trying to make that calculation. what goes into this? should we move forward or should we stop here? there s no question, it s money. if you come out of the caucuses tonight and one of the first top three places, clearly, you want the candidate to go on. you re already looking ahead. and in my case, and i m sure like mary, my role was to deploy staff to the next two, three states and, if you can t succeed tonight, you re bringing them to tennessee, you re bringing them to south carolina, but if you do poorly tonight, you re going to bring them back home and try to close the campaign down. reporter: did you ever find did you ever lose her here? i lost the state in 1980, lee atwater fired me three times and george h.w. bush called me the next morning, he said, get on a plane, you re unfired. this is up and down the state. but we ve been debating this cycle about how much does organization count, how much
tonight. i would just ask real quick, jeremy masterson, i talked to you about this a little while ago, another santorum supporter, you were picking up on this, the fact that he s been to all of these counties. that means something to you as an iowan. it does. it means he s more he s not about the polls, he s about the people. and it s about taking the time to go around and talk to the people and find out what s really important. and not only that, but sticking to the conservative values, like he says. you know, we shouldn t settle on a candidate, but really choose one that represents the best value and i agree with i m sorry reporter: with jim bob there. yeah, and just the fact that he is about family values. he s been supported by jim bob, sarah palin, a lot of people that stand for a lot of good conservative values. reporter: i ve been hearing that time and time again tonight, wolf, that family values is driving a lot of the support for rick santorum. consider the fact
the voters continue to move after we stopped polling them. what is your sense of where the movement is going since the pollsters stopped? well, i think santorum does have a lot of momentum right now. you see it out on the hustings with senator santorum. but i think romney, too, is showing a lot of strength. we simply don t know. on the republican side, they re doing callbacks, trying to gauge that level of intensity. they re doing a lot of crowd estimates and trying to judge enthusiasm. but there s a great deal of both intensity but a lot of questions. there are so many undecided voters, a lot of volatility. we ve been talking about it for weeks. look how many republicans have been up and then down, all is that alternative to romney. here s the point of strength for romney tonight. that is his opponent is not a candidate. it s a constellation of social conservatives. nobody has yet totally emerged and then separate from that, you have ron paul.
who did themselves the most harm tonight? rick perry. he had to come in here and perform according to his polls, as a very strong front-runner. he could have created a bigger zns between him and romney tonight. he failed to do that, romney, much more debate experience. performed better than any of the rest of them. and i think helped remind republicans, don t rush to perry. perry loses on the opportunity cost because he could have nailed it down tonight? romney, clearly did himself the most good as far as i m concerned. romney managed to take very solid conservative positions. but he also managed to separate himself from perry on social security.