and the more stupid statements they make, the more baggage they ll have when the fall campaign starts. now romney s camp is actively arguing no other candidate can win the nomination. the nomination is an impossibility for rick santorum or newt gingrich. these guys, it s going to take some part of it, but it s going to take some act of god to get whether where they need to be on the nomination prize. so is it that these guys don t believe that or is it they are driven by something else? why do you think they won t get out of the race, or do you think eventually they will? two reasons. number one, newt gingrich uses this as a way to feed his ego. whether he has a chance or not, he still wants the attention. number two, rick santorum and newt gingrich know they may not be able to get the necessary votes to be nominated but they think that together they might be able to deny mitt romney 50%.
if mitt romney doesn t have 50% going into tampa at the convention, then it s very likely all heck could break loose and who knows who winds up as the nominee. that s their strategy. can santorum or gingrich get the 1140 they need in delegates? no. can they keep romney from being at 1140? possibly. it depends on what happens in the primaries in the next several weeks. now isn t it also so that the more they fight and the more they continue attacking romney this continues to tear him down and erode some of his support for the general election if, in fact, he s successful? listen to how santorum keeps swinging back at romney. listen to this. what won t they resort to to try to bully their way through this race? you know, if the governor thinks he s now ordained by god to win,
then let s just have it out. i mean, this can t be helpful taking shots. the governor thinks he s ordained by god. the later and later we help hearing this, the more they lessen the time period that romney is going to have to try to refute some of this negative stuff. i think that s a very good point, al. let s assume super tuesday had ended it. then all of the attacks on romney, all of the beatings he s taken, a lot of it self-inflicted, there would be time for that to sort of erode and fade into the background. if he gave a good speech at the convention, he could start off the fall campaign, maybe even close to even with the president. the longer this stretches out. and, remember, we ve got primaries in new jersey and california in june. the longer this stretches out, the worse it is because there s less recovery time. it s like an athlete with an acl. you want to give them the maximum recovery time. governor romney if this goes into california, new jersey, is not going to have t
today he said the bail-out was sweetheart deal for unions. he wrote, they could reemerge as competitive companies. this s what happened. the course i recommended was eventually followed. but for now romney s problem is santorum. rasmussen told every challenger to romney along the way, and santorum has done something no other candidate has done. vested romney by 12 points. if the race were just between them. never before this poll did any republican candidate beat romney in a head-to-head matchup. significant break through for rick santorum. but romney still does far better than santorum on the question of who is most likely to beat president obama. which is what he continues to argue to conservatives. bret? bret: the super pac is running ads against gingrich? they are. at the moment, the super pac supporting romney running ads against gingrich, which doesn t make since because
much much. much. here we go, hour two. captions by vitac www.vitac.com welcome back. i m brooke baldwin. news just in from the mitt romney regarding those iowa caucus results. this as rick santorum declares victory and newt gingrich cuts into romney s leads in south carolina. time to play in all political roulette here. cnn politics style. we ll begin with jim an costas following team romney this charleston, south carolina. jim, it looks like iowa is out of now romney s you know, win column. the newly certified tally shows santorum actually won the caucuses by 34 votes. what s romney saying? that s right. that s a good question, brooke. we re not really sure right now, to be quite honest with you. our paul steinhauser told me a few moments ago that he got a call or that he called hogan gidly with the santorum campaign and the santorum campaign says mitt romney called rick santorum to concede the iowa caucuses. now, candy crowley has said she has heard from the romney