what do you think? that is interesting. rick perry doesn t have a lot of actual votes. he doesn t have a lot of support. he has a good number of state legislators and members of congress from south carolina who were supporting his bid. if he took what he had worked on as a ground game in south carolina and turn it over to newt gingrich could that yield some results? perhaps. he is polling in the 5 to 7% range in south carolina. this is not as if somebody 15 to 20, a bigger share of the vote. it will mean this flood of support to newt gingrich, but, given gingrich s surge over the past few days, given fact he seems to pick up momentum, this could help. martha: it clearly might. might be sort of a tidal wave he might need to push him into closer range with mitt romney. let s put up the numbers in the control room. this is real clear politics average. look at south carolina. this is average of a group of polls down there. you can see what range looks like right now, with gingrich at 2
lead wins florida. it s proportional again, so newt comes in second he ll have della gather. at the end ever the day you then get to february which is a bunch of caucuses and not any big states and gives you time to regroup and build an organization which beginning r-fnewt gingrich doesn t have and it gives romney time to readjust his machine. martha: we see who i nasty it gets between mitt romney and newt gingrich. there appears to be no loved lost. and you feel this continued searching for an anti-mitt romney candidate. you have this coalescing around newt gingrich which they ve had a tough time falling in love with but they love him in these debates, it s clear. he s a very intelligence man,
in south carolina that newt gingrich was concerned could inhibit his ability to cast himself as the alternate to romney, the conservative ante mit candidate. the evangelical christians, the traditional values voters of south carolina have bon less choice anone less noise and that may make it possible for newt gingrich to coalesce the vote behind him. santorum has significant momentum of his own and should not be counted out. he s worked hard in south carolina after his iowa now tie, the certification obviously said that santorum got more votes than mitt romney, although it s not minding. as a practical matter santorum won the expectation game in iowa that s what made him credible
he was the guy they like him. polls to show there is an a finance a tee for him, social conservatives like them. if he can give a little bit of that in newt gingrich, give him the mo in south carolina, he could even beat mitt romney. martha: i think we ll see this as him sort of taking one for the team and it s a positive for him going forward to get out ahead of the vote sewing that his votes can go to some of these other candidates, mainly newt gingrich we understand is who he s going to endorse. mitt romney has been getting a lot of heat, chris, over the financial issues, the accounts in the cayman islands where some of the bain money is apparently invested. how does all this fare for him going forward? reporter: the deal for mitt romney is this. south carolina is too close for him to change the discussion very much, especially given the perry endorsement and the discussion there, we re just 36 hours away from the voting, but florida looms out in front. and mitt romney has to thin
gingrich gets a bounce coming out of south carolina from a close second-place, tie, first place, he s going to go down to florida with some juice, that means that mitt romney is going to eventually release his tax returns, address the issue about the off shoring of money. he s got to do this because with florida coming up on the 31 of january he can t have this issue lingering. martha: would now be a good time for that? reporter: well, now actually might be a good time because it would tend to sort of get lost and blown-out by everything else. martha: a distraction, right. reporter: exactly. martha: we ll see if he decides to do this. chris christie this morning called for him to do that. rob portman has endorsed mitt romney today. those are two big names in the mix nor mitt romney, folks considered either of one of them as a vice president on the ticket with them. reporter: absolutely, absolutely. the biggest thing for mitt romney right noise surviving south carolina and getting