good weather i think for folks to turn out. and the independent voters have not been captured in the polls. there s still a good third of the folksรง out there undecided. wouldn t you if you were santorum right now going very hard after mitt romney? even though you haven t been bestowed that title, just start attacking him, say, listen, it s going to be me or him, nobody expects ron paul to win, this is what the race has come down to. making a very good point. no one has done that. mitt is one of the luckiest guys out there because this whole thing, everyone else has been the target, but mitt has fortunately skewed that opportunity to be the target standing on the stage. no one ever took the shot, you know, the political kill shot to really bring him down on health care, to bring him down on abortion, to bring him down on any number of issues in which he s got some real vulnerabilities. one more thing about gingrich, it s inherently funny
it is significant. i m sure the white house is praying and hoping that that is what happens, that there s a third-party candidate that can chop off gingrich, romney, whoever the nominee s support is. i think democrats would really like that. whether or not that s going to be the actual result on election day if that indeed is the scenario, that s a little more undetermined. i think third-party candidates have huge hurdles to cross when it comes to getting on the ballots in a lot of states and the candidates need to be particularly well-funded if they are going to achieve that if that s going to be the result on election day. ken vogel, didn t rule it out certainly with david gregory? yeah, and ron paul, there are definitely enticements for him there to think about running as a third-party candidate. let s not forget in 2008 when he finished with 10% of the vote in the iowa caucus that he refused to endorse john mccain, the eventual nominee for the republican party that year and e
obama/gingrich contest. head to head matchup matchup where obama comes out on top 51-43 but in a three-way race it s 43% to 32% to ron paul 21%. shirra, a significant ron paul factor? it is significant. i m sure the white house is praying and hoping that that is what happens, that there s a third-party candidate that can chop off gingrich, romney, whoever the nominee s support is. i think democrats would really like that. whether or not that s going to be the actual result on election day if that indeed is the scenario, that s a little more undetermined. i think third-party candidates have huge hurdles to cross when it comes to getting on the ballots in a lot of states and the candidates need to be particularly well-funded if they are going to achieve that if that s going to be the result on election day. ken vogel, didn t rule it out certainly with david gregory? yeah, and ron paul, there are definitely enticements for him there to think about running as a third-party candidate.
college campuses. there s a problem having moved in the primary, the caucuses, not all the college kids will be there. if anybody can overcome that problem, it will be ron paul s organization. the more mitt romney attacks newt gingrich, and that s what romney is doing now, the more it could be to ron paul s benefit, which the romney people don t necessarily mind. they would rather put it to use newt s term, electromagnetic pulse over iowa, discredit iowa, have somebody else win it as long as it is not newt gingrich. he has been asking for a nonaccusatory campaign between romney and himself, trying to put away the hatchets, this was the bury the hatchet week. it hasn t worked so far. of course, the frontrunner wants that. is romney finding vulnerability in gingrich in the attacks he
director and nbc political analyst howard fineman. thank you both for joining me. guys, first of all, o donnell business to deal with here. howard fineman, christine o donnell s endorsement of mitt romney. there is a real mystery at the core of this thing. number one, why couldn t the romney campaign stop it, and what s going on here? she s saying gingrich is more liberal than romney. how did this happen? howard? well, being one of the people that had the honor of covering the christine o donnell campaign in delaware, i can only imagine that there may be, i m just saying, hypothesis, maybe some unretired campaign debts involved who know as mitt romney has said, money is no object. i can t imagine that that would be a problem if she needed to have the rest of her debt retired. but if they didn t actively try to prevent it, didn t distance themselves from it, they made a big mistake.