alternative to mitt romney, it remains wide open and all three of you are saying the same thing. is there a chance you split the conservative vote you all seem to be appealing for tonight? well, i think that the campaign that we put together here in south carolina is really strong. i have got the speaker of the house, endorsed, aen really serious conservatives and that s a message that s going to resonate with people from south carolina. and people who get it from the standpoint we need an individual who s got a track record of creating jobs and mek made a powerful presentation and he looked at all the candidates and only one that s got the record job creation. a lot of people talk about what they re going to do. i ve done it in the state of texas creating a million jobs and that s a story that resonates here in the palmetto
who can beat the president. he does head into carolina with a split conservative vote. he won it barely, but as long as everybody stays in the race and keeps fractures that vote, it s good for him. it s amazing that winning for the first time, he almost filled the nominee suit. i don t know what you can do. he just looked like he had that air of confidence. i see yellow flashing lights with mitt romney. that is not going to be what real republican primaries are like. romney and santorum were neck and neck. 33-26. this is where you could see how he runs into a problem in south carolina. you can see how he runs into a problem, the conservative vote can be a much larger voting two good things for him. one, he actually won the tea party vote and the very conservative vote here which means maybe his problem was iowa more than it was conservatives,
interestingly, romney split the conservative vote, the exit polls tell us, here in new hampshire with rick santorum, but, again, new hampshire conservatives are a very different breed of cat than south carolina conservatives. so mitt romney goes south with a big head of steam. there s no discounting the fact that he won iowa, he won new hampshire. we can say it s by four points more than he won it last time. we can say that he still is, you know, not dominant in not building much of a broader base, but at the same time, he is really consolidating a very strong hold on the nomination. it s going to be very hard to stop him, unless the opposition, the un-romneys, get together. and so far, as you ve seen, everyone says they ve got a ticket to ride out of here, and they are heading south. huntsman is going to be on a plane in the morning, taking a commercial flight through philadelphia. santorum going south. gingrich certainly is, and
be nice. do you think my premise is correct governor romney although the frontrunner will be catapulted to victory even though he is a semi moderate because there are so many other to the right of him that will split the conservative vote? i think you are definitely on to something. what you have certainly on the right where romney might stand is between gingrich, paul, go down the list. the same dynamic is going to play itself out in very hard form here in south carolina over the next couple weeks after new hampshire wraps up when i heard somebody said it s a place of strong elbows. it s going to be a big risk contest in south carolina. i don t think you will see romney s lead as it stands hold. it will be a very tight race. you will see the super packs
feel how did he hold? they weren t ecstatic. they weren t happy. look, he showed a little bit of pressure. whenever he s playing time keeper at these debates, you know he s not feeling good about where he s at. but they also feel good in that they re also not unhappy that gingrich sort of popped back up again. anything they can do to keep all of these dc. keep them in. we ve got a couple of different divisions right now. you have paul and huntsman are fighting for some of the independent vote and then the conservative consolidation that s not happening in santorum and gingrich. so gingrich s comeback here is actually not such a bad thing for romney. so in that respect, if they were glad that it wasn t just santorum that landed all the punches. so a day before voting begins, do you think romney s holding his own? i think romney s holding his own. the question i have, i think the conservative vote will be somewhere between 30%, 35%, are