[O'brien:] Good morning. Welcome, everybody. We've got updated information on those two American tourists who are believed to have been kidnapped in Egypt. Let's get right to Christine Romans who has some headlines for us on that. Good morning.
[Christine Romans, Cnn Business Correspondent:] Good morning. That's right, Soledad. We begin with that breaking news at of Egypt. A group of armed gunmen kidnapped two American female tourists and their Egyptian tour guide in the Sinai Peninsula. Again, we're just getting word of that. A tour guide and two women seized by masked gunmen and we're following this closely. Our Ivan Watson is on the story. We'll have him a little bit later on in the program. All right, also in Egypt. Thousands of people gathering in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square this morning in protests against police. Looking at live pictures here right now. Protesters are angry about the lack of response from riot police during a soccer stampede that killed 79 people. U.S. officials are expressing concern about a link between Iran and al Qaeda. They say Tehran recently freed as many as five top al Qaeda operatives who had been under house arrests including members of Bin Laden's inner circle. Officials also say Iran may have provided material aid to that terror group. The Obama administration said to be considering the release of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay as a way of promoting peace talks in Afghanistan. It comes after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested U.S. troops would end their combat role in Afghanistan by the middle of next year rather than in 2014. Mitt Romney stomping in Nevada on the eve of the state's caucuses. Romney is trying to move forward while backpedalling on those comments he made on this show regarding the country's poor. Polls give Romney a comfortable lead in Nevada. He was just endorsed by Donald Trump. Actress and comedian, Roseanne Barr says it's no joke, she is running for the Green Party's presidential nomination. Roseanne says she's a long-time Green Party supporter. The party's nominee will be chosen at a convention in Baltimore in July. "Minding Your Business" this morning, U.S. stock futures point to a higher open right now. Everyone is waiting for the big jobs report this morning. Economists surveyed by CNN Money are forecasting 130,000 jobs were added to the economy in January. The CNN Money survey shows that the unemployment rate probably ticked up a bit, maybe to 8.6 percent. Stay tuned. We're going to get you those numbers as soon as they're available next hour. Right now though, a quick check on the weather. Meteorologist Rob Marciano joins us. Good morning, Rob.
[Rob Marciano, Ams Meteorologist:] Good morning, Christine. I've been tracking this blizzard that is heading east of Denver. Major snowstorm from Denver with nine inches of snow and counting there, but the visibility has dropped and just now shutdown parts of I-70 from about the airport eastward, about 60 mile stretch. Blizzard warnings are up for eastern Colorado, western parts of Nebraska and Kansas. How much snow do we expect? Well, we could see over a foot in Denver, which doesn't sound like a lot, but in the month of December or February that is a fair amount so it's a major snowstorm for these folks. Heading into Nebraska, some of these darker colors we could see in some spots, up to 20 inches of snow. Elsewhere not too shabby. East coast, 46 degrees in New York City, 53 in D.C., but if you are traveling to either Dallas or Denver, those are going to be problem spots at the airports. Christine, back up to you.
[Romans:] I know hundreds of flights are canceled in Denver. Thanks so much Soledad.
[O'brien:] All right, let's move on. Talk some more politics this morning. Late last night, Mitt Romney started backing down from the comments that he made here on STARTING POINT the other day about the poor. That was after he repeated his stance twice actually on our show. I want to play that for you.
[Mitt Romney , Presidential Candidate:] I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans.
[O'brien:] Then he changed his mind and now he's saying this.
[Romney:] John, it was a misstatement. I misspoke. If people are going to go after me when I make a mistake, when I slip up on a word I say even though I say I got it wrong, sorry, that's not what I meant. That's going to be part of the political process. I understand it and I accept the consequences.
[O'brien:] Ron Brownstein is the editorial director of "National Journal." The new issue, by the way, is on the newsstands today. There I am pitching "National Journal." Yes and I'm getting a Dodge Dart later this morning.
[Ron Brownstein, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Pitch that, actually.
[O'brien:] Yes. Good morning to you.
[Brownstein:] Good, good morning.
[O'brien:] I thought it was really interesting to hear what I just said, you know, when I slip up on a word. Do you think what do you make of this strategy of characterizing what was a big giant brouhaha for his campaign when they should have been doing their victory lap after the win in Florida to a slip up on a word?
[Brownstein:] Well, if he slipped up on a word he slipped up 75, 100, 125 times? Look, this is something that some version of which he has said repeatedly on the stump in debates. You know, that the phrasing of it was particularly explosive on the show Wednesday morning. But the basic sentiment, the basic argument, that in essence in this downturn, the very poor are sheltered by a safety net. The very rich are taking care of themselves and middle class is left out and getting the shaft has been a central argument he's made all of the way through. And in fact, as I said yesterday, the core of his argument against President Obama is that he is turning us into what Obama calls an entitlement society, a European style social state that we are sort of coddling American's independency. This is not the phrasing may have been a mistake, but the sentiment is something he has said many times before and he really can't say that that was somehow a misstatement.
[Unidentified Male:] Ron, do you think when you talk about poor. Mitt Romney has been so often accused of nothing having one. And kind of going with the wind to suit whatever audience he was speaking to. Was this an example of him actually articulating his more honestly than he has before?
