he sealed it in an envelope exclusively for us. tonight we ll open it. as iowa republicans head out to vote tonight, all eyes on mitt romney, including a set of eyes at the white house. president obama s back from vacation and will address tonight s democratic caucuses on a video hookup to iowa. let s check in with jessica yellin. jess, the president doesn t have an opponent, why does he think it s important to check in in iowa? reporter: well, in general, for the obama campaign, there s a sense that if mitt romney wins tonight they ll be curious to see by how much, john. the sources i talk to believe that mitt romney will be the eventual nominee, that s no secret. but what they want to know is, can he really deliver some kind of knockout punch tonight because he has invested a great deal of time not a great deal of time but a great deal of
caucuses tonight, sir somewhere look the bachmann people in the eye, look the perry people in the eye and say they re good candidate but was we need a single concern emerge from iowa as alternative to mitt romney. how do you counter that? i agree with that analysis, it s correct, and i m the only person who has the ability to raise the money nationally and has the ground keep in these other states to do that. that is an absolute correct analysis, but it s not rick santorum. frankly, rick s going to have a real problem when he leaves and people start vetting his background from a fiscal conservative standpoint. this guy s the king of earmarks and pork barrel spending, the liaison between washington and k street. he s got real bags that he s going to have to explain to people and that s in going to be a problem for him. if you wake up tomorrow morning and see governor perry in a disappointing fourth or fifth, any point where you say, that s a message we re going home, or are you goin
will make their pitch and we ll have a vote. if mitt romney has a strong showing and wins new hampshire he will be the prohibitive favorite to win the nominee. is that good or bad? i don t think that s necessarily the right conclusion. our and new hampshire will certainly narrow the field. remember, back in 2008, john, mitt romney had trouble in the south. i think that it is still a question as to how well he will do in the south. if you just look at some of the polls by state that have been taken over the past couple months. a herman cain endorsement would help in the south. if he came by iowa and new hampshire as the winner, would you stand by him in south carolina? not exactly, john. here is why. you see, my mission is to help get the republican nominee elected president. in order to do that, i don t want to fragment my supporters. they ve already made up their mind, many of them, who they want to support. if i were to endorse, it could
help rick santorum and they don t want that kind of a turnout. women do very well with mitt romney. they like him. and they don t want the sort of ideological purists if you will. those are not his people. his people are that sort of solid 25% that have liked him all along, they believe he s electable and they want those people to come to the polls tonight. . they don t want those they don t want this. they don t want younger voters that ron paul might bring. they just want their dependable mitt romney voters to come out. this is the evangelical base of mike huckabee four years ago. come forward 2012. here are the colors. watch this. this will fill in live as results come in. here, interesting questions. we have the evangelical voters. the darker the area on the map, the higher the percentage of evangelical voters. if you talk to people in the santorum campaign, they say they ll go into the caucuses look to perry people in the eye,
money here. he is the establishment candidate, if you will. he has said, and then walked back, that he believes he could win here. they clearly dedicated a commitment to iowa. and the obama team will be curious to see if he can capture a significant amount of the vote. and if he doesn t, no doubt expect them to say that this is a major loss for mitt romney, john. if you re president obama or political team, jess, what s their dream outcome for iowa tonight? reporter: i d say that the dream outcome would be for somebody like a rick santorum to win because he is or somebody who is among the more conservative candidates and that s because it would in theory force mitt romney further to the right and if mitt romney given what i said before, that they expect romney will be the eventual nominee if romney has to run further to the right in