choice for this country. so, the more that rick santorum does stuff like this and that people are talking about his terrible record, the better mitt romney ends up looking overall and i think that's trouble for democrats. >> so, ron brownstein, then, what does it mean that rick perry who said he was going to go sort of rethink things the other day and then didn't drop out kind of a shocker, actually, he decided he was going to stay in the race. what is the fact that he's staying in mean and who does it help and who does it hurt? >> the basic dynamic of this race is that romney has done a solid, but hardly spectacular job of consolidating the center of the republican party. as we saw in iowa, he's still facing enormous resistance against the conservative an guard. and the tea party activists and evangelicals. only won 14% of evangelicals in iowa. but the evangelicals did not consolidate nearly as much as they did in 2008.