party primary. >> a new poll from the des moines register shows paul is in second place. >> ron paul wants to destroy virtually the entire government. >> they don't care about your personal liberty. >> i'm running for president of the united states. >> rick santorum has soared to third place with 15%, something a gop strategist has called a bombshell. >> i'm announcing my candidacy for president of the united states. >> you bring up newt gingrich. >> gingrich said he'd been romney-boated. >> i don't think i'm going to win. >> he's like freddy koorueger, keeps coming back. >> rick perry would decimate various departments if he can remember which ones. >> to announce formally my candidacy for president. >> i think michele bachmann is going to have the worst finish any winner of the iowa straw poll has ever said. >> i came her to declare my candidacy for the republican party of the president of the united states. >> crazy never wins in the republican party. >> if you don't run christ, chr christie, romney will be the nominee. today, one iowan wanted to know why during the 2008 presidential campaign rick santorum endorsed mitt romney instead of the more conservative and eventual winner mike huckabee. >> isn't it disingenuous to tell us not to settle when you did four years ago? >> i'm telling you the pick the more conservative of the candidates. it's not to settle for something less than what you believe is the best. and yet sometimes the best isn't that great, but it's the best. and as i've said, i'm not a perfect candidate. but i would make the argument that i believe that we're the best alternative out there. in the case of governor romney and john mccain, i settled for what i thought was the best alternative out there. >> while santorum was going after romney for being too liberal, ron paul and his senator son turned the liberal attack on santorum. >> he's very liberal. >> rick santorum is liberal? >> oh, have you looked at his record? go look at his record. >> what makes him liberal? >> he spends too much money. he wasn't leading the charge to slash the budgets and vote against big government. >> he voted to double the size of the department of education. he voted to expand medicare and add free drugs for senior citizens and he's voted for foreign aid. those are not conservative principles. >> tonight fox news is aiming its big guns at ron paul. >> even if the congressman does do well, he will not, will not be the republican nominee. because his positions on many issues are simply outlandish. ron paul with his soft approach to iran, his gold standard madness and other extreme positions is not going to be nominated by the republican party simply because president obama would beat mr. paul by a colossal margin. >> tonight in iowa, mitt romney is hoping that his public confidence would be contagious. >> you guys, i need you tomorrow night. i need every single vote in this room and i need you to get a couple of other votes from your neighborhood and get them to caucus. i need a great showing here at cedar rapids. we're going to win this thing with all of our passion and strength and do everything we can to get this campaign on the right track to go across the nation and to pick up other states and to get the ballots i need, the votes i need to become our nominee. that's what we're going to get with your help. >> this weekend's much-anticipated des moines register poll showed huckabee and obama leading on the eve of their victories in iowa. shows mitt romney narrowly leading ron paul by two points with santorum polling third. when you only use the data from the last two days of polling in this fast-moving race, santorum jumps to second, three points behind romney. that's within the margin of error. paul drops to third with 18% support. a new american research group poll of likely iowa caucusgoers shows romney with a more comfortable five-point lead over ron paul. santorum polls third in that one with 16% and gingrich is running fourth in that one at 15%. joining me now from the polk county convention center in des moines, david gregory, moderator of nbc's "meet the press" and andrea mitchell, host of nbc's "andrea mitchell reports" and nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent. we're beyond the polls now, and 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. i talked to a prominent republican today who said, you trust that iowa poll because it's been right in the past, it shows a combination of romney, paul and santorum being in that top tier. but this republican also cautioned, perry could still make some noise here and defy some expectations. >> that's right. >> andrea, of all the campaigns that are working in iowa tonight, the romney campaign was the one campaign of that group that actually considered not even making an effort in iowa, not really going in, not looking, at least, like they were trying to win iowa. huntsman has obviously stayed out of it. but to see him tonight fighting for the lead in iowa was something that didn't seem possible months ago. >> and predicting he could win when they tried so hard successfully to lower expectations, not coming in here, doing almost a stealth campaign here. and then coming in with big guns, spending a lot of time here, not doing as much bussing from county to county, 99 counties as both rick santorum did and some of the other candidates. but at the same time, he has built a very effective organization here. he campaigned actively here even in losing four years ago. and he had a lot of organizational strength. the main thing that we're seeing is that rick santorum is not only surging but he's gaining his voice as a candidate. and tonight we see that there's a tweet