Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Source: Bachmann Suspending Campaign; Prepping for the Primaries; Michele Bachmann Holds a Press Conference

Aired January 04, 2012 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: Well, she is now dropping out of the race. We are waiting for a press conference by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. A source says she is going to announce that she is suspending her campaign.

The news conference is scheduled to begin any minute now. We're going take you there as soon as it starts live. A Republican source familiar with Bachmann's plan says, quote, "she will acknowledge that the reality of Iowa's vote. When asked if that meant, she was dropping out, the source said she deserves the chance to say this in her own words but it's safe to say we don't see a viable way forward."

Bachmann finished next to last in the Iowa caucuses, just 5 percent of the vote. So while we wait for Bachmann news conference to start, I want to bring in Dana Bash. She is in West Des Moines, Iowa. As well as John King He's here in Atlanta with some analysis on the Bachmann campaign.

Dana, first of all, let's start with you. Obviously breaking this news. Any sense of the mood within her campaign right now? Clearly they don't want to actually get ahead of this announcement, but it seems like it's a pretty disappointing finish.

DANA BASH, CNN SR. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think that's definitely an understatement, Suzanne. They are kind of in lockdown mode inside her campaign, trying not to say much. Again, as John reported earlier, trying not to get ahead of the candidate. But there is no question about it that they are really, for lack of a better term, incredibly bummed out.

I mean, this is a woman who came in at the beginning of this race flying high. She won the Ames straw poll, the first real contest here in Iowa, back in the summer. She did it in a very surprising and impressive way. But since then, she has tumbled, tumbled in a pretty intense way in the polls.

And it's really unclear why, because she has -- at least at the beginning, she had done pretty well in debates. She had been here campaigning very hard.

She, like Rick Santorum at the end of this campaign, was around the state. She did all 99 counties.

And guess what? She was even born here. She was born in Waterloo, Iowa. So she is a native daughter of the state. But she still certainly did not do well at all, very disappointing.

And at the end of the day, Suzanne -- you know this, you've covered many campaigns -- you need money to go on. And if you're not doing well, the money dries up, and that is clearly a critical problem for her.

MALVEAUX: And Dana, it's such a mystery in a way, because you bring up a very good point. I mean, she actually won that straw poll back over the summer here.

Do we have any sense of why her campaign just didn't gain the traction that was necessary?

BASH: You know, she was -- first of all, she was competing with other candidates here who were pretty strong when it came to being socially conservative, which was really where she was appealing. And that definitely divided the vote.

But, you know, it is a little bit of a mystery. It is definitely a little bit of a mystery, why she didn't do as well as she did.

I talked to some Republicans. They say that her campaign internally was a bit of a mess and that that was a big problem for her, that she never really got the organization here on the ground that she needed in order to do well. But look, I mean, many candidates overcome that with their message and with their personality. And for her, she just didn't.

MALVEAUX: Dana, do we know who she's endorsing? And how important is that?

BASH: We don't know. And that certainly is going to be one of the questions that I and I'm sure a lot of other reporters here are going to try to ask her, whether she even will endorse at this point. If she is technically suspending her campaign, she might wait to do that. Generally, as you know in covering candidates who drop out, they don't do it right away.

For example, I remember Mitt Romney, back in 2008, he dropped out of the race in a pretty abrupt way. But he waited a little while before he officially formally backed John McCain. And you could see that now. Tim Pawlenty, he pretty quickly, when he dropped out, endorsed Mitt Romney, so you never know.

MALVEAUX: OK.

And Dana, final question here. You and I have covered politics quite a bit. We've seen these Republican women rise and fall. We saw Sarah Palin, who elected to sit out this one. Christine O'Donnell, we're going to talk to her in the next hour. Now we see Michele Bachmann here.

What do you make of this? Do you think it says anything about the state of women in the Republican Party?

BASH: I'm glad you asked me that question, because I've been thinking about this as I've been sitting here, actually thinking what kind of question I could ask her with regard to the state of women. But I actually think that obviously this is a disappointing end to -- an early end to her candidacy. But I think that Michele Bachmann, if you are a Republican woman, is probably somebody who you can look up to, because she was, I think, simply a candidate, not a female candidate.

She kind of stood up there with the boys, and she definitely held her own. And she talked about the issues that she believed in, in a way that was I think very impressive for -- by any means and by any measure.

So I think that is one thing that is different about her campaign. Obviously when Sarah Palin came on the scene, people looked at her and talked about the fact that she was a female and a female nominee, the first ever on the vice presidential ticket, but Michele Bachmann was a different kind of candidate. And I think that's fair to say.

MALVEAUX: All right. Dana, hang with us. Obviously, we're going to go to that live as soon as she makes her announcement.

I want to bring in John.

And John, we watched her support simply erode over a course of weeks, if not months. Where did her support come from in the first place?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Suzanne, sometimes we overcomplicate things. In the end, politics is about math, pretty simple arithmetic.

Dana noted she won the Ames, Iowa, straw poll, 4,500, 4,600, just shy of 5,000 votes back then. That's in August at a straw poll when people show up.

Look at the numbers last night -- 6,073 votes, five percent. Again, in the state where she was born. Michele Bachmann was born.

This right here is Black Hawk County. You saw her last night. She spoke at a caucus here. There was a large caucus here. Michele Bachmann came in, she played up, I'm one of you, I'm from here, I understand you, I share your values. She said she was the Republican who could beat Barack Obama.

In the county where we saw her speak last night Ron Paul won, then Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann. She just barely, by a few votes, beat Rick Perry. One, two, three, four, five. You can't come in fifth place in the place you call home.

Look at her color. She is the yellow color. Purple is Santorum. The dark red, Romney. The orange-pinkish color, that's Ron Paul.

This green down here, that means there was a tie in that county. It was not a tie involving Michele Bachmann. It was Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.

Rick Perry even carried two small Iowa counties. And he says he's going home to Texas to reassess. If you are the Midwestern candidate, who knows? We will say for the next week Mitt Romney must win New Hampshire. Well, the Michele Bachmann dynamic in this campaign was Michele Bachmann must win Iowa to prove she was a viable contender.

Not even close, Suzanne. This is a simple case of simple math. She didn't prove herself in the one place she most needed to prove herself.

MALVEAUX: And John, I want to ask about her credibility here, because some of the statements that she made, really, as she rose to prominence raised a lot of eyebrows, some of them that considered kind of outrageous. This is back in November of 2010. This is when she talked to Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He's taking 2,000 people with him.

He'll be renting out over 870 rooms in India. And these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over- the-top spending, it's a very small example, Anderson.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: That was the kind of over-the-top statements that she used to make, John. And having covered President Obama's trip there, we knew it was patently false. And she repeated misstatements about the risks of getting the HPV vaccine.

Did she have a credibility problem here?

KING: She had a consistency problem. I asked her about this very issue once, months ago, at the beginning of the campaign on my program. And I said, "Do you understand now you're running for president?" And she was very candid.

She said, "Yes, I've made a lot of mistakes in the past. And I must now meet a higher credibility test." That was before her comments about the HPV vaccine. That was before a few other controversial statements.

And you make a key point. This campaign, up until the final 10 days, two weeks in Iowa, was defined by what? The debates.

If you go back to June, our very first CNN debate, the one I moderated in New Hampshire, Michele Bachmann turned in a pretty strong performance. And she went up in the polls. But in the future debates, she was not viewed this is a race for the presidency.

And Republicans, especially, again, up until the final 10 days before Iowa -- even Iowa was tracking the national polls -- the race was defined by those debates. And who was the most presidential? Republican voters clearly made a decision, at least in Iowa last night.

And if you look at the national polls, Suzanne, the New Hampshire polls, the South Carolina polls, the Florida polls, she has done this since the spring. Republican voters across the country making a decision, looking at this field in picking a president, in picking a candidate. She always said she was the best candidate to go up against Barack Obama. If you look at all the data, the Republican voters who will decide their nominee beginning in Iowa last night just flat-out disagree.

MALVEAUX: And John, one of the things, it was a stapler (ph) campaign with some of the harsh statements against President Obama. She had said previously that he may have anti-American views. She also said his administration had embraced something called -- what she said gangster government.

KING: Gangster government. She calls him a socialist.

MALVEAUX: Yes. Right. I mean, did this resonate with a certain population that doesn't like this president?

KING: You were just having an interesting conversation. When Sarah Palin decided not to run, one of the big conversations was, could Michele Bachmann pick up the Sarah Palin base?

Governor Palin did not run for president. She never has. She was the vice presidential nominee.

We don't know what her base would be, but we do know who was attracted to her. One of the things we looked at in Iowa -- I'll bring this up right here -- this is Tea Party strength. We knew about Evangelical voters. They've been a force in Iowa forever. The Tea Party is a new presence on the scene.

The darker the county, the higher the presence of voters who identify themselves as Tea Party voters. Right? You see them all over the state right here.

Again, a lot of Tea Party voters here, a lot of Tea Party voters here, a lot of Tea Party voters here. Michele Bachmann, with those statements, the harsh criticisms of Obamacare, saying he's a socialist, gangster government, as you said, that was designed to appeal to the strong anti-Obama sentiment in Iowa.

Remember -- see all these places? And there's more of them up here where I've said there's Tea Party support. Let me turn this off and turn this off and turn this off and come back to the regular map.

Any yellow? Any yellow? Did Michele Bachmann win in any of these places where you find deep pockets of the Tea Party? The answer is no. That's why she's about to suspend her campaign.

MALVEAUX: Pretty amazing.

And John, final question here. Suspending the campaign simply means -- I mean, she can continue to raise money here. Herman Cain suspended his campaign. What does this mean for her?

KING: Campaigns do this. Most candidates do this, especially the lower-funded candidates.

Herman Cain got out in the last calendar year, in December, a month ago. She is getting out in 2012.

It is now in the campaign year where you can apply to the Federal Election Committee for matching funds. And Michele Bachmann is a candidate -- she's a classic matching fund candidate.

A lot of her money comes in, in small $25, $50, $100 donations from conservatives across the country, a grassroots campaign. Those campaigns can almost double their money by applying for federal matching funds. It helps pay off your debts, it helps pay off the staff, it helps the legal expenses it takes to close down a campaign.

And Suzanne, there's that one in a million chance -- and I view this as far in the distance as a possibility as you could get -- that were something to happen in this race, she has the right to get back in. She's still officially a candidate. It almost never happens. This is a legal fund-raising financial decision to suspend rather than end, essentially so they can do the paperwork and clean this up.

MALVEAUX: Yes. Well, John, we never imagined what would happen last night, so you never know. One in a million chance -- we'll see what happens.

Thanks, John.

We are awaiting Michele Bachmann's statement. She's going to have that press conference about the future of her campaign. As soon as that happens, we're going to bring it for you live.

Well, for most of the Republican candidates, it is bye-bye, Iowa, hello New Hampshire. The race shifts to the next battleground after that nail-biter in the Iowa caucuses.

Mitt Romney beat Rick Santorum by just eight -- we're talking eight -- votes. Each got about 25 percent of the vote. Ron Paul was a close third, followed by Newt Gingrich. Rick Santorum thanked his supporters for the late surge, while Romney took aim at President Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He said three years ago after being inaugurated -- he was on "The Today Show" -- he said, "Look, if I can't get this turned around I'll be looking for a one- term proposition." And we are here to collect, et me tell you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK SANTORUM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Game on. By standing up and not compromising, by standing up and being bold and leading, leading with that burden and responsibility you have to be first, you have taken the first step of taking back this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And we are waiting for a live event, Michele Bachmann to talk a little bit about where her campaign is going to go.

Want to bring back Dana Bash.

And Dana, much was made about her family. We've seen a lot of these candidates with their family members. We know she has four children and some 23 foster kids throughout her life. Her husband as well.

Who's in the room with her now? Paint a scene for us, if you will.

BASH: Well, no one yet. I'm looking over my shoulder yet to make sure. We were told she's going to come within the next two minutes. We should expect her at any minute. It's hard to imagine her not having her family around her as she has over the past few days campaigning around this state talking about the fact that she did believe that she was, as John was saying, the best person to beat Barack Obama, never mind the fact that obviously that did not even close to take hold with the Republican voters that she was appealing to.

Look, this is going to be a very difficult comment that she's going to make, very difficult speech that she's going to make, very difficult for any candidate. I think it's even more so for her on a personal level because of the fact that she did make this run as somebody who is, as I said, a native daughter of Iowa, the fact that she was born in Waterloo.

She is a congresswoman from Minnesota. She came here, she officially kicked off her campaign in the city of Waterloo, talking about the Iowa values and so forth.

