individual mandate been upheld or has it not. it appears that the answer is the law will stand, the individual mandate which is the hart of the funding mechanism behind the law will stand, not under the commerce clause powers of the congress but under the taxing power of the congress, which was very controversial because this administration has represented to the american people that this was not a tax, they had said all along this was not a tax, but whether they got into court and needed to justify congress behavior they did a 180 and argued to the justices that they could do this under the taxing power and it appears that the chief justice, a george w. bush appointee has joined with the left-leaning justices on the high court. bill: we don t have the vote total yet. headline alert chief justice roberts says the mandate is not a valid exercise of commerce s
lawrence, how are you, sir? we ve got a barn burner in mississippi. tell us about it. well, here i want to pull it up because i want to show you, you know, obviously and let s not pretend that twitter doesn t exist and there wasn t a lot of chatter out there in the innertubes that indicated romney was doing well in all the exit polls. but we know the raw vote s a different story, and santorum has held a lead most of the night as the raw vote has come in. and let me just tell you the story a little bit, go to the county map here. and at least explain why it s happened. now, these greene countys here, this is the jackson media market. we expected romney to win them, but i can tell you in looking at the vote total, they re not the numbers he expected to have in those three big countys around jackson, he expected to be over 45% in those places. he s not cracked 45% once. the biggest reason, though, that romney seems to be underperforming what they thought they were going to do is in
romney. you re rick santorum this morning. you found out you in your mind, you won iowa. you know, nobody iowa republican party is not going to declare a victory here, a victor here because of those unknown precincts. but essentially now the certified vote total has you ahead. you re right. i think from a technical standpoint, you know, senator santorum said he won already. he said that a week and a half ago n terms of him getting anything out of this, i m not sure where he goes except he can probably make the argument that, a, look, i have the momentum on my side from a financial standpoint, from a fund-raising standpoint. not only did i raise $3 million over the last two and a half weeks, but give even more money to social conservatives so i can be the conservative alternative here, especially fli south carolina but especially even more importantly in florida. so the real question is whether or not senator santorum would use this to my point as to use this from a fundrai-raisin
majority and can win. and win an election. your thoughts? my thoughts is that newt gingrich has been a congressman from the most conservative district in georgia and suggested somehow he can put together the campaigns that have won this election when i ve won in two democratic districts as a conservative and won the senate in pennsylvania, key state to win as a conservative and put together major campaigns. in fact, much, much bigger campaigns that newt gingrich conceived of doing. by the way, let s look at the record in this campaign. i m 2-0. i ve beat newt gingrich not only in iowa by a lot, i doubled his vote total and i beat him in new hampshire where he had the union leader endorsement and spent millions of dollars so the proof is in the pudding. we ve been very successful so far in this campaign of putting together a message with a lot less money and a lot more discipline. we ve had a very disciplined message. we haven t been all over the place. we ve had good, solid policy pr
i think we shouldn t settle on somebody right now. the longer it goes the better for the republican party. it was not the full, whole-hearted endorsement the gingrich team wanted. where she said newt gingrich. it is a good sign for newt gingrich. jon: newt gingrich the candidate, conservative candidates if you want to call them that, rick perry, rick santorum should get out of the race. here is what he said. here is how he put it. people have to decide. if you vote for senator santorum, in effect you re functionally voting for governor romney to be nominee because he is not going to beat him. the only way you can stop governor romney for all practical purposes is to vote for newt gingrich. that is just a fact. it is a mathematical fact now. jon: that is what newt gingrich says. i want you to hear rick san francisco s response this morning on fox & friends. . let s look at the record in this campaign. i m 2-0. i beat newt gingrich not only in iowa by a lot, i doubled his vote total