folks, the front group basically for him are basically doing the job of destroying newt gingrich. what i think is fascinating and comes out of what ed says and what steve said. what happens if the whole result of the next several events here, caucuses tonight and in new hampshire and then down to south carolina and on through florida is that romney never really gets beyond about 25%. do people basically say they don t like him, but he beats his main opponent which is newt gingrich, so, in other words there, he s no one else around that s a real alternative who could win and beat him, and yet he s unpopular. what happens when the republican voter who is reading the paper and watching television says wait a minute, what happened here? we agreed we don t like mitt romney but romney has cleverly destroyed the only person we could beat him. are we forced to beat for somebody we don t lyrics even if we want to change presidents? this is a real quandary for thoughtful republicans now. if they
pitch. it s a very parochial setting in iowa. a lot of friends, a lot of neighbors, small groups. come on, joe, vote this way. what do you think, johny? a lot of that es on, and so i think santorum has done the groundwork. the 99 counties, the social conservatives, no matter how you look at it, they carry big stick in iowa. they are about 60% of the vote, and keep in mind that huckabee won this with 40,000 votes. mitt romney got 30,000 votes in 2008. the question is what has he done to build on that number? i think santorum is the wild card here tonight. if there s a big turnout and the social conservatives are strong and they leave bachmann and they don t spend too much time with perry, i think santorum could win this thing tonight, and the fact that they have got three social conservatives in this race is the best thing that could happen to mitt romney. al sharpton, have you been in iowa in a lot of different capacities, including running there. what are you looking for in terms of
first amendment and legislative limiting on what candidates can do so i don t think this outcome should be surprising to anyone. ben, i know that the candidate cannot specifically coordinate with the super pac, but any candidate can say, and romney can can s can say, i want all of the negative advertising to stop what. prevents him from saying that? well, what prevents him from saying that is the plain wording of the law that says you can t coordinate i m saying he can say i don t want negative advertising in this campaign, without any reference to that super pac so he avoids the legal technicality. lawrence, if i m sorry, but if he could say that, then he could also say i want you to buy 800 points worth of time in the northwest corner of the state that targets 18 to 28-year-olds, and would you say that was illegal. no, ben. and there s no substantive
mixing no. chris, i love you, but you re mixing apples and oranges there. one is the comment about what s involved with the law. the other is the comment that politically whoever the republican nominee is is going to go through the hell s kitchen of barack obama and he is negative ad barrage which has already been directed on mitt romney this cycle through barack obama s super pac. are you not quite so outraged about that, however. ben, back to the point you were talking about the point is not a veiled point. your candidate said he s wrong. you re saying he s wrong to say that he could tell the super pac to cool it? no. you re saying he was wrong to say that? no. my candidate is never wrong, but you re mixing apples and oranges in what you re trying to get me to say. one is the legal standard and one is the politics. your candidate finally broke his leash and said something you don t think he should have said which is to say he could tell
the benchmarks are the benchmarks, but he s going to do well, and, in fact, tonight it will already be a victory in the sense that not six weeks ago you were saying he couldn t possibly win and tonight we re in the hunt. in terms of the competition from his fellow candidates in iowa, newt gingrich does not appear to be polling as a top three candidate right now, although quite recently he was in the lead. mr. gingrich made a lot of waves this morning when he said mitt romney is, and i m quoting him, a liar. he described mr. romney a liar for denying responsibility for the negative tone of ads run by a pac which is not directly associated with mr. romney but is clearly in his camp. he also called mr. romney a liar for claiming to be a conservative. do you have a response to those allegations? oh, i ve known newt gingrich since 1985 and worked with him since then, and to me it s just sad that as his campaign is floundering he s turning to sort of personal attacks about that,