newt gingrich fighting it out for fourth place tonight. rockefeller plaza finishing 2nd >> we will kick off tomorrow morning a campaign for jobs and economic growth, a campaign for a balanced budget, a campaign for returning power to the states through the 10th amendment, a campaign for a strong national security, a campaign for a stable solid social security program, both for people now on it and for the young people who are here who desterve a chance in their lifetime to have an even better program with an even greater

return because if we are smart, we can do better things for people than washington alternatives, how do we raise taxes and cut spending in a way that causes you pain on the spending side and causes you pain on the tax side is exactly backwards. i was really struck, this is part of learning. when we had a debate the other day and asked the question about the heating assistance program. it was phrased in a perfectly washington way. are you going to run a bigger deficit so you can help more people or are you going to cut people off and hurt them so you can shrink the deficit. nobody on the panel asking the question seemed to consider an alternative. what if we simply went out and developed american oil and gas? brought down the cost of heating oil, and didn't need to help people, because the price came

down? that idea of doing more and doing it better does not exist in the washington lexicon. and it makes it very hard for our friends, the news media, to cover, because it's so strange. what if you just were innovative? what if you just had new approaches? what if you just did everything americans have always done? the fact is, the entrepreneurial free enterprise system, which attracted people from benjamin franklin to the wright brothers to henry ford, to thomas edison, to bill gates, to steve jobs, that model of maximizing the development of new approaches, new energy, new opportunities, new technology has raised the standard of living of people across this planet more than any other system in the history of the world. with your help --

you've been wonderful to us here. and i'm asking each of you not to slow down. in the next couple of days, make a list of every person you know in south carolina and every person you know in florida, because those are the next two great contests. and i believe as we get to south carolina, as the choice becomes clear, as people understand that there is a bold, reagan conservative approach of lower taxes, less regulations, more american energy, a sound dollar, and actually being in favor of creating jobs, the opposite of the obama program of higher taxes, more regulation, less american energy, and attacking the people who create jobs, look at those two models. i believe we can reach out and we can create a majority that will shock the country and a majority that will begin to put us back in the right track.

it is doable. it is a daunting challenge, but consider the alternatives. if we do not go the extra mile and we do not offer a vision powerful enough to unify americans, and we continue down the road that obama has us on, but more than obama, the bureaucracy has us on, the judges have us on, the entire pattern of how washington operates has us on, more years of decay, more years of inadequacy, more years of falling behind, more years of growing weakness. that's the alternative. i believe that it will take someone who is capable of debating barack obama, face-to-face, delivering the conservative message, winning the argument in order to overcome his billion-dollar machine. with your help, as your spokesperson, representing your values, on behalf of our children, our grandchildren, and

our country, i will do everything i can to win the opportunity to represent you this fall in debating and then defeating barack obama. thank you and good luck and god bless you. >> former speaker of the house, newt gingrich, declaring tonight that he is not out of the race. the man with whom he is fighting it out, the man who he is fighting it out with for fourth place, rick santorum, also declaring tonight that he is not getting out of the race. nobody getting out of the race after new hampshire tonight. one week after the iowa caucuses, mitt romney wins again in new hampshire. mitt romney now making history by making it two for two. >> thank you, new hampshire! tonight we made history! >> never before has a republican non-incumbent won in both iowa and new hampshire. has the former massachusetts governor established himself as the man to beat for the gop presidential nomination?

is he the prohibitive favorite? >> it's about more than replacing a president, it's about saving the soul of america. >> nbc news projecting texas congressman ron paul as the second place finisher tonight. the texas congressman tonight declaring himself happy with second place. >> i called governor romney a short while ago, before he gave his talk, and congratulate him, because he certainly had a clear-cut victory, but we're nibbling at his heels. >> the look on his face is as important as the words he said. also, the man who bet everything on new hampshire, jon huntsman, the apparent third place finisher tonight. the former utah governor vowing to fight on to the next contest of the 2012 republican presidential nomination. >> i'd say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen! hello, south carolina! >> on this night, four years

ago, mitt romney said he had won another silver, after having placed second in iowa and second in new hampshire. he's won both iowa and new hampshire this time around. let's go back to chris matthews in manchester. chris? >> thank you, rachel. i'm here with debbie wasserman schultz, the u.s. congresswoman from florida, but also, of course, the chair of the democratic national committee. here we feel a fairly, i guess, expected set of results, although there were questions early on, even today, about who would come in second. it's clear now that ron paul has taken the excitement away from the huntsman campaign by grabbing second place, making no other credible democrat have that opportunity to say i'm second to mitt. now it looks like going into your part of the country, two elections from now, they'll be in florida, my question is, it looks like romney, is this the guy you were planning to face? >> well, we've been focused on trying to build our campaign the most significant, robust grassroots campaign in presidential history.

