he said in your interview there, i think you ve got something important, that he wasn t expecting to finish third. he may well do that. and i think that s going to depress his fundraising and make him less relevant. reporter: i thought that was a mistake, too, when i heard it from paul saying i don t think i m going to place third. it ll be first or second. is there life for ron paul after this campaign after iowa if he comes in third to rick santorum and mitt romney? like jesse jackson in the democratic party in the 1980s, he is the kind of candidate who can go on for a long time because he has a deeply committed base. this is kind of the paradox of these purely id lodge these candidates with a very pure ideology. they appeal to a certain segment of the elect rat who likes the purity, the consistency across all issues. then you run into someone like i ran into today at a mitt romney event in iowa. i agree with him on the economy. on foreign policy he s nuts. you have that base
that. he said in your interview there, i think you ve got something important, that he wasn t expecting to finish third. he may well do that. and i think that s going to depress his fundraising and make him less relevant. reporter: i thought that was a mistake, too, when i heard it from paul saying i don t think i m going to place third. it ll be first or second. is there life for ron paul after this campaign after iowa if he comes in third to rick santorum and mitt romney? like jesse jackson in the democratic party in the 1980s, he is the kind of candidate who can go on for a long time because he has a deeply committed base. this is kind of the paradox of these purely id lodge these candidates with a very pure ideology. they appeal to a certain segment of the elect rat who likes the purity, the consistency across all issues. then you run into someone like i ran into today at a mitt romney event in iowa. i agree with him on the economy. on foreign policy he s nuts. you have tha
senator rick santorum. let s go to cnn s joe johns right now. he s joining us from des moines. i think rick santorum believed in himself. not a whole lot of others, joe, did. but it s been quite amazing over these past few days how well he s done. reporter: that s true, wolf. you know, more than half of the republicans who participated in this process the last time around viewed themselves as evangelical christians. born again christians. so it might be a little risque to compare this process to a seduction, but rick santorum has gone a long way. he says the other candidates in the race are speed dating, and he says what he s been doing is a courtship. i have done literally 358 or 359 town hall meetings in the state of iowa. we ve been to all 99 counties, and we weren t speed dating. reporter: rick santorum s polling numbers, his surge in the race for iowa, is starting to look like love. though the question is, what took so long for a staunch conservative who s been cou