulitsas.  A good handshake. Thank you very much.  The debate will continue.

And coming next, results from the Iowa straw poll and making sense of the changing presidential primary calendar.  It’s all fodder for our roundtable this morning:  Margaret Carlson, Michael Duffy, Chuck Todd and Byron York. It’s all coming up right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  The race for the White House 2008 with our MEET THE PRESS roundtable right after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  And welcome to all you.  Let’s go directly to Des Moines, Iowa, where Byron York of the National Review witnessed yesterday’s straw poll in person.

Byron, the results, we’ll put them up on the, the screen.  As expected, Mitt Romney comes out on top at 32 percent, but Mike Huckabee is a big story there coming in second at 18 percent; Sam Brownback, 15 percent; Tom Tancredo at 14 percent.  What does it mean?

MR. BYRON YORK:  Well, I think, first of all for Romney, he was the front-runner going in, he’s the front-runner coming out.  He won, and he can—he can be happy about that.  So it solidifies his image.  But it also kind of solidifies his image as a guy who’s paying tons of money to stay where it is.  And it allows people like Huckabee, who was kind of a surprise second place finisher, to just attack him over and over again as a big money guy who’s trying to buy votes, the candidate of Wall Street, not Main Street, a guy who wants to sell you the box and not the cereal.  I mean, he’s taken a lot of hits here.  So he does come out ahead.  As far as Huckabee is concerned, you know, it was a really, really big win for him.  He was worried that he’s raised so little money that if he finished way down in the pack he might not be able to stay in the race.  And his, his oratorical skills, he’s a former preacher, very strong.  He’s the kind of guy that you listen to him speak on a few occasions and you wonder why he isn’t higher up in the race. So he—he’s made a huge step forward.

MR. GREGORY:  Chuck Todd, if you look at the voter turnout as well, down significantly from 2000 when George W. Bush won.  Is that a bad sign for Republicans?

MR. CHUCK TODD:  Let’s—I don’t want to go—make too much of it because they had a couple things.  First time, I think, this time they actually asked for Iowa IDs.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. TODD:  They didn’t ask for that before.  Used to be you could just bus in people.  No doubt Steve Forbes and George W. Bush might have bused in a few folks back in ‘99.  And then, but the other thing is when you have three major contenders not participating.  Last time there was only one major contender not participating.  So I think you had some of that.

Look, I go back, the Romney is win is significant, but it would only have been an interesting story had he not done well.  The Huckabee story is amazing for a couple of reasons.  He didn’t buy a single bus.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. TODD:  You know, this straw poll is known for renting buses.  Sam Brownback rented a whole bunch of buses, Tancredo, obviously Romney did.  The other thing is Huckabee actually had a negative ad run against him for this last week.  The Club for Growth went after him.  So here—here’s somebody who only—didn’t have any paid media up himself, had a negative ad criticizing him, and he finished second.  It’s a big deal.  I think at this point it’s like, who finished first and second, everybody else is now definitely second tier.  Huckabee may start inching up and saying, “Hey, I belong in this first tier.”

MR. GREGORY:  Well, let’s look at some of the polling out of Iowa and also nationally for the Republicans.  University of Iowa poll has Romney on top, there’s Giuliani at 11 percent, Fred Thompson—not officially in the race—at 7 percent, and down it goes with John McCain only at 3 percent in Iowa.  You look at the national picture, a little bit different.  Giuliani is on top at 29 percent, Fred Thompson—again, not announced yet—at 22, there’s McCain, and Romney down at 12 percent.

And, Michael Duffy, one question for Mitt Romney here is did he win by enough to, to put the questions about his flip-flip—what a lot of people are calling it—on abortion, did he put those questions behind him now in a state where that’s going to matter in Iowa?

MR. MICHAEL DUFFY:  Well, no, not completely.  He, he won, and he was supposed to win and that’s good.  He’s now ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire. This straw poll, what it probably means, he’ll be ahead in Iowa by a little bit more over the next couple of days.  But the others will eventually come after him, or continue to, on these issues, and I think the Republicans are going to go at each other like a free-for-all on all their flip-flops.  There are no real perfect Republican candidates.  They all have issues about consistency, particularly on the social conservative issues.  And so eventually we’re going to have a giant, you know, rumble about who, who had the greatest flip-flops, and so Romney’s not out of it and neither is anyone else on that score.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.  Margaret.

MS. MARGARET CARLSON:  Yeah, Romney’s—Romney, since he was buying the Iowa straw poll, had to win it big, and then I think he won it big enough.  His tactical error was to say early on that he was going to spend what it would take and scaring out the others so it doesn’t have as much meaning as it would if the other major candidates had been in.

MR. GREGORY:  Hm.

MS. CARLSON:  But even though the Iowa straw poll is entirely irrational, it’s completely welcome because it lets you know that the person who was winning the, the debates, for people who were watching them, was Governor Mike Huckabee.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. CARLSON:  And he got more votes than he bought tickets, which is a rare thing in Iowa.  You usually get what you pay for.  Huckabee got more than that.

MR. GREGORY:  And, and, Byron York, talk a little bit about he dynamic now on, on the Republican side of things in these early states because what Mitt Romney would like to do, has been written about today, is create a, a, a dynamic between himself and Rudolph Giuliani where he’s a conservative and Giuliani’s running as more of a moderate.  How does that play out in terms of early stage strategy?

MR. YORK:  Well, you know, on, on the abortion issue, as Margaret said, Romney is fighting from his right.  I mean, there are a lot of radio talk show hosts here in Iowa who are really pushing hard on him, talking about his change of heart over abortion—change of position, you know, which happened in late 2004.  It’s a very, very recent one.  So it’s not just him against the, the pro-choice Giuliani.  He actually has to secure his right flank on this and, and, you know, he, he has not gotten over the flip-flopper image by, by far.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. YORK:  He’s—you know, in, in New Hampshire, of course, he is the next door former governor.  He is running very strong.  In South Carolina it’s quite different.  Giuliani, who people thought really couldn’t make it in South Carolina polling very, very well, and that’s a state where you see Fred Thompson, still undeclared, doing really, really well.  So, you know, Romney would sort of, with this crazy new schedule that we have, would kind of like to run the table early, but that—you know, I just don’t think that’s going to be possible.

MR. GREGORY:  Do you think Giuliani, Chuck Todd, will stop him?

MR. TODD:  Well, we’ll see.  I think that, you know, Giuliani has set himself quite well, I think, in these early states.  They are going to compete in the early states.  You know, they’re—I think they—there are other folks who are saying, “Oh no, no, no, they’re not,” and, and some of the New York media’s almost pushing this idea, “Oh no, Giuliani’s focused on Florida.” But Giuliani’s set himself up as where long as he finishes second in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, then makes South Carolina, I do think South Carolina is the showdown state.  If this, this is Romney and Giuliani, and I’m sort of leaning that that is where this thing is headed.  Maybe we’ll see what Fred Thompson does, but if this thing ends up being Romney vs. Giuliani, neither one of them fits South Carolina, so that will be the showdown state.

MR. GREGORY:  We, we talk about looking at the national polls and, and the Iowa polling, and you see John McCain way down the line.  It was interesting this week during an interview with Matt Lauer on the “Today” program, and he was asked a series of short questions that were in keeping with his new book called “Hard Call.” Let’s watch that.

(Videotape from “Today” show)

MR. MATT LAUER:  If you were asked tomorrow to take...

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ):  Mm-hmm.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 22: Senate roundtable, Brinker, Snyderman Nov. 15: Clinton, Duncan, Gingrich, Sharpton Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: