>> i was referred to by many in my state as senator puerto ricocanio. >> for mitt romney, it's a conservative cold shoulder as he hits a certified southern losing streak sending him begging for more cash today just a few blocks from here at new york waldorf-astoria. indeed, after all the cheesy grits, biscuits and the catfish, maybe the supposed front-runner has developed a southern fried stomach you sker, especially after he let this escape his lips tuesday afternoon. >>. >> santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign and is trying to in many way to boost his prospects and frankly, misrepresenting the truth is not a good way of doing that. >> wait, who's desperate? santorum? hmm, interesting. let's bring in our panel now. with us from washington, msnbc political analyst and georgetown university professor microal eric dyson, michele cottle of news week and the daily beefrt and the senior writer from the salon.com. congratulations, steve. i have to start with you and i read your article the moment mitt's dreaded. with all the campaign disasters there have been for this man, i guess if he did drink alcohol, he would be crying into his beer today, wouldn't? >> he >> yeah, or at least maybe a little more apprehensive about the future of this race than he's probably had reason to be because he's kind of been protected from the beginning of this process by the fact that there were so many conservatives running against him trying to be that romney alternative and conservative votersen an activists couldn't seem to settle on one. you have this feeling coming out of alabama and mississippi that this is the moment that santorum, this is the moment that conservatives have been building towards here. i know gingrich is still there. doesn't sound like he's going to go away on his own. it raises the question who he sort of organically be eliminated from this race? will conservative voters now look at him and say you're done, our vehicle now is santorum. we have that one-on-one race now. >> it's all solidifying around santorum. michele, by the math, mitt romney was the winner. he took the most delegates, cemented his national delegate lead thanks in part to the good people of hawaii and american samoa, those important states. why does it feel like he's in trouble today? >> well, i think because it was a bit of a surprise for santorum to take both states. nobody expected the santorum sweep so to speak in the south which suggests that the conservative bat is drawing to a close. as people have noted, there's no reason mathematically or in terms of being a real prospect for newt to stay in. at this point, it's sheer meanness or maybe there's the suspicion he's staying in there as a way to kind of keep the establishment happy and you know, not have everybody coalesce behind santorum. so it was really last night. had nothing 0 much to do about romn romney. it was all about was this going to be a two-man race. that is increasingly what it looks like. >> professor dyson, more than three-quarts of the voters in mississippi and alabama were evangelical christians, 80% and 83% this they showed no love for mitt. perhaps more alarmingly, they do appear to be coalescing around santorum. does that make rick a real threat in this race do you think or do you take romney's view and his camp's view that they still are likely to be the nominee? >> well, to borrow william sapphire's phrase supplied to spiro agnew, he's a nattering naibob of neg taism and negativity to be sure. i think he's a substantial threat not only because the south doesn't give any indication that will support mr. romney, that those who are evangelical piusists will in any way concede the legitimacy of the more mon faith. on top of that, santorum seems to be charging with a full head of steam and also got more enthusiasm. has anybody looked lessenthus yas tick about being the front-runner than mitt romney? >> his wife looks pretty unenthusiastic on most occasions. >> i'll leave that to them to decide domestically. the reality is that, of course, rick santorum does prove to be a serious problem here. and as both guests have indicated, he's not going away jentsly into that night but he's raging against the dying of the light. the light is getting bigger and somebody said yeah, the light at the end of the tunnel may be a train coming in the opposite direction that mitt romney saw but it's santorum coming at him hard. i don't think this is going to be over for a while. >> to professor dyson's point, steve, santorum can did well last night. isn't last night a problem for him going forward in that there are not going to be states like alabama and mississippi with that rich concentration of white evangelicals? over 90% of the population who voted, republicans who voted in alabama and mississippi white, over 80% evangelical. he's going to have problems in the other states because that isn't the makeup of the republicans elsewhere, is it. >> the anti-romney vote on the republican side has been more rural, more religious, christian, lower