from rupert murdoch of all people saying that rick santorum is the man. that could be the first signal that conservatives, moving conservatives are now going to try to get around santorum as perhaps a "stop romney" movement. >> david, conservative media mogul rupert murdoch has been tweeting for three days now, starting on new year's eve, and he's already found it to be contagious.is morning where hee ntorum surgin regardless of policies, all debates showed principles, consistency and humility like no other. not exactly an endorsement. and then murdoch tweets later tonight -- can't resist this tweet, but all iowans think about rick santorum. only candidate with genuine big now, when you say only candidate with big vision, that's as close to endorsement as you get. >> right. >> i think it's significant. and if you're rick santorum and you're canvassing the state and you're going to the pizza barn and fox news is playing at the bar, that kind of thing matters. what's different about iowa, as you well know, these are real party stalwarts. these are activists, these are people that are going to the lengths of caucusing. that's a lot of work. some of this could have some impact. there's been no reliable alternative to romney. santorum may be catching the wave at exactly the right time. here's what the romney folks say. okay, fine, do you really think that rick santorum is going to be the nominee of the party? this is a guy who's worked iowa incredibly hard, gone to all 99 counties. he can't have 500-plus town hall meetings in florida. if this is a game that lengthens a little bit, it's more to romney's advantage. the reality is, first, second or third, if romney succeeds in exceeding expectations here, which everybody says is the name of the game here and he seems to have already done that, then this is going to be a good night for him. >> and romney has the money. santorum doesn't have the money to go the distance. >> andrea, what about the money case? here is romney trying to make the case backstage to all of us, the romney campaign and publicly that, look, santorum, no matter how well he does, doesn't have the money or the resources to go all the way. i, romney, do. he's doing that. in the middle of a campaign where someone came in with a massive amount of money from texas and collapsed completely, rick perry came in with more money than anybody could count and it hasn't mattered a bit. >> money has mattered in terms of the commercials because the commercials have been very effective. the super pac supporting mitt romney did in newt gingrich. gingrich contributed to his own failure as a candidate, which he acknowledged here in iowa today, even though he says he's going on. and he has two debates coming up in new hampshire. and debates have been his good form. but he's short on money, short on strength. he looks almost like a stricken man in the way he's been conducting his candidacy in the last couple of days. gingrich has certainly been hit hard by the money factor. this iowa caucus has not been like past iowa caucuses. it hasn't been small and folksy. we'll see what happens tomorrow night when people actually get together and vote. but up until now, it has had a lot of the apparatus of a big primary campaign with all this money and these big ads. >> could i just add to that, lawrence, that the dynamic of perry falling short of expectations almost right away completely reshaped this race. this was supposed to be a romney/perry race. and it has not turned out to be that at all. but the note of caution about romney, there's plenty of room for surprise in iowa and as we move forward. the reality is that romney is still a weak front-runner. he may not have a solid number two that he's running against. but he's still a weak front-runner which is why he has good potential scenarios coming out of iowa. but it doesn't change the fact that the floor beneath him is still a little bit fragile. >> david, you bring up a good point about the perry collapse. the front-runners are the front-runners tonight in iowa because of a series of collapses that you couldn't see coming. rick perry coming into iowa and collapsing quickly, despite all the money. michele bachmann winning the iowa straw poll and then collapsing. and then with this final collapse that we saw in december with newt gingrich, let's just listen to newt gingrich exactly one month ago, december 1st, talking about his prospects in a way that made sense at the time. >> i'm going to be the nominee. it's very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high i'm going to be the nominee. >> and now let's listen to the way newt gingrich is talking about his prospects of winning now. >> i don't think i'm going to win. i think you look at the numbers, i think that volume of negativity's done enough damage. whatever i do tomorrow night will be a victory because i'm still standing. >> andrea, have we seen a candidacy like this, that in 30 days goes from "i'm going to be the nominee" to "if i'm still standing, that's the best i can hope for"? >> i can't think of one. there have been seven changes of lead in this race since may. that's extraordinary. i think you could have predicted the collapse of herman cain and after that first debate, the rick perry collapse. newt gingrich was a little bit more unpredictable. he had ha near-death experience with his campaign last spring. and then came back and resurrected himself. this past month, it's been amazing to see what's happened. but he's his own worst enemy in many cases. we've known that over the decades. he isn't a man that his former colleagues say has 100 ideas and maybe several of them are actually good ideas. he doesn't have the