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do you think he has to go after romney s record? most of us weren t aware that the massachusetts health care plan provided funding for aboring services. most people would say they re for abortion rights but not for funding by the government. this does get him into a thicket there as a republican doesn t it? but, chris, that s not new. that claim has been out there and, you know, the flip flop on the life issue, that s been out there and i do think that, you know, the further south we go the governor is going to have to answer some of those questions. but tonight the story to me is not that newt gingrich might come in third or fourth or that rick santorum is the 23 or poll is at 23%. i think that is a real ceiling that romney, that he s dealing with, 23% and 25%. we ve been noticing that. go back four years. two well funded, well organized campaigns, he s not gotten beyond that 23 why 23? it s like the roulette wheel in ....
Rick santorum lost that state by 18 points in 2006 and his candidacy for president would be a nonstarter there. i think all of that will start to become part of the fabric of the discussion. i would say that if this holds up mitt romney did 25% in 08. he is still there now. if he doesn t go higher than this tonight momentum would be on the side of santorum. if he can come out of here near there, get some more endorsements, because we don t know where a lot of them we don t know where herman cain and 9-9-9 may go. this could go a lot of funny ways if romney cannot decisively win tonight. what about rick perry s money? rick perry is going to have to smell the roses here pretty soon, too. he is not doing very well tonight. right. though he does have a lot of money. if he puts his ego aside and goes with rick santorum. yes. this of course brings in a different element to the whole deal. what if they all decide newt gingrich is their guy, that newt gingrich now roused from ....
Forward for ron paul and the republican party? what is fascinating about this situation is the problems it could create for romney if in fact he ends up being the eventual nominee or whoever emerges if it is not paul. paul is a 76-year-old man. he is probably not going to run for congress again. he clearly is not in this, you know, for any reason other than to do what he is doing right now. so it s hard to see what incentives he could be given to get him to drop out of the race or endorse the nominee. he did not endorse mccain the last time around and he has the money and the organization and the volunteers to last a very long time. in fact, there is a story just the other day about how his campaign is already looking at those caucus, those other caucus states which are late in calendar and taking a page from obama s playbook in 2008 and trying to get their volunteers and organization active there so they can pick up delegates where they can get them. you can envision a scenario in w ....
Polk county. it was his biggest margin in raw vote over mitt romney was in polk county there. and it s paul that s leading but i want to emphasize we re missing a ton of vote in polk county. we have places like dubuque county all the way on the mississippi river where we have yet to get any returns in but i can also tell you this. i told you about our modeling that the boiler room is doing first and third based on different models. there is a precinct model we do. there is a county model we do. based on those models, throwing out the entrance polls at this point, actually using the data that we have, 1.1% separates first and third. so unless something dramatic happens with some of this un this vote that we haven t seen come in, but in the way it s coming in it feels like it s a representative sample, we re going to be here a while, rachel. 1.1% between 1, 2, and 3. i will say in terms of those of us whose job it is to just make sense of what all of this means rather than just count ....
Day one. we always knew this race was about a couple things. one it was mitt romney and who was going to beat not mitt romney and then we had dr. paul. dr. paul has a great showing tonight. rick santorum has become the not mitt romney candidate and now what we ve got, we ve got the board set. we ve got the players and now we run in new hampshire and south carolina to see how we finish out. chip salzmann the 2008 campaign manager for mike huckabee. this is an exciting neat. thanks for taking time out to talk with us. it was a pleasure. thank you. nbc news s political director chuck todd is with us with more about why this race is so close and what votes have yet to come in. chuck? well that, s the one thing i want to point out. only 27% of the polk county, des moines, is in. polk county accounts for 20% of the entire vote so that is a huge chunk that is still missing there in those early counting returns. paul is leading in polk county. four years ago huckabee won in ....