as best you can down in iowa. pro life. all know your window is different. it doesn t party if he gets walloped there. he won t get walloped. i don t think he will. he ll show better. he ll get some traction out there. gingrich will help him out but gingrich might have a credibility problem too. all of a sudden gingrich is the high and mighty voice of how complains ought to be run. let s not get too close to gingrich, santorum. how gingrich goes after him and the real problem is that if i m in romney s camp, i want to go to new hampshire and start running against president obama. now he has got to run against santorum. and the longer that narrative plays, the better it is for the president. that s i think he says i can t say enough nice things about santorum. i ve seen him on the stump. he does talk about manufacturing. he talks about repatriating money coming back into the united states. zero percent when it comes to corporate tax.
and that leaves mitt romney in one of these weird positions where he s just simply how much does he win by, how quickly does santorum close the gap and now they set themselves up for south carolina 11 days after that and at that point if newt gingrich is there serving as sort of a lead blocker for santorum, which it sounds like what newt said he would do, i m going to throw all these bombs at romney and by the way almost plow the field for rick santorum, i mean he didn t say it in those terms but it seemed to be the subtle message he was sending, boy, that helps santorum buy some time to build an organization because right now he doesn t have the infrastructure, frankly, to compete in the biggest prize in january and that s florida on january 31st. chuck, in terms of how rick santorum might meaningfully position himself against mitt romney in new hampshire, the sharpest contrast to that mr. czar has drawn with mr. romney is on family values issues. things like abortion, even in
she knows she s out of it and she for some reason doesn t want to say that tonight. whether she s going to say it before new hampshire, i don t know but it won t be long after new hampshire so where do michele bachmann people go and there aren t really in new hampshire? santorum looks like the guy for those folks. waiting to see if there are perry people cut loose. we ll hopefully here from rick perry within the next couple of minutes. to chris matthews in the meantime, where we re waiting to hear if we re going to hear from rick santorum. chris? watch santorum begin tomorrow with the help of newt gingrich who is going to be his point of his spear as we say. watch him go after the irish and italian people that have moved up to new hampshire to get away from the taxes of massachusetts and the culture thereof. i watched pat buchanan in 92 and 96 once taking on george herbert walker bush and i m getting about 37% and smashing bob dole against the pollsters. what s happened is a lot
10% and michele bachmann at 5%. let s go to chris matthews at the polk county convention center in des moines. rach, it looks like something could be developing which would be fascinating for the obama people and interesting for the republicans. the normal course of events is when you go on the attack against another opponent, for example, if gingrich is still part of this race coming in fourth tonight at a decent 13% after all that s happened, he goes out with a knife against romney this saturday night on the abc debate again and then on sunday morning with david gregory on meet the press in that debate and go after hammer and tongue all the issues of abortion, rip the scab off issue, if he does that who is the beneficiary? not newt. the beneficiary is santorum. and that s fascinating because that opens up the republican party like a cantaloupe then you have a situation where romney suffers from the fact that s been he ll be bleeding by then in the south on social
new hampshireites are a bunch of granite state yankees when in fact they aren t any more. they re irish and italian people that don t like big government. as tip o neill used to say in new hampshire ey don t even like parks, they don t like government. what you ll see, watch santorum maybe pick up that buchanan vote up there against the establishment and really put on a challenge, perhaps, with gingrich s help against the yankee, if you will, mitt romney, it could be very fascinating and just a four or five-day race but it will climax saturday night in that abc debate and have the follow-up on sunday morning with david s show meet the press. you ll see an attack like you ve never seen from newt to the benefit of santorum. it s going to be fascinating. this thing is wide open. he has a heck of a wing man. no question about it and santorum goes into new hampshire, no pressure. just raise money. make a good showing, stick to your principles, do what you did