[Brownstein:] I think, as I said yesterday, there is a political argument here that Republicans and conservatives have made for many years that is reflected in this language. I mean, I think a core of conservative populism and of the conservative argument against government has been opposition to transfer payments. The idea that the government takes money from people who are working hard and gives it to people who don't deserve it. That was I think significantly removed from our politics in the 1990s with welfare reform signed by Bill Clinton and helped to be designed by Newt Gingrich. But it's really re-emerged in this recession. We've had 15 million more Americans in poverty today than when Bill Clinton left office. There are a lot of people, in fact, receiving government benefits, whether it's food stamps or Medicaid or unemployment insurance. Some would argue that's exactly how this safety net is supposed to function when people are basically thrown on their own resources by the economy. But the Republicans are arguing this is a dangerous level of dependency. This is going to be a big argument. Just to be clear, I think the core point is, when Mitt Romney said to Soledad I'm going fix is safety net if there are holes in it. The essence of his agenda on these issues has been to retrench spending and to retrench the federal role on these issues, whether it's Medicaid
[O'brien:] It looked contradictory to what we know Will Cain is dying to get in here. Go ahead.
[Will Cain, Cnn Contributor:] Ron and I have had this debate several times about what the core message of the Republican Party is. I'm not going to deny, Ron, opposition to transfer payments is part of that, but I think you're leaving out part of Mitt Romney's message, which was obviously inarticulately put across here. Newt Gingrich did a much better job. Newt Gingrich and actually Rick Santorum are guys that have voiced this ideology much better and that is you provide opportunities. There is a tenor in our conversation that if you care about the poor, if you're concerned about it, you give to them. You give more, you give more. History doesn't suggest that's true. From the '60s to the '90s, we had one of the most robust welfare and it failed. Since we've had reform, it's gotten better. Mitt Romney was speaking to that message as well.
[O'brien:] I think there are kind of two different categories. One is just from a PR stance you should never say I don't care about fill in the blank. It's just a bad thing to be quoted because people will take that chunk no matter what the context is and run it.
[Unidentified Male:] Absolutely. More dangerous than you might mean it.
[O'brien:] And you might mean it. We're talking politicians willing to even say who knows what anybody really means. But on the other side of this, you also have to say, what it really Mitt Romney stance on certain issues? So when we talks about I'm going to repair that safety net. In fact, Ron Brownstein, I mean, walk me through. Where does he stand on the things that we consider the safety net? I think we have a graphic of this. That's unemployment insurance. That's Medicaid, that's food stamps, that's housing vouchers, that's welfare. If you are talking about people poverty is, what, $22,000 a year for a family of four? What is Mitt Romney's position on repairing that safety net?
[Brownstein:] Well, first of all. Will is right. Certainly the welfare reform in 1996 did in fact expand an opportunity for low- income people by moving them into a labor force at the time when it was expanding. But, if you're looking at what Mitt Romney is talking about here, the core of his agenda is reducing the federal commitment to a lot of he's anti-poverty programs. The most important one is Medicaid, which is now an entitlement that provides health care for the poor including seniors. He wants to convert that into a block brand. He wants to reduce the growth of federal spending on it to about half the level it is now, about $100 billion a year. Unless states find significant efficiencies that are eluded them before. Inexorably, that means fewer people are being eligible and reduce benefits.
[O'brien:] I'm going to stop you there. At a time when the number of people in poverty is increasing, I think we have from 2007, 37 million up to 46 million in poverty today, an increase of just under 25 percent. Chrystia, want to jump in on this?
[Chrystia Freeland, Editor, Thomson Reuters Digital:] I wanted to say, Ron, first of all, I totally agree with you on the misspeaking point. I think it's quite essential to point out that this was maybe for the Romney campaign an unfortunate way of phrasing it. But it actually spoke to a core point that they've been trying to make. I wanted to ask you about something a little bit different about how this is playing. What I wonder is, we've seen quite a few times that Mitt Romney has a hard time talking about money.
[O'brien:] Why is that?
[Freeland:] In ways that are comfortable for everybody else. This has caught fire so much because it reminds us that we talked about money
[O'brien:] His gaffes are always around money. Why?
[Unidentified Male:] I like to fire people.
[Freeland:] I think it's because he's very rich and he lives in a different world from the rest of us.
[O'brien:] Ross Perot was even richer. Ross Perot was really, really, really rich and he didn't. So there are a lot of people who have been rich who do not make these gaffes. I find this very curious. Ron, do you have a theory on this?
[Brownstein:] Well, you know, I think that is a really good point. I think there are two aspects of it. First, the most dangerous thing in politics is to play into a pre-existing story line, right? So when Dan Quayle misspelled potato it was a much better deal than if Al Gore had misspelled potato. For Romney, there is kind of accumulation that's going on here because he has made so many awkward comments relating to money, I'm unemployed, too, I like firing people. You know, each one might be misconstrued and certainly some of them have been stretched. But there is more sensitivity to it. I think the second thing is kind of, you know, I think he's kind of internalized a kind of unease about this. I mean, I think, you know, the fact that Republicans, as well as Democrats, have been going after him on his financial background. I think it has made him somewhat unsteady in this terrain. I think he probably doesn't feel as secure as he does on some other areas. So I think the combination of more sensitivity and kind of the audience and probably more sensitivity on the part of the performer explains part of what we're seeing.
[O'brien:] All right, Ron Brownstein, always nice to have you. We love having you in person though. You might want to move to New York. Do it, do it, Ron. Did I mention, the "National Journal" is out now on newsstands?
[Unidentified Male:] Do they have ads for Chrysler products in the magazine?
[O'brien:] The dodge dart, which I'll be purchasing later? Good thinking there. All right, got a lot to get to this morning. Susan G. Komen, a cancer charity. We've been talking about that. Now they are literally mid-crisis after cutting off cash, payments, to Planned Parenthood. We'll examine whether this is policy or politics or maybe both. Also, cashing in on tornado tourism. A plan to get people to visiting Joplin, Missouri, to see the damage. A lot of people are angry. We'll tell you why we say get real to that this morning.