the final day of the campaign trail. the latest des moines register poll showing the political pendulum in iowa swinging away from ron paul and toward rick santorum as we re talking about. however, ron paul is hitting the state hard today after a weekend braeng, hoping to reverse that tornado. he and he s recruited his son, tea party faifrlt, rand paul to the front lines. paul also making the case this weekend that he is electable. i always say that i m pretty mainstream. i think that people who are attacking me now are the ones who can t defend their records and have been all over the place. nbc campaign embed anthony terrell, live at the polk county convention center in des moines. anthony, explain the mood on the ground and the push from the paul camp, now that both ron and his son rand are in town together. hey, good morning. they re pretty excited about senator rand paul being back here. he s trying to motivate conservatives to get behind his father s candidacy, pointing t
75 to 150 voters coming out to give him a second look. nbc campaign embed carrie dann, thank you so much. thanks a lot. rick santorum is telling iowans to pay attention to the candidates that have made their votes and opinions a priority. thank you for getting our message out there about we ve got the conservative kre dengs, we ha we have the track record. we have made the case we re the best candidate out there that they can trust. nbc s andrew rafferty joins me by telephone. santorum is doing things the old-fashioned way which could pay off at the caucuses. that s right. rick santorum is living off the land is the old term you can really apply to his campaign. of course, you heard from a couple other embeds, we re on buses following around their candidates. rick santorum doesn t have any
as a result, iowans are opening their mail bocks to a slew of negative letters and pamphlets all targeting gingrich. nbc s campaign embed is in des moines, alex mo. good to see you. give us your how are you? i m great, thank you. give us an idea of what kind of mailers we re seeing. describe them. that s right. as you said, there was a slew of negative mailers in iowans mailboxes. i saw at least eight and five of them were specifically targeting newt gingrich. one from ron paul, mitt romney campaign, and two from a pro-mitt romney super pact, all targeting newt gingrich. and the one from the two from the from the pro-mitt romney super pact saying that mitt romney they dant barack obama, excuse me, didn t want to run against mitt romney. he wanted to run against newt gingrich. all these mailers are coming and
2012 ballots are cast, iowa caucuses on january 3rd. first up, nbc news campaign embed alex moshi is in iowa on the ground. alex, who is banking on a win in iowa? well, i think all the candidates right now are really trying to, you know, grasp all the voters in iowa. they want to win here. it s obviously the first nominating process state in the process. we ve seen rick santorum here a lot. he s visited all 99 counties. mitt romney was here yesterday. drawing crowds of over 200 people. so we re really looking at it s a wide-open game. herman cain and mitt romney are still in the lead here with less than two months to go, but any of these candidates can come from behind and pull a mike huckabee from 2007, 2008. it s been very interesting there, alex in new hampshire, to see what s happened to michele
i mean, that is the big question, and that is a question that came up even before this latest scandal has broken, but gloria cain has not been on the trail at all. have not heard from her, and the response that mr. cain has been giving about that is he wants to keep the sanity at home. he doesn t want to bring her into this. he said when he goes home and goes off the trail, he doesn t want to worry about campaigning, but the questions were mounting even before this politico story, and now, as you see, she s going to be doing an interview on fox on this week so obviously those questions will come to a head. andrew rafferty, nbc news campaign embed with herman cain. thanks. call it a victory for the consumer. bank of america dropping its controversial plan to charge customers $5 per month for using its debit card to buy things, the move coming after weeks of massive customer outrage. cnbc s melissa francis joining me now.