face of the race completely, with ten states voting and 416 delegates at stake. i m back now with our cnn stellar a team, led by the king himself, wolf blitzer. john king, who s another king, and gloria borger, who must be the queen. welcome to you all. i ve been watching the as usual brilliant coverage all night, and my gut feeling is i know a win s a win, and mitt romney obviously won arizona. we expected that. he did sneak through in michigan, but to only win by 3% in your home state when rick santorum was outspend five, six to one? it s not a thuching victory, is it? not a ringing endorsement. as you know, and who knows better than you do, piers? in any soccer or baseball match or baseball, a win is a win, and you can t deny that he did win. it was only a week or ten days or so ago before the last cnn debate that santorum was ahead in michigan. i don t think that last debate necessarily helped rick santorum. mitt romney did come back, and he did win. we ll see how tha
children off for a supervised visit. powell had lost custody of the boys, and he was a suspect in his wife s disappearance. he sent an e-mail saying only i m sorry, good-bye. a neighbor describes what he saw. i just knew that if there was anyone in there, they didn t survive. you could tell that instantly from what we saw. i can t imagine anyone killing their children. i just that s beyond anything i can imagine someone doing. the state department shut down the embassy in syria hours ago. they are urging americans now to get out. syrian activists describe a weekend bloodbath that left hundreds dead in the city of homs. another 46 syrians are said to have been killed. activists accuse the syrian government of intensifying the brutal crackdown. russia and china gave president bashar al-assad a life line, vetoing a resolution that would have condemned him. they are asking for help. we re asking for your help. the rockets for four hours now, they re going to kill us all
side by side victory speeches by rick santorum and mitt romney, after midnight eastern time. they tied in the iowa caucuses, so each gave a victory speech. santorum, as steve schmidt who had been john mccain s chief of staff think the out of the park. it was sincere. it connect canned on almost every level. there were points at which it was almost reaganesque which is a strange thing to be saying about a guy named rick santorum who is dined of a doer, not likeable campaigner, but last night he was superb. mitt romney was awful. he gave a warmed over version of his stump speech, phoned in, mechanical, didn t connect. he seemed off his game. now it s not at all clear that that will continue, but if it does, if if somehow santorum kind of finds his voice now, and, remember, he s won twice
can t romney break 25% and if we were to get place number one here, i think that would give him the push he needs to start breaking 25% in some of the future contests. so that alone would be a major accomplishment for the romney team, brooke. okay. so breaking the 25% is breaking an accomplishment for them. what are you looking for tonight as you watch all of this? well, you know the old saying in iowa is that there are only three tickets out of town here. so everybody will be looking at who places among the first three finishers. and then going to what we were just talking about, what percentage of support they do get. and then it will also be interesting to listen to their victory speeches. you know, if romney does well, will the other candidates start going after him in a more aggressive way in i sort of expect them to at some point take sharp aim at him in a way that hasn t happened. and then you look at the bottom
and rick santorum are running neck and neck and neck. while perry and bachmann are struggling to stay in the race. huntsman is passing on iowa and doubling down in new hampshire. for gingrich tonight s caucuses come several weeks after he peaked in the polls. but he said he is still in position to win. there s 41% who are undeci d undecided, it s very possible to win. we ve talked we ve had 18,000 people in a telephone conversation call yesterday afternoon. we reached 89,000 eye juans and telephone conference calls and one more yet today. we have precinct leaders who believe that the caucus those are going to walk in, have a discussion and a substantial number of going to switch. 41% newt gingrich mentioned are voter s who say they could change their minds. whatever happens in iowa, romney says he s going to face president obama in november. by the way the president is running in iowa too. he ll speak to the caucusing democrats live via satellite this evening and mitt