income and southern. southern itself has been a key to that. so had you all four of those in mississippi and alabama. >> in illinois? >> 41% of the illinois electorate in the 2008 primary which john mccain won identified as evangelical christian. if we get this two-man race we've been talking about since last year, think of how many plos we've seen where we've looked at them and said wow, if huckabee and trump, if palin and perry or somebody like that, if they could just get together, then mitt romney would really have a nightmare. i don't know. i think it's a great unknown. how much anti romney resistance is out there outside of a state like mississippi. >> a new quinnipiac poll shows vum smashing romney in pennsylvania. a 14-point lead there. so the romney can't win the bible belt. he's got issues in the rust belt. yet, we keep being told that mitt's inevitable. >> that has been mitt's story line all long. if he doesn't have that, he doesn't have anything because he doesn't have the charm, he doesn't do the retail politics well. he's not idea logically in tune with the base. >> his best friends own nascar and nfl franchises. >> so they have to -- >> are they not assets? >> well, when it comes time for funding, they're certainly assets. but you know, being the 1% doesn't add up to an electoral victory necessarily. >> indeed. professor dyson, we've seen a slew of polls with varying results on the president's approval rating from 41% as you know to 50. are the polls broken or are we just that far from being able to tie the president's approval with things like gas prices? >> yeah, it's very difficult to tell. i mean, as you've already pointed out in regard to mr. romney, these polls don't exactly track scientifically because when he's supposed to be winning, he's not really doing so. he comes up with a few surprises here and there. so the mechanics of trying to determine whether or not obama is successful is not about the math. it's about the chemistry. and so here i think what's going on is that obama strikes a nerve in the heart of the american middle states as well as some of those states that are significantly blue. so when you begin to tinker with his numbers i think he's much more successful at being able to concede the legitimacy of some points coming from the republican side. all that stuff he did early on in his administration are trying to reach across the aisle will stand him in good stead now as he seeks to define what the democratic vision will be for this coming election, and as he continues to make headway among the independents. so i think that these polls are going back and forth. we'll see who has the true grit or in mitt romney's case the true cheese grits as soon as we figure out what the american people. >> professor, you're talking about chemistry. mitt romney is at the waldorf astore yas today with millionaires and billionaires. there's real chemistry there, isn't there. >> there's no doubt, there's chemistry, math, biology, probably some accounting going on, as well. none of the liberal arts. what's interesting is that this race continues to expose the flanks of those who say that they're for the people that they're populists in a serious way and those who are truly down for them. obama continues to raise money primarily among people who are nickelling and diming themselves into the process whereas mitt romney is taking super pac money big-time. they all are, but the disproportionate money in the super pacs suggest his clientele is much richer and much whiter. >> michele, given mitt romney's propensity to mimic the vern knack cue lar of the states, do you think he's saying y'all at the waldorf-astoria today? >> i think he's much more in his element today. he won't have to eat anything funny. no catfish on the menu. he can quick back and relax for at least one afternoon. >> wonderful. i'm sure he would be delighted to do that. thank you all for joining us. next, newt wants to go to the convention come hell or high water. stay with us. >> when i was winning and he wasn't, i wanted had imout. life is like that. he said no. so i want to quote santorum, no. 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>> i want to start with some measure of congratulations. your man gingrich did take second in mississippi and alabama, forcing romney into third place. but mr. tyler, you were quoted as saying we needed to win both those states. sadly, you didn't. but is winning this thing now secondary to you to injuring mitt romney? is that the purpose of gingrich? >> no, not entirely. what i said was -- >> not entirely? mr. tyler, you think it is partially, don't you? >> well, i think we're going to do everything at the super pac to keep mitt romney from getting the nomination. i did say we needed to win alabama and mississippi to change the narrative. we will change the narrative moving forward. i predict now the that newt gingrich will arrive in tampa on equal footing with mitt romney and rick santorum and ron paul. and the reason is is none of those people will have the