we've got seven offices around the state of new hampshire. we've had 500 events. we had 25 house parties around the state tonight. and tomorrow, when all of the republican candidates pack up and go on to south carolina, we will be kicking off the most significant grassroots campaign that new hampshire's ever seen and on to winning the state again for president obama in november of this year. >> well, let me ask you -- let's go to the micro questions. we've now come through two states, both of which are definitely in play. is that correct? neither state is safely in the president's column, neither iowa nor new hampshire? >> both iowa and new hampshire are usually battleground states. this cycle won't be any exception. i think it's important, though, to make a couple of observations about the outcome tonight. mitt romney got about 36% of the vote. four years ago, chris, he got about 32% of the vote. i mean, in his, what is essentially his home state, for him to only do a handful of points better than he did four

years ago, after campaigning for five years, that's really not anything to write home about. you could really declare it a loss, because he should have blown the doors off in this state. in addition to that, the republican turnout was off about 40% from the turnout in 2008, showing that this is not a field that their side is very enthusiastic about. >> so you're saying that he's going to be the nominee, but he won't be a strong nominee. >> i would say that there are supporters in the republican party, aren't quite fired up and ready to go. >> and nothing's going to change in florida? >> well, i don't detect anymore enthusiasm in florida for candidates who believe that we should focus on keeping the wind at the backs of people who are already doing well, while president obama's fighting for the middle class and working families. >> last question, was there damage done to him and all these charges by newt gingrich and the others, santorum and perry, to the effect that he ran a chop shop? that he's basically in the business of taking apart companies, not building jobs? >> the scrutiny that's been paid to mitt romney, that he has been a turnaround specialist, that

specialized in dismantling companies and offshoring jobs certainly did him some damage and rightfully so. >> will you guys make use of that? those charges made by the republicans? >> we think the economic experience that he's hanging his candidacy on needs to be scrutinized and we'll be making sure we help people do this. >> and utilized and destroyed. thank you, debbie wasserman schultz, u.s. congresswoman from florida and the chair of the democratic national committee. back to you, rachel. >> thank you, chris, and congresswoman wasserman schultz. tom brokaw is with us from new york. tom, great to have you with us. americans looking at these results tonight, what should americans know about what these results mean both for republican party politics, but also for what happens next? >> i think there's some fundamental truths to come out of tonight. first of all, both in iowa, and especially tonight in new hampshire, the voters, especially those in new hampshire, who are able to go under the sanctity of a voting booth, it appears that they were making their judgments on electability and who's best able

to do something about the economy. this is an impressive win on the part of governor romney tonight, especially when you look at the number of independents that he was able to pull into the republican voting booths tonight and get that group that four years ago were so strong for president obama. we just heard from newt gingrich, obviously, talking about how he's going to save the economy when he goes into south carolina and into florida in the future. there was less of the conservative theology from him tonight, so he understands that mitt romney now has a big head of steam going into south carolina. the real issue in that state, and i've been talking to a number of people down there, is what kind of a jihad they're going to have in the republican primary? will it begin a process of self-immolation, and that's what terrifies a lot of people,

including a lot of conservatives. but tonight mitt romney does have great momentum to going into south carolina. could be a much tougher state for him. it's quite striking to me, after i've been at this for a long time, as you know, that two out of the three leading candidates in new hampshire tonight were mormons. and the other one, ron paul, was a libertarian. that was not so surprising. so politics has changed profoundly in this country. and south carolina, here we come. >> in terms of looking ahead to that south carolina contest, tom, when you look at the dynamics within the republican party and sort of, i guess, the feeling among other republicans, as mitt romney moves forward from strength to strength, from iowa to new hampshire, is the tone of the attacks on mitt romney, taking him on for his time at bain capital, these attacks of him as a looter, as a vulture capitalist. is that unexpected within the party?

