bret, your response? is this a good move for rick perry in terms of the timing? well, martha, a lot of his support had already gone to newt gingrich in south carolina particularly. he was seeing some prime, some prominent supporters leave his campaign and we re told there have been multiple conversations between gingrich and perry, actually for the last couple of weeks and there was some kind of get together yesterday in which this digs was made, a final decision was made. it was in the cards because he was only polling 5, 6% in most polls. and it was believed that a lot of his supporters were going to gingrich anyway. this is a big development for newt gingrich who is already closing the gap in a lot of polls with mitt romney in south carolina. while we re still waiting to see what the fallout is about this abc interview
weren t able to get votes in i don t understand why they wouldn t respond to our phone calls. we wanted to make sure that every iowa citizen had their vote reflected. martha: i hope you re hearing me okay and we don t have any problem with that. the rick santorum folks are upset when being told it s a tie when they have 34 votes ahead. the precincts weren t in the picture either when the win was called on election night for mitt romney. the santorum folks, because as you know the romney folks have said this is a historic win for a nonincumbent republican to sweep iowa and new hampshire. this would take away those boasting rights. it s a big deal if you ve been a rick santorum supporters all along. what do you say to them? i looked at our job as making sure we were able to certify as many precincts as possible and
if they are looking at the person who is the only one who has business experience and the only one who has been on the other side of government they will go with mitt romney. he s the only one that is not attached to washington. we can t have anyone that is a part of the chaos of washington any more. was polling 5, 6%. if all those voters go to gingrich s side that puts him even or ahead of governor romney. how do you foal that swing could be realized on the ground on saturday. i don t think that is realized. voters don t move in a block or vote in a block. they look at the candidates and make up their own mind and decisions from that. i think that 5% will split up across the board and they will decide who is best for them. the main issues in south carolina are jobs, spending and the economy. we need a businessman in the white house. we need someone that is not a part of washington. i think mitt romney its going to take it in south carolina.
responds to the attacks from mitt romney s rivals with regard to his personal finances. the fact of the matter is everybody knows that mitt romney hasn t had an income-plea duesinproducing job for the last couple of years. he s been campaigning for president of the united states. ee know he s supporting himself from the investments he made. martha: is mitt romney properly handling the attacks from his rivals? bill: rick perry is going to talk in a matter of moments. the latest headline in a crazy primary season. do not move, south carolina is shaking it up again.
we wait until 3:00 in the morning and we are told that mitt romney won by eight votes. now we are being told that rick santorum won by 34 votes. why wouldn t you call this a win for rick santorum. we have a two-week certification process where we counted on our volunteer precinct leaders in 774 precincts to provide the original record of each of the votes that happened on january 3rd. last of yesterday s 5:00 deadline we had 756 of those official documents being able to be certified from the precincts. we wanted to make the totals accurately reflected ou i iowa voted. hrick santorum has 34 more votes. for the pr precincts that