tonight mitt romney is florida s choice. a win that helps him look like the front runner again. a competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us. and we will win. it s a new setback for newt gingrich and his roller coaster campaign. we are going to contest every place and we will win. four candidates with four contests behind them. but the fight for the nomination is just beginning. the votes are in. florida has spoken. and now the campaign goes west. the campaign does head west. the story is what happened in the east in florida. if you re just joining us, welcome to the special primary coverage live until midnight. after wild swings in the polls, withering attack ads, millions spent by the superpac. earlier speaker gingrich conceded the night but not the race. governor romney claimed victory and looked ahead to the fall. a lot to talk about in the hour ahead and our guests. let s start by bringing a quick look at what the candidates said tonight. thank yo
good evening, again, you re watching a special edition of ac 360, primary coverage. winner take all. and tonight, the big winner in florida by a big margin, mitt romney. mitt romney, florida s choice. a win that makes him the front runner again. a competitive primary doesn t divide us. it prepares us, and we will win. a new setback for newt gingrich and his roller coaster campaign. we are going to contest every place and we re going to win, and we will be in tampa as the nominees. four candidates with the fight for the nomination just beginning. the votes are in, florida has spoken. and now the campaign goes west. and again, welcome. kwet 360 is live tonight, all the way to the midnight hour. breaking down the results i think florida did something very important coming on top of south carolina. it s now clear that this will be a two-person race between the conservative leader, newt gingrich, and the massachusetts moderate. a few months ago, there were how
the counter punch, he wins. romney has to idea how to do the third attack, come back to the counter punch. he s a man of limited spontanei spontaneity. newt can hear the other guy s attack and respond to the very words in real time. the other guy is a character out of the mechanical people. mitt romney can t think on his feet. newt can. so interesting what newt has to be careful is to wait for the best punch thrown at him by romney tonight, on any issue, and punch him back for all he s got and he can win the election. you think he can be the nominee? you think that newt gingrich after what he did in south carolina and the way it s trending in florida this might be the tip of the iceberg for the moformer speaker? progressives are uncertain what is going on, i know they are. the right is angry, they have a very clearly motion. the anger is contempt, anger against the president, the
because freddie mac figures in very prominently to the fact that people in florida have seen home values go down. this is romney s message of the day, they have already had a house-themed event this morning, just over an hour, surrogates will hold a conference call on gingrich s work as an historian for the mortgage giant. gingrich, again, denied those lobbying charges on meet the press. wait a second, david. david, you know better than that i was not a lobbyist. i was never a lobbyist. i never did any lobbying. don t try to mix these things up. the fact is i was an adviser strategically. a little taste of how he will probably respond to romney tonight. romney is doing his best, debatedly, to neutralize an issue that has weighed on his campaign for about two weeks, whether and when he will release some tax returns. i will release my tax returns for 2010, which is the last returns that were completed. i will do that on tuesday of
numbers that we were hoping to see and hopefully will continue. so new jobless claims plunged to 352,000 last week. that s a huge drop. down by 50,000. this demonstrates there are fewer layoffs. however, jobless claims can be a little volatile. for example, we saw claims jump a few weeks ago because of the temporary holiday workers that were laid off. and also the prior week was revised a little bit higher, not much. just by about 3,000. it did go above 400,000. we need to stay below that in order to associate that with actual job creation. today s report is good news. we need to see it continue in the long term. all right. felecia, thanks so much. let s get to politics now. we begin in iowa. yes, iowa. just when you thought it was a done deal. well, the des moines register is reporting the iowa caucuses were a virtual tie, that rick santorum actually ended up with a 34 vote advantage and that romney did not win. so now we re being told that in about 15 minutes we re goin