race when he was competing with mitt romney. because of the superpacs that take limited donations, it only takes one multimillion dollar backer to keep your campaign going. foster indicated he s going to lend some kind of support this time as well. as long as that s the case santorum can hang around and wait for his moment. as long as that money keeps on keeping on. asking robert about rick santorum. he took a swipe at hillary clinton yet. let s listen to that. hillary clinton and big business boo! they have called for a massive influx in unskilled labor. business does it because they want to control costs. hillary does it well she just wants votes. all right. keeping the regular guy, you know wanting to make a buck in
ineligible for 18 of the state s 66 delegates that puts him at substantial disadvantage. in the last few days in ohio mitt romney appeared to have surged in the polls. he had been down by double digits but the romney campaign points out romney has now won five states in a row and has the benefit of momentum. a victory in ohio in the popular vote and delegate count for romney would be significant. it s not his native state like it was in michigan and it is an important rust belt state adjacent to pennsylvania where rick santorum runs strong. it has a lot of meaning for both of these candidates. shepard: speaking of a lot of meaning the state of tennessee tonight may tell a story as well, carl. well, it s a southern battleground and tennessee is going to be one of the closer ones. this is another state where rick santorum has been running strong. he had a lead for quite some time. santorum is expected to do very well in oklahoma tonight. but, in tennessee over the course of the last
that s very significant. romney has been winning those delegates for primary states. and after tonight, there won t be anywhere near as many primary states left for him to compete in. california and texas come very late in the process. romney will have to start competing in caucus states where base conservative tea party and self-described very conservative voters hold sway. that s where santorum and gingrich have shown real romney will have to verify the of the primary vote and start wrestling with santorum and gingrich going forward. conversely, if romney does get north of 400 delegates total by the end of this evening. he will begin to have a big big margin ahead of rick santorum and newt gingrich and questions will immediately result as to whether or not they have the capacity to catch up while concentrating on caucuses and not winning the big primary states. shep? shepard: makes sense, carl.
and that was the state that gingrich said he had to win. it s probably the high point of his evening. for much of the rest of the night is he likely to watch rick santorum and romney battle it out. though he will be collecting deletes in a host of other places. virginia you mentioned at the top. that s an example where gingrich and santorum face a bit of a problem structurally they are not on the ballot in the old dominion. as a consequence romney and ron paul is battling it out. romney is expected to win that it speaks to, on some level the structures turley and financial problems that gingrich and santorum have in a long extended race. romney is much stronger in terms of his war chest and his organization. candidates who can t get on ballots have a hard time competing for ballots. shepard: that does make it more difficult. that s part of santorum as well. is he on the ballot in much of the places but not everywhere. the buckeye state is the battle of the evening. ohio is the sort
those two different scenarios lend two different political relates. one is the republic candidates keep fighting with each other and leave each other battered and bruised as they have been over the last few weeks. the other is mitt romney gets the 200 to 215, maybe 220 delegates he is hoping to gather tonight to get over that 400 threshold and then he starts focusing singularly on barack obama. i m guessing the republic establishment would prefer the latter. chris: yeah. but he can focus on barack obama but if santorum and gingrich are still in the race and they are focusing on mitt romney and what s wrong with him, that s going to continue to drive down his negatives. it s going to continue to push romney to appeal more to conservative voters. as we have seen that s having a real negative impact on romney s support on independence. shepard: pardon the interruption there is breaking news now on fox news channel and now fox news projects in fact mitt romney has won the state of virg