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December 04, 2007

Polls, Polls, And More Polls

Hannity & Colmes

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome to "Hannity & Colmes." We'll get right to our top story tonight. We're just 30 days from Iowa and the caucuses, and 63 days from Super Tuesday on February 5.

Now, watch the bottom of your screen during the next couple of segments. Check out the Hannity and Colmes campaign wire, with all the latest news from the trail that you can't afford to miss.

And we're also going to start a new segment on the show tonight, where we're going to try to get through as many polls and ads as possible in the next two segments. Buckle up--the fastest two segments in politics are straight ahead.

And joining us now to run through all of this with all the information, Fox News contributors Michael Steele in Washington and Frank Luntz is in Denver, tonight, and right here in our New York studio, our very own Kirsten Powers.

All right, Kirsten, these polls I have are specially for you. I want to go to New Hampshire voters as they talk about honesty and trustworthiness on the campaign trail. And look at what we put up for the screen for you all, if we have it there. There it is--most honest and trustworthy.

All right, who is the most honest and trustworthy in the campaign? Why does Hillary Clinton--we go to point two--Barack Obama is the single most trustworthy candidate for the Democratic Party, John Edwards second, Hillary Clinton, a low 18 percent.

And then the third part here is Clinton still leads by seven points overall. Why is she viewed as untrustworthy?

KIRSTEN POWERS: You're acting like this is a surprise, Sean. This is one of the problems she has. When they go through the candidates, Hillary's number one issue is that they feel that sometimes she panders and that she doesn't speak to them clearly.

And what happened with the illegal immigration question definitely played into that. With Obama, it's experience. Hillary does very well in experience. Each of them has their weaknesses, and they have to address them.

HANNITY: Frank Lutz, you've been examining and doing these focus groups. Why the untrustworthy factor for Hillary, and what does it mean in your view?

FRANK LUNTZ: They're looking for someone who is incredibly candid, who speaks off the cuff. And the advantage for Obama is that he doesn't sound rehearsed. Every time you here him, you feel like he's saying it for the first time.

When she had the laughter incident about eight weeks ago, and then, as Kirsten said, going back and forth on illegal driver's licenses--what voters are looking for is someone that can look straight into the camera and straight into their eyes and tell them what they honestly feel.

Here's one important point--you showed a seven point gap between Hillary and Obama. The key number here for viewers--eight points. Obama can make up an eight-point deficit should he win in Iowa. If it's bigger than that, it becomes hard to get that kind of momentum.

HANNITY: Michael?

MICHAEL STEELE: I think Hillary has a long his story with America, and Americans who have watched her perform, if you will, over the last 20 years, and I think they're really beginning to boil down to some fundamental questions about the next president of the United States. And do we want to have two presidents in Clinton and Clinton? Are we going to relive some of the old news from the past? And I think a lot of that is weighing her down.

I think Hillary being Hillary, she can overcome it. But right now going into the final stretch before Iowa, it's beginning to weight her a little bit.

HANNITY: Let's go to this campaign ad. Hillary is not just being attacked by Republicans, as shown in this ad here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hillary has good ideas, like giving every American an equal shot at success.

SEN HILLARY CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the Republicans attacked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell me this isn't socialism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: What's fascinating about that, if I can throw it to my friend Kirsten here--I love that ad, by the way, because that's put out by Democrats. That shows her flip-flopping on the baby bond. She's flipped and flopped and flailed on Iraq, she flipped and flopped and flailed on illegal immigrants getting driver's licenses.

This is a field day for Republicans, and the Democrats are doing this to her.

POWERS: It's a primary, and the Republicans are doing the same stuff on the other side. They're all going to attack the front-runner. There is nothing unusual about that. And on the baby bonds issue, she did not flip- flop on it.

HANNITY: What do you mean?

POWERS: She went out and suggested it was possibly something she would look at, and suddenly it was headlined she s coming up with a baby bond.

HANNITY: What happens is she floated a trial balloon, it didn't work out--

LUNTZ: Listen, she's got -- the attribute that you should be using from this point forward is not honest and trustworthy, because that's a given--someone who says what they mean and means what they say.

Of all the times we've been testing attributes that matter for president, a straight shooter comes in first. And the problem for Senator Clinton is that she seems like she's trying to appeal to every audience. You can't be everybody's friend at the same time.

COLMES: Tell that to Giuliani and Romney at the same time. And let me show you something John Edwards has put out, which is a health care ad, one of the issues Americans claim is most important to them, and where Democrats score very well. Here's John Edwards.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN EDWARDS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We don't have universal health care because of drug companies and insurance companies and their lobbyists in Washington D.C.

And anybody who argues that every American is not entitled to health care, I want them to explain to you what child in this country is not worthy of health care?

Are you going to sit at a table with drug companies and oil companies, and they're going to give away their power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLMES: Michael Steele, that's a pretty good endorsement for health care, and a pretty good selling point for John Edwards, isn't it?

STEELE: It is, and it's getting him nowhere. He is still third or fourth in the polls, and the reality of it is--you're right, it's a good commercial, it's a great sound bite. It plays to the base of his primary voters, but he's got two 800-pound gorillas in front of him, and he can't get past them.

And the reality for John Edwards is how do we overcome with a strong message when everyone's focused on Hillary foibles, and Barack's feel-good message?

COLMES: Frank Luntz, can an ad like that help an Edwards breakthrough, and if not, what can?

LUNTZ: It's more than just a good ad, it's a great ad. It's beautifully constructed--you've got the candidate speaking, the flag. It's patriotic, and it talks about the frustrations that Americans feel.

But, as Michael just said, the negativity that comes out of Edwards in the debates undercuts the beauty of that message. And the problem for Edwards is he doesn't have to get past one candidate, he's got to get past two candidates.

COLMES: Let me put up some new poll numbers--National Gallup polls, and we'll have them for both parties here, and they show a tightening of the race.

We'll put them up and let you see exactly what's happening for both Hillary on one end, and Giuliani on the other. Hillary losing a little ground nationally, down 11 percent. Giuliani is down nine percent.

So we see a tightening of the race here, Kirsten. But that's typical, I guess, as we get closer and closer to what will be the day when people actually pull those levers.

POWERS: Of course, it going to keep tightening up, and you're going to see lots of shifting happening, like you are seeing in Iowa, where people are starting to pay attention.

And I think it's always to have been expected that this was going to happen with the national polls, especially the whole inevitability thing with Hillary. I've always said it was never inevitable, she was always going to fight for this, and she's very well going to lose in Iowa.

COLMES: Let me show you something else that happened today--National Public Radio debate, and Hillary Clinton being questioned about her stance on Iran, calling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. And she defended that by saying this today on NPR.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN HILLARY CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: I think we've actually seen the positive effects of having labeled them a terrorist organization, because it did change their behavior.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no evidence--none, zero--that this declaration caused any change in action on the part of the Iranian government.

CLINTON: I'm someone who wants the best possible advice from as many different sources as possible, and that would certainly include my husband.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLMES: Who wins that debate, Frank Luntz?

LUNTZ: The Democrats like the fact that Bill Clinton will be involved, the Democrats miss those days. And it seems interesting that Hillary Clinton at one moment is bashing the Bush administration for its foreign policy, and the next moment it's endorsing it.

I am going to make your producers angry--I need to go back to that one piece of data before. Mike Huckabee in second place in the Republican party? The guy hasn't even spent $2 million. It's a shocking result, and Americans should be watching what happens to Huckabee over the next 30 days.

COLMES: Don't worry about making the producers angry. That's what I do. But we'll be back in just a moment. More polls, pundits, more sound from the trail right after the break.

But still to come tonight, the candidates roll out the red carpet for some major star power. But does the celebrity endorsement actually translate into votes? That's coming up on Hannity and Colmes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLMES: We continue now with our panel. I want to put up on the screen a news conference from today where George W. Bush had to defend the idea that we have new information from the NIE that basically discounts what he's been saying, pushing war with Iran, and 16 intelligence agencies point out that Iran is not the threat we thought it was.

In fact they haven't developed nukes since 2003, and here's that give and take.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want to contradict a reporter such as yourself, but I was made aware of the NIE last week.

In August--I think it was Mike McConnell came in and said "We have some new information." He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.

And it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLMES: Frank, we're going to believe the president was told one thing in August, didn't get the actual information until last week, and in the interim has been promoting a hard-line military policy with Iran?

LUNTZ: Well, first, the president--it takes time to collect all this information. Second is that you don't want to make a mistake. Third is that people like you, Alan, criticize him because he rushed to judgment on some issues. Well, now you're not giving him the time to make the right determination.

And, fourth, we know from Israeli sources, who have been very public over the last eight hours, that they don't necessarily agree with what the U.S. knows. And in a situation like Iran, I might be more likely to trust the Israeli source.

COLMES: Kirsten, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies--when did the president know, what did he know, when did he know it, and were we misled, once again, like we were with Iraq?

POWERS: Unfortunately on this one I'm probably not going to say what you want to hear. I'm a little skeptical about this report, and I think that the president--I don't know if he's being straightforward or not, but the reality is Iran is a threat.

COLMES: We don't know if the president is being straightforward, which is a serious question about the president.

POWERS: There is a question of when he had the information, and when he disclosed it, and maybe he was misleading people in terms of the information that he had. But I do think to suggest that they're not trying to pursue a nuclear program is unbelievable to mean.

COLMES: Well, that's what these 16 agencies say.

But let's look at new polls, here--another FOX News opinion dynamics poll which discusses experience and how the people responding to the poll feel about experience in terms of New Hampshire.

Democratic primary the most important candidate quality, Clinton weighs in at 55 percent, Richardson, 22, Obama seven, and Edwards five.

One other poll put up there--are people satisfied if Clinton or Obama win the nomination, New Hampshire Democratic Primary, if Clinton wins, 69 percent satisfied, 74 percent if Obama wins.

Michael Steele, what does that tell you?

STEELE: I think the real question for me is electability. I think a lot of this boils down to the voters are beginning to fine tune their choices down to electability.

And for Democrats, it's who can beat the Republicans and make up for 2000 and 2004, and for Republicans it's who can take on Hillary.

Hillary right now comes to the table--it's interesting that she has more credibility and more substance, if you will, that someone like Richardson, who--you've got a resume a mile long. Obama is where Obama should be as a two-term state Senator running for president.

So I think people are boiling it down for themselves.

HANNITY: Frank Lutz, you thought that in the last debate Rudy Giuliani didn't have his finest moment on the issue of immigration. He came out with an exclusive new ad today. We have the first look at it. Let's take a look and get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I remember back to the 1970's and the early 1980's. Iranians Mullahs took the Americans hostages, and they held the American hostages for 444 days. And they released the American hostages in one hour.

And that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists who we're facing. The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald Reagan was taking the oath of office as president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Frank?

LUNTZ: For a Republican primary electorate, it's brilliant. He takes the strength of Reagan and the determination and the success, and he applies it. He implies that this is something that he would do, that's he's tough.

And the language that he uses is very stark, it's very plain. It's going to work in Iowa and New Hampshire. The challenge for Rudy is what happens in his upcoming debate on another network? How does he respond to that illegal immigration question?

They know he's tough. He's the best on terrorism. But what's he going to do with illegal immigration?

HANNITY: Let me go back to my friend Kirsten here in studio. We raised the question before, and we put up the poll about trustworthiness for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and we also have the new Gallup poll as it relates to Hillary Clinton and her unfavorables--50 percent unfavorable rating.

Anybody in politics will tell you if you're at that high a level, unfavorable, 47 percent, you're in trouble.

POWERS: She needs that number to go down, there's no doubt about it. And this has been something that she's had to deal with from the beginning and something she dealt with in her Senate race--

HANNITY: Why don't people like her?

POWERS: And I think that, well, I think that she's been a very polarizing figure for a long time, and there's been a lot of information that has been put out there that's very negative that people have heard.

But I also think that this is just a challenge for her that she's going to have to really convince people that she's not pandering to them, that she's talking straight with them She's very scripted and very prepared, and often it comes off that she's not being straight.

HANNITY: Michael Steele, I've got one last question for you. We have an AP South Carolina poll that came out, Republican poll--very, very close. After Iowa and New Hampshire, this will be a very key state. Look at those numbers--Rudy 19, Romney 19, Fred Thompson 18, McCain 13, and the rising Huckabee at 10 percent.

STEELE: This race is wide open, and you'll see on the Republican side a little bit more movement and back and forth, particularly with a surging Huckabee, a flat lining among Thompson and a few others. South Carolina is going to be wonderful beachhead in a few months.

HANNITY: All right guys, we have a lot of ground to cover in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for being with us, we appreciate it.

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