requisite amount of delegates to take the nomination. my guess is after the first ballot which romney will fail, it's a better than even chance that newt gingrich could win a nomination on the second ballot. >> mr. tyler, based on where we are at the moment, romney has said he's got more than a million more votes than gingrich and two times the number of delegates. based on present evidence, is it wise for me to take your wager seriously? >> well, again, you cannot win the nomination unless you get the 1144 delegates. he will not have the 1144 delegates. i believe that newt as he said all along, if he believed that rick santorum and mitt romney and previously anybody else for that matter could, in fact, beat barack obama and change washington, that he would have gladly stepped aside and let that person run and endorse them. but nobody like that has emerged. neither mitt romney, he has no ability to beat barack obama. if newt got out, away, mitt romney would crush rick santorum. santorum's only hope is to get a nomination to go to a brokered convention. >> mr. tyler, surely if mr. gingrich got out, then those people who would have voted for him are likely to go to mr. santorum. that's not going to mean that romney crushes santorum. that's going to make it a much more difficult fight for mr. romney. >> no. that's the same argument. >> let me quote activist keith apell. he said santorum has and i'm quoting earned the opportunity to take on romney in a two-man race. if gingrich really wants to des em bowel romney the best way surely is to allow santorum to go in for an uninterrupted head to head collision, fight it out. surely that's better. >> which he will lose and mitt romney would be the nominee going into tampa. you're making this analysis on a static basis that nothing in the world changed. this campaign has been nothing but dynamic. all the empirical evidence points to that. we don't know what's going to happen. mitt romney will not be the nominee and will not arrive in tampa with the right amount of dels. my guess is he'll be tossed aside after the first vote. >> you know mr. gingrich better than any of us. it's hard for us to get inside the great man's mind. is this really about his anger at what the house and indeetd republicans did to him in 1997 when he was ordered to pay that unprecedented fine of $300,000 and where the house voted 395 to just 28 in favor of him being reprimanded as speaker? is this how he wants to get his revenge by getting to tampa and actually getting is the opportunity to speak at the convention even if it damages the nomination process? >> well, that would be a great story if it was true. first of all, newt wasn't fined $300,000. the committee needed to do something because they spent $300,000 on the investigation. >> sorry, he paid $300,000 and. >> he paid the committee to reimburse the committee. >> and he was reprimanded by the house. >> he was found innocent by the a federal judge and by the irs. >> i thought he was found guilty of ethics issues. >> no, sir, 84 out of 84 charges he was dismissed on all 84 charges. >> to my point, is this about mr. gingrich wanting his revenge for what happened to him in the '90s? he wants to own the podium one last time at the convention, doesn't he? >> and that would be a great moment but that's not the reason. >> it would be. >> the reason is newt gingrich has worked on the republican party for 30 years. and he has brought the republican party briefly to a governing majority and did he so by making a conservative he party which led to a balanced budgets, $405 billion worth of debt paid off and he reformed welfare, the only entitlement reform done in our lifetime. take all that and we're going to hand this over to mitt romney who was pro-choice and governed as such who raised taxes 47th in job creation? i don't think so. i don't think this party is ready to be handed this over all the mitt romney. we have a party that represents the government interests called the democratic party. this is the republican party. let's just fight it out. >> mr. tyler, thank you very much. by the way, just for the sake of accuracy, that was mitt romney's position. it's changed since then. thank you, sir. next, the president and the prime minister. stay with us. >> i andm a little embarrassed i stand here to think that 200 years ago, my ancestors tried to burn this place down. everyone in america depends on the postal service. i get my cancer medications through the mail. now washington, they're looking at shutting down post offices coast to coast. closing plants is not the answer. they want to cut 100,000 jobs. it's gonna cost us more, and the service is gonna be less. we could lose clientele because of increased mailing times. the ripple effect is going to be devastating. congress created the problem. and if our legislators get on the ball, they can make the right decisions. without the stuff that we make here, you wouldn't be able to walk in your house and flip on your lights. 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