say, okay, fine. you actually listened to people talk about their candidates. the important thing about organization is that rick santorum if he has a good organization, will have people speaking on his behalf at these caucuses. and it could make a difference. another important thing for him is those endorsements of two leading evangelicals. there s no single evangelical candidate but these two people carry a lot of weight in the state. i think, john, he also learned the gingrich lesson that if you re going to be bombarded with negative attacks you better respond. and he surged at the right time. before a real onslaught of negative ads could take him out. caucuses are high intensity, low turnout elections fundamentally. the fact rick santorum has been able to have a boom right now, it really answers one of the open questions. do retail politics still matter? because for a long time, we saw candidates surging in the polls in iowa who weren t putting in the time that santorum had.
he said in your interview there, i think you ve got something important, that he wasn t expecting to finish third. he may well do that. and i think that s going to depress his fundraising and make him less relevant. reporter: i thought that was a mistake, too, when i heard it from paul saying i don t think i m going to place third. it ll be first or second. is there life for ron paul after this campaign after iowa if he comes in third to rick santorum and mitt romney? like jesse jackson in the democratic party in the 1980s, he is the kind of candidate who can go on for a long time because he has a deeply committed base. this is kind of the paradox of these purely id lodge these candidates with a very pure ideology. they appeal to a certain segment of the elect rat who likes the purity, the consistency across all issues. then you run into someone like i ran into today at a mitt romney event in iowa. i agree with him on the economy. on foreign policy he s nuts. you have that base
cover on this important night. quite a few iowa republicans say they could still change their minds before the caucuses tuesday night. we re going to talk about how this volatile race could turn, one last time, when the voting begins. let s talk about the santorum surge right now. the rest of our excellent panel is here. eric, you heard the interview with rick santorum. did he convince you he s the guy? he s a nice guy, but, no. 0ñ@
because at the end, you know, you saw him smiling and having fun. as wolf said working hard. i wanted to show you this. bho best relates to iowans in the latest poll. this is where you see that hard work coming through. rick santorum, 20%. michele bachmann very high. michele bachmann has traveled to all 99 counties in the state. so has rick santorum. i bet ron paul is pretty close. these are the people who spent the most time in the state. iowans feel like they know them. you saw rick sar tor um. he s been traveling around in a truck with his chief of staff and they re kind of hanging out in every county. you look at the person, though, the question, who best relates, mitt romney only 10% to iowans. a, he hasn t been there a lot. b, even when he s there, they know him from 2008. he didn t do so well in 2008, so there are still these reservations about him. this is going to be
there are still these reservations about him. this is going to be interesting here as we go through these questions. the next one i want to show by the way, i like that, how i just trash it. who is the most consistent. this is interesting. you also see santorum scoring about the same as mitt romney. sure. ron paul, i guess this isn t surprising, right? he has been very consistent over the years. as dana bash was pointing out, ron paul has an agenda. small government. get rid of the debt. get out of the wars. easy to say. easy to understand. consistency. and either you like it or you don t. interesting that romney with all the the finger pointing on flip-flopping and, okay, you had this view on abortion, now you have that view, still coming in second. santorum has that problem, too. the other candidates are pointing out, well, maybe you re not so conservative. maybe you were for those earmarks. he said, yes, i was. i ve made some mistakes. there s a question with that, t