intellectual discipline to stick to the themes that are really most compelling to the people, especially here in iowa. all of this said, lawrence, this is a year where you see it, you feel it, everywhere we go, people are angry, they're upset. they feel completely abandoned by both political parties in washington and congress in particular. and there's a real hunger for answers. i think you may see more turnout than we all expect. certainly the republican party is seeing a big registration increase, upwards, more than 30,000 new registrants. you may see independents coming and registering on the spot tomorrow night. then when they begin talking and listening to the speeches, people may be influenced and still are saying that they could be persuaded to change sides. so this is very unpredictable but it's very meaningful in that these are the first votes that are going to be cast and people want change. look at the debates and the people who are watching shows like david's on "meet the press" and the debate that david is doing on sunday in new hampshire. all the debates have had extraordinary viewership. this is a time when americans know this is serious business. >> and we're reminded of how little we know. an undecided voter said to me today, i probably won't decide until the very last minute. why would you decide anytime before then? it underscores what we don't know and how volatile this race still is. >> why would that voter want to make it easy for us? >> exactly. >> andrea mitchell and david gregory, thank you for joining me tonight from iowa. >> you bet. coming up, how do you sell yourself as someone who knows how to create jobs when your career was built on outsourcing or getting rid of jobs? our next guest was laid off by mitt romney. and the gop presidential candidates are making promises on the campaign trail that are impossible to keep because the constitution says they're impossible to keep. what the candidates pretend not to know about governing. congressman barney frank is going to join me on that one. and full coverage of the iowa caucuses starts tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc. 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[ male announcer ] one pill a day. 24 hours. zero heartburn. are you proud of your work at bain capital? >> absolutely. we helped create tens of thousands of jobs. i'm proud of the private sector. there's no question but that speaker gingrich and much more significantly, the dnc and president obama are going to put free enterprise on trial. >> the recurring bain of mitt romney's campaign, bain capital. while romney says he helped to create tens of thousands of jobs as ceo of the private equity firms, others say that's not the case. the democratic national committee has flown in one of those dissenters to iowa this week. we'll talk to him in just a moment. full disclosure here. bain capital and nbc universal are part owners of the weather channel. how that impacts this segment, i have no idea. but it's stuck in all of our prompters whenever bain capital comes up now. in 1992, bain capital bought american pad and paper. by 2000, ampad was bankrupt. hundreds had lost their jobs and romney and the rest of the investors were $100 million richer. for a candidate who touts his private sector experience, this history may be a tough sell for some voters, especially with the national unemployment rate at 8.6%. layoffs at ampda helped senator ted kennedy squash mitt romney's 1994 senatorial campaign. here's a 1994 anti-romney ad featuring workers who lost their job after romney's firm bought their company. >> he's cut our wages to put money back into his pocket. >> you're not creating jobs. you're taking them away from us to put money in your pocket. >> he just wants to take money out of your pocket and put it in his. >> right. >> i'd like to say to the people of massachusetts, if you think it can't happen to you, think again. >> joining me now is randy johnson who lost his job at ampad plant in indiana after bain capital bought the company. he was flown into iowa this week by the democratic national committee. thanks for joining me tonight, randy. >> glad to be here. >> i remember that 1994 senate campaign in massachusetts that romney was doing very well until ted kennedy started concentrating on what he had actually done as an investment banker and the way people lost their jobs, not just the number of jobs, but the actual style of it. could you tell your story about how you lost your job once bain took over? >> yeah, quickly, ampad is a subsidiary of bain. they bought my plant in '94. it was called an asset sale. they come in, bought the assets and they did not have anything to do with the employees. if you wanted to work for us, you had to fill out on application. they brought in guards and walked us out of the building. it was a really bad time. >> and the personal communication that some of you got from mitt romney as you were being laid off, wasn't there? >> actually there was a letter sent to me when they decided to close the plant back then. it was kind of apologetic but by the same token it was on the day the plant closed so it was a little late to help us. >> when you see mitt romney making hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of his career doing this kind of business, you can reasonably say in effect that his presidential campaign has been launched on the lost jobs of all those workers that were laid off and these kinds of transactions so that his company could take hundreds of millions of dollars in profit out of these deals. that's how these deals were done. this seems to me to be a very strange year for a candidate like that to be a front-runner in