'This Week' Transcript: Sen. Jim DeMint

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2011— -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): This week, start your engines. Campaign 2012 shifts into overdrive as Mitt Romney ramps up...

ROMNEY: Career politicians got us into this mess, and they simply don't know how to get us out.

AMANPOUR: ... Rick Perry cleans up...

STEPHANOPOULOS: What an August it has been for Texas Governor Rick Perry.

KARL: Rick Perry has transformed this race.

AMANPOUR: ... and Sarah Palin, well, that's anybody's guess.

PALIN: I want to tell you what my plan is.

AMANPOUR: Today, our headliner rates the field. I'll talk to South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who hosts the top candidates tomorrow. The Tea Party kingmaker on who he thinks has what it takes to beat Barack Obama.

And then, the big zero. Jobs flat line and the president faces his biggest test yet. What should he say next week when he addresses Congress and the American people? Our expert economic roundtable debates employment solutions.

Plus, it was the deadliest attack on American soil since 9/11. Now, the family of the Ft. Hood shooter speaks out in a "This Week" exclusive.

(WOODRUFF): If you had known what was possibly going to happen, would you have turned him in?

AMANPOUR: And we'll take you on an emotional tour of rarely-seen artifacts from the World Trade Center.

ANNOUNCER: Live from the Newseum in Washington, "This Week" with Christiane Amanpour starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program. We've got lots to get to today, but first, some news since your morning papers.

Tropical Storm Lee makes landfall this morning, as the Gulf Coast braces for impact. Lee is expected to dump 10 to 15 inches of rain on the region. And ABC's Yunji De Nies is in New Orleans with the latest.

Good morning, Yunji. And, of course, nobody can look at New Orleans without remembering Katrina. What's happening there right now?

YUNJI DE NIES, ABC NEWS: Well, the rain has been incredible. It started two days ago, and it really has not stopped. It's putting the levee system and the drainage system here to the test, although so far, everything has been holding. The wind has also been incredible, with gusts of up to 60 miles per hour. Ten tornadoes have touched down along the Gulf Coast, though, thankfully, no one has been injured.

We've seen quite a bit of flooding in low-lying areas. On some roads, people opted for boats instead of cars. This is supposed to be the final holiday weekend of the summer, but across the Gulf Coast, much of it has been spent working, because people have been sandbagging to protect their homes. There are also big concerns about storm surge.

Take a look at this boat in Pass Christian, Mississippi. Firefighters tried to tie it down, but the surf was just too strong.

Now, the winds on the ground here are incredibly fast, but the storm itself is very slow-moving, just two miles an hour. That will mean this region and this city will get exactly what it does not need today: more rain and possibly more flooding.

Christiane?

AMANPOUR: Yunji, thanks so much for being with us there in New Orleans and keeping an eye on that.