always has. it goes for the establishment candidate and many believe that is why they choose the guy who is nominee for the party. your thoughts on that. i would say probably one of the reasons. we are an independent lot and historically the historic side is splintered up therefore what you are suggesting is true. in many cases the tabement candidate would win. what you saw here begin the focus on income issues and high unemployment in the state was a focus was conservatives coming together with social conservatives and they banded here in the lenth hour behind a candidate other than the front runner mitt romney and we saw the verdict. i think that trend will hold longer as we go in florida and other primaries. you are saying that south carolina is sending a message
50 percent of the voters said that was a priority and thought newt gingrich was their man. i think it is also that newt gingrich is speaking to big issues. in one debate he took a question about grandiosity and mitt romney s team put out a opposition research piece where they talk about the people that newt gingrich compared himself to and all of which is true. but he said, this is a time for big issues. these are we are in times that require big solutions to the problems. he turned it around and that spoke to conservatives. that is what we want to hear from our candidate. we ll be back throughout night. coming up, charles helps us to break down the vote. we can tell you that mitt romney is californied to speak soon. when he does, you will see it here on fox news channel as we
the longer the race goes for republicans the more we can talk about our issues and have the center of the stage focusing on barack obama. he suggested cnn s debate session about the assertion made by gingrich s second ex-wife that he wanted a open marriage, helped him surge. i don t know if he paid him to say that question but that s the nicest things done for the republicans in a long time. reporter: he needs to beat ron paul. we have a clear message and i m challenging the status quo and the rest of the candidates are part of the status quo. reporter: paul expects to come in fourth tonight but it will not stop him and the mitt romney campaign braces for second place and signalling they are prepared to start their counter punching against gingrich next week in florida, going after him again, demanding that he release documents from his ethics reprimand, house speaker 15 years ago today and the documents that explained his
and people didn t have as much trouble with that and were able to get behind mitt romney for that. i don t think in that sense, newt gingrich s attacks worked on the substance of those issues and the second issue is his taxes. and i think part of it may be his taxes and the attention that that focused on, that issue, but, more broadly i think the bigger problem for him was, this week, his inability to answer those questions. the fact that he stumbled again and again and stumbled in the debate on monday and wasn t able to say exactly how much he was going to release or when he was going to do it and the fact that he stumbled repeatedly throughout the week caused him some problems. we saw sorry. megyn: we ll be right back, soon, and often. on the other side of the break, polls in south carolina will be closed. things getting dramatic on the campaign trail the last few days and late deciders, playing a key role, live from the candidates headquarters. bret: and ed rollins, mike hu
warrior and went up against barack obama, he can handle this and other issues? we got to see a side of his combativeness and it absolutely probably helped him looking after his debate performance because he never really polled well with women but, even after jenny sanford came out and trashed him on msnbc the other night, he, through the conversation reestablished himself as a strong catholic and talk about how he asked for forgiveness which plays well in south carolina and he was also able to show his fighting side which so many of the late deciders looked for who will be able to really go up and fight against president obama. megyn: and it hurts him in the general. megyn: as a democrat, as a democrat, do you worry at all about the possibility of barack obama debating newt gingrich? no. i don t. i think if you look at who the republican primary voters have been and who have been in the audiences, standing ovations,