It absolutely didn't take off beyond what happened earlier in the summer, which was her very strong showing. In fact, not only did it not take off, it absolutely plummeted. The more she went around the state, the more she talked, the less she gained voters. That was obviously a huge, huge problem in the results that we saw last night.

MALVEAUX: She was one of the candidates. It seemed that she struck the right balance when it came to negative and positive ads there. She really saved much of her firepower for President Obama, almost as if she was trying to leapfrog above some of her competitors there. She really went very hard after the president.

Did that seem to resonate with the supporters?

BASH: You know, it obviously didn't resonate enough because what they wanted was somebody who was quite a different candidate. Covering Michele Bachmann in the United States Congress, it is very interesting that she didn't get the kind of support that she thought she was going to get. John was pointing out the map and the Tea Party supporters. She started the so-called Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. She very early on appealed to that contingent of people, tried to really be a part of them and be one of them because she saw that that was where the movement of the Republican Party was going.

The fact that she didn't catch fire with them in this very important state of Iowa is really perplexing, I think, because she was so known to be one of those Tea Party Caucus people. The reality is the Tea Party Caucus is a caucus in the House that doesn't effectively do very much except to have an important name and an important connection to this important movement out there in the Republican Party. That is really, as I said, fascinating and perplexing that she didn't catch on with those people that she was trying so hard to connect with, and successfully did early on.

MALVEAUX: All right, Dana. We are waiting. We're going to get right back to you as soon as that starts live.

We're going to try to squeeze in a quick break first.

Thanks, Dana.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: We are soon going to be going to a Michele Bachmann event. She is going to be announcing very shortly that she, we expect, is suspending her campaign after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses.

The first of the contests of the presidential race is over. The second, less than a week away now. We're going to have highlights from the Iowa caucuses. We're going to look ahead at the New Hampshire primary as well.

Our correspondents, political analysts are going to break down what is happening and what is next. We're going to have live reports from Dan Lothian. He is in Manchester, New Hampshire. Christine Romans, in Atlanta. We're going to talk with Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia Center for Politics as well.

Well, right now, want to zero in with the next political battleground states. We are talking New Hampshire, holding the nation's first primary next Tuesday, January 10th; South Carolina's primary on Saturday. That is January 21st.

Dan Lothian brings us to Manchester.

Mitt Romney has a substantial lead in New Hampshire polls. The race intensifying there after last night's tight three-way close finish in Iowa among Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul.

What do we expect in New Hampshire, Dan?

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, first of all, one thing that New Hampshire voters pride themselves in is the fact that they are independent-minded. They don't necessarily embrace what others have decided in other states, in particular Iowa.

We saw President Obama in 2008 win in Iowa, but he did not win here in New Hampshire. So, you know, one expert we talked to, one political expert told us we see the polling out there. We see what's coming out of Iowa, but don't necessarily believe that New Hampshire voters will simply go along with it.

What does that mean? Well, let's break it down.

First of all, here for the last several months we have seen Mitt Romney, who is well known here because he ran in 2008. He has a home here, he's also the former governor of the state of Massachusetts, which is right next door.

He has consistently been leading in the polls, strong double-digit leads. Again, because he is not someone that they have to get introduced to, but they know everything about what he stands on and also know him just as a person.

Again, we don't see much fluctuation when we look at the latest position from CNN/ORC poll, where he was at 47 percent in December, continues to be in 47 percent according to those who were watching the caucuses last night. The only shift that we have seen is with Senator Santorum, where he has now gone from an early December five percent to last night at 10 percent. His supporters we talked to believe that the momentum that he got coming out of Iowa will translate here in New Hampshire as voters get a chance to take a second look at him.

They believe that he'll also get that bounce here -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Dan, what do we think about Jon Huntsman?

LOTHIAN: I think one things that can come out of this is anything can happen. We've seen him. We were at one of his events last night as well. Had a large turnout. We were told one of the largest turnouts that he has received in quite some time.

He's had about 150 events here in New Hampshire, and his campaign believes that he can have that same surge. He has been going door to door. He has been getting out there and meeting people, and they believe he's starting to resonate with the voters of New Hampshire. He could, according to them, have that surge and anything can happen as we have seen.

MALVEAUX: Dan Lothian, thanks.

I want to let you know in the bottom of your screen there you are watching the Michele Bachmann news conference supposed to start momentarily. Looks like her supporters are all gathering behind the podium there. There she is. She's approaching the podium now.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE SPEECH)