>> no, i don't think it's entirely unexpected. he thought he got some very strong support today from ron paul, saying this is the nature of a free market economy and capitalism, and it's unclear just how much damage bain capital did to really productive companies. in many instances, as you know, they say that they had to go in and change those companies, because they were going broke on their own. that's something that will play out in the course of the next several days. in south carolina, by the way, it's a very conservative state. it's a state, the punitive leader of the state right now is jim demint, probably the most conservative member of the united states senate. nikki haley, the governor, a republican, is in some difficulty. her approval rate is well below 50% at this point. so there's a real conservative fight going on in that state. but most people in south carolina say the big issue, jobs, jobs, and jobs. it's a state that's been hit hard. and if the voters of south carolina set aside a lot of the conservative theology, as i've been describing it, and go into the voting booth concerned only about the economy, that's good news for mitt romney, obviously.

>> tom, we have seen insurgent candidacies of different types on both sides of the aisle, but in particular in republican politics, i'm looking back to pat buchanan. when you look at the ron paul success, with a strong third place finish in iowa and this second place finish tonight in iowa, do you see an insurgency of a different kind, or is this something we can expect to follow, contours that were set out by other republicans who have been sort of outsiders within their own party? >> you know what's so striking to me about his success is the number of young voters he gets, rachel. and i think that's the tip of the iceberg. a lot of young voters who are coming out of college with great college debt, unable to get a job, worried about the high cost of entitlements for their generation downstream are looking for someone who runs completely counter to conventional politicians. and ron paul does that. and in his own -- and i use this in the best sense of the word

now -- homely downhome way, he gets his message across, especially in those debates. >> tom brokaw, thank you. it is invaluable to have you with us on nights like this. i really appreciate it, sir. >> thank you very much. when we return, chuck todd will be joining us to talk about probably the biggest headline out of new hampshire tonight, other than the fact that mitt romney has won. yes, mitt romney has won. but you know what else happened tonight? nobody got out. why do the candidates who did not win tonight all decide that they would stay in this race? chuck todd joins us with some answers to that question when we come back.

tonight in new hampshire, nbc projects that mitt romney is the winner of the new hampshire republican primary. in second place, texas congressman ron paul, at this point with 24% of the vote, this is with 71% of the vote counted, mitt romney at 38, ron paul at 24, jon huntsman in third place tonight with 17% of the vote.

rick santorum and newt gingrich fighting it out for fourth place, each with about 10% of the vote right now. and rick perry well behind at just 1%. let's check in with our nbc news political director, chuck todd, who's been looking at the calculus being made by some of those non-winning candidates tonight who are nevertheless deciding to stay in the race. chuck? >> well, rachel, i've talked to both the huntsman and gingrich campaigns about this very issue, right? and the gingrich campaign, obviously, they made this decision. it's south carolina or bust for them. they got the big donor, the big donation, sheldon addison, the casino mogul out in vegas to give the big money to an alternative super pac to them to

go after romney. they made this calculus. they didn't care where they finished here in new hampshire. but huntsman was interesting. and in talking with their strategist, they say this. getting the third place means maybe -- they think it's important for them to go to south carolina, because even if they only get 10%, if they can help deny romney victory in south carolina, it vetches the race, impose to florida, a plac maybe huntsman does a little bit better, but does the same thing. denies romney victories. the whole strategy now for the gingrich campaign, for the huntsman campaign, is actually the same. deny romney victories. and if they can do that, maybe they can stretch it out. maybe they find out romney might have more of a glass jaw than maybe he does. i think we're going to find out in the next ten days whether he does have a glass jaw or not. but that's the strategy. stay in the race. and in huntsman's case, he's not looking at winning any of these states. he's simply looking at denying romney victories. so he hopes to be pulling votes from romney's left, rachel. >> it's interesting. we're starting to see that from a lot of the different

candidates right now, the idea is to stick around in case romney face-plants. stick around in case something happens to mitt romney or something is done to mitt romney that takes him out. still be in the race when that happens. >> they're all "break glass in case candidate implodes" candidates. and the little elephants break the glass, here i am, you know? and if you're huntsman, you're seeing everybody else has moved up and down and moved up and down. he's still waiting for his moment. so maybe the point is, if he stays in long enough, something happens. >> let me ask you one last question, chuck, you look at rick santorum, jon huntsman, newt gingrich, rick perry, who has not been a factor in new hampshire, but will be a factor in south carolina. all of these candidates who not only have their own campaign resources, but have access to quirky billionaires who may or may not be their dad, who may or may not want to give them money to carpet bomb in the next couple of states. is there any difference in strategy from any of those four toward mitt romney, or are they all on board with the mitt

romney corporate raider attack that we've seen newt gingrich play up so much in the last couple of days? >> no, they actually have different strategies. santorum, you saw, he's not going to go there. he's not going to touch it. i think santorum's strategy is pretty clear. play up his cultural conservative credentials in south carolina, hope that the mud between gingrich and romney, that gets exchanged, creates a factor that we've seen a lot of times in multi-candidate fields, which is candidate "a" attacks candidate "b," candidate "b" attacks candidate "a," and candidate "c" ends up winning the primary or winning that election. so i think we'll see straightforward strategy that way. perry and gingrich are double-teaming that. and then you've got the romney/paul sort of non-aggression pact, if you will, and paul even defending romney against these charges. that's helpful to him at some point, because anytime you can have a surrogate push back rather than having to do it yourself, it's always better.

but they all are in this sort of deny romney victory strategy. if they ever want to find their way back. and at some point, they're going to turn on each other. newt gingrich told me today, i said, when you do the simple math in south carolina, if you and santorum split conservatives, 50/50, romney wins with somewhere between 35 and 40%, and gingrich said to me, you know what, let's see what happens early next week. let's see how these ads hit and maybe conservatives will start consolidating around him. he thinks, of course, santorum is hoping it's the other way around. but at some point, you know, there's a big meeting this weekend of a lot of social conservatives, movement conservatives that don't want romney as the nominee, and their goal is to try to figure out if they can consolidate behind one of the two, gingrich or santorum. maybe that happens this weekend in favor of one over the other. >> and with mitt romney having now 1 -- won in iowa and new

hampshire, anybody who really wants it to not be mitt romney, these are desperate times. and if there are desperate measures available, now's time to go for them. chuck todd, thank you for this. we're going to go to chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. he's with howard fineman and others who have been reporting with various campaigns and their reactions to tonight's results. chris? >> great, rachel. you know, howard, it seems we've got three guys now running in this race that are behind and have to do something magical to pick up. let's start with the most fascinating -- gingrich. tonight, no attack in his speech tonight on the man he's been attacking, romney. what's that about? >> well, i think that's significant. partly because i know that some friends of his, former members of congress, have called him to cool it on the looting thing. they say, you're making a pariah of yourself in the party. and even though the mitt romney people claim, bring it on, we want to get this debate over now so we don't have to deal with it in the fall, they don't like it. they definitely don't like it. but newt has a choice to make. by the way, i've covered him for many years. i've never seen him look that deflated and unhappy. >> as tonight? >> as tonight. you know, he cried out in iowa because he was tired.

here he just looked like a guy who was being denied the opportunity that he wanted. he started that speech with i, i, i, i, i. it's all about him feeling thwarted and defeated and you saw that. but the problem he faces is if he goes down the looting road, what john sununu called the soci socialist road, the does at some point paint himself into a corner in the party. that's what some of his friends are telling him tonight, i understand. >> can he forgive what was done to him in personal terms in iowa, in that blanketing campaign? basically on behalf of romney? >> no, he can't. but the emotional choice he faced, the political choice he faces, does he continue trying to exact revenge and get some kind of satisfaction out of that. nobody thinks he's going to win the nomination at this point. or does he stand down and avoid really becoming a truly, you know, attack figure from everybody else within the republican party, which is quite possible. >> fair to assume, though, if he does go on the hard attack, he'll lose the battle to romney.

he only has one choice. >> the only way is to destroy him. >> what about santorum? does santorum have a chance of taking him down, romney? >> i interviewed rick santorum the other day. he told me that he'd changed. he'd been changed by his 17-point defeat in pennsylvania the other year, where he really was a negative attack dog. it didn't work. he got clobbered. and also, you know, the family story, the fact that he's got this daughter who he cares very much about and all that. and he's tried very hard, maybe for tactical as well as personal reasons, not to be an attack dog in this campaign. you know, he was known as senator slash. he's put that aside. and if you've noticed, he's been very, very wary, for the most part, of attacking any of the other candidates. he thinks he's sitting a different tone. whether he can keep doing that or not in south carolina, i don't know. but i think his hope, as small a hope as it may be, is to be the guy who's not attacking the other candidates and somehow benefit and have that weave into his cultural conservative traditionalist values.

that's his line. >> i've always had the sense that santorum was really gunning for a cabinet post. that he may have done well in iowa, but he never thought he'd do that well, and he's really sort of trying to hug up against romney rather than attack him. >> if you've noticed, he's eschewed almost every chance he had to attack romney. >> one last chance. we don't get -- i guess most people, i shouldn't say "we" on behalf of anybody, but ron paul does not look like the candidate for winning the republican nominati nomination but is simply a person who wants to get a message across to the party at the convention, perhaps either on a platform or probably more forcefully, in the words of the eventual winner. what's his goal now going into south carolina? >> i just got done e-mailing with jesse benton, his main guy. he was right there next to ron paul and is practically a member of the family. he claims, at any rate, that they've raised at least $10 million in the month of january alone. they're already organizing in

all the states down the road. they're going for maximize delegates they can get, maximize leverage they can get, and then there will be a moment. right now romney and paul are sort of in a -- they're being nice to each other, not attaching each other. paul defended him on free enterprise and so on. there will be a reckoning at some point. ron paul has refused to say that he will stay in the party, that he will even support the nominee. he'll go with as many delegates as he can, get whatever he can out of the republican party, and i think romney's big diplomatic challenge of the next many months is to keep him in the party. i don't think it will work. i think, ultimately, ron paul will go off on his own and he'll have the money to finance his own independent -- >> this time? >> yes, his people. look, we've been at his rallies. his people want no compromise. and he will lose his credibility with all the people that he's spent years and years winning the support of if he stays in the party. i think, in the end, he will leave. >> my belief is with you, because i believe there's an opportunity to the right of romney, somebody will take it. >> especially with romney. >> rachel, it's a desultry night

for those thinking that the republican party was going to go through some disruptive change tonight. it looks like it's on course. it's romney's turn. it's been his turn like it was with reagan and bush sr. and dole and cain. the relentless tedium of the tyranny of the republican party. they give the job to the guy whose turn it is. >> the tyranny of the tedium. that was amazing. >> it's so desultry, i'm sorry. >> in terms of looking for an eruption, what howard fineman just said right now about what he expects from the ron paul candidacy going forward and about the beliefs and desires about the ron paul true believers, put that in a bottle and keep it on the shelf. that is a time capsule of what's going on right now in this campaign, and that may become very, very, very important many months down the road. howard, i think that was very important. we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, we've got some news out of what's happening in south carolina. obviously, with nobody getting out of the race tonight and with mitt romney having locked up now iowa and new hampshire, south

carolina has never been more important. what is going on in terms of spending in south carolina? and power brokers in south carolina who can make all the difference in that state. new news on that coming up next.

welcome back to msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. with 74% of the vote reported, mitt romney in clear first place. 38% of the vote. vote. jon huntsman, 6 points behind ron paul. gingrich, santorum, and perry in fourth, fifth, and sixth. the distance between gingrich and santorum, very close there, as you see. looking ahead to south carolina, obviously, jim demint as an important conservative in south carolina. nikki haley, as tom brokaw was pointing out, perhaps slightly wounded in her standing in the sta state. what are we expecting next in terms of south carolina? >> there are a lot of things unfolding in the last hour, rachel. you've got the conservatives now, i think, starting to line up behind mitt romney. jim demint, who is probably one

of the most coveted endorsers in south carolina is saying tonight to mark levine on his radio show, i'm just sitting here and listening to romney's acceptance speech and he's hitting a lot of the hot buttons for me and balancing the budget, and frankly, i'm a little concerned about some of the republicans who have criticized my free market principles. the super pac backing mitt romney, reported by michael isikoff tonight, that super pac backing him has just spent $7 million in new ads in both south carolina and florida combined. they're going for the knockout punch. the bain story continues to be out there. conservatives are starting to rally around mitt romney with his win tonight at 38%. you've got michelle maukin, hannity, limbaugh, jim demint, as i just said and ann coulter are now saying that mitt romney is all about capitalism. the advice in "the new york

times" tonight that the advisers intend to cast romney as the founder and chief of bain capital, as a defender of market capitalism, a bedrock principle of capitalism, and suggest that those who assail his business background are outside the party's mainstream. what tom brokaw was talking about earlier, that jihad, the republican party is on newt gingrich tonight, telling him, back off. that's what i can read in all of this and that they are circling the wagons fast and realizing that the money factor is in mitt's favor. he's 2-0. it's going to be hard-pressed for anybody else to come out and win the nomination at this part, except, the chance would be ron paul, and he could continue to build momentum. but it seems to me that the republican party is making a statement tonight that we're starting to damage our brand too much. we've got too much in-fighting, we've got to clean this thing up. >> but if newt gingrich believes there is an audience in the republican party for the kind of anti-bain attack that he's been making and wants to continue to make against mitt romney, with a

ton of money to do it, does he say, listen, republican elites, i don't care. the republican rank and file ought to hear this, since democrats are going to use this against him, and in fact, it's indefensible. does newt gingrich defy the elite on this? >> i don't think newt gingrich particularly cares. but i was struck listening to chuck todd's report earlier today about this fact. that all of these campaigns have lost control of their destiny, except for mitt romney. and it's a sign of your fundamental weakness when your strategic calculus changes from this is how we're going to win the election as to this is how we're going to try and impact the race, so that guy loses the election. and that's one step away from being out of the race. so i think we come out of tonight with mitt romney in command of the race, but i also think that howard fineman, you know, asked the most important political question of the race. what is ron paul going to do looking ahead? will he leave the republican party? will he mount a third party challenge? howard thinks he will. i think he won't, because i

think it destroys the future of his republican senator son. but this is the biggest and most important question when you give consideration to the general election ahead. and who knows the answer. >> and the dynamic in south carolina is going to be different. the unemployment rate in iowa is 5.7%. in new hampshire, it's 5.2%. in south carolina, unemployment, 9.9%. >> so if there's a market for populism -- >> that would be it. >> anti-mitt romney populism, going after his vulture capitalism, as they've been saying, that would be the place for it. >> and a company that was the victim of bain in south carolina, if they intend to pursue that. so south carolina can be very interesting. but i think, what the established order there from the governor, now demint, going where they're going, romney gets a little more strength than one would think. he comes in 2-0. i think the two factors is going

to be paul and i think he's going to be just as much of a problem in the tent for the republicans as he will be out. and i think that you're sleeping on romney's message tonight, i think, will help energize the moderate independents and the democrats. because he's running on appeasement, which he cannot get anywhere with after bin laden and all. he's running on talking about the economy. and he's certainly going to have to deal with bush's legacy there. and he's going to have to start some of these hundred thousand. and he's running on the politics of envy. working class people are not envious, they're injured. we're not jealous in this country. the economy's jaded. and if he comes out with those three points, those are the three points he made in his speech tonight, he just set up a layup shot for president obama in november. >> lawrence o'donnell, will the republicans be doing themselves a favor by taking hard shots at mitt romney right now, to test whether or not he has a glass jaw? would they be actually doing the party a disservice by letting mitt romney go, essentially, so

that they don't test him too hard, to leave all the testing to obama? >> they have run the test, he has a glass jaw. so they know exactly how that test comes out. you know, it's worth noting what actually really factually happened here tonight. delegates. some 12 delegates. that's the grand total in the state of new hampshire. five people are going to share those 12 delegates. the threshold is 10%. if you're 10% or above, you get some of those delegates. so it's romney, it's paul, it's huntsman, then gingrich and santorum. that's why this 10% level for them is crucial. they were -- they're both looking as though they're going to get above that, probably. but that threshold matters. and so al was right to point out earlier the ron paul delegates, but i don't see where ron paul picks up an amount of delegates going forward to the convention where he could actually end up being any kind of factor. i do think you've got that issue about, how are they going to

behave? the ron paul delegates. that's an interesting issue in the convention. >> inside the tent or out a problem in either case. msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary continues in just a moment. stay with us.

welcome back to msnbc's live coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. i'm rachel maddow. should be noted, there was a democratic primary in new hampshire tonight. guess who won? looking ahead to south carolina,

the question is not just the polling and not just the spending, but the character of the south carolina electorate. whether or not the message that mitt romney has been able to parlay into wins in both iowa and new hampshire resonates in a state with a different character of an electorate and a different situation in terms of unemployment, also a different structure of the state republican party, especially vis-a-vis the activists in the tea party. nbc's andrea mitchell joins us now with more on that from manchester, new hampshire. andrea? >> one thing that's very important about south carolina is that the unemployment rate is twice what it is here in new hampshire. so economic concerns will dominate, but it's a different kind of economic concerns. they are concerned about jobs more than budget deficits. there is tea party strength. he does have the support of nikki haley, but as you've been discussing, nikki haley is not a popular figure at all. jim demint, as ed schultz was pointing out, his comments favoring mitt romney, not an endorsement, but certainly a broad hint. that would be very helpful, because of jim demint being mr. conservative in south carolina.

interestingly, romney split the conservative vote, the exit polls tell us, here in new hampshire with rick santorum, but, again, new hampshire conservatives are a very different breed of cat than south carolina conservatives. so mitt romney goes south with a big head of steam. there's no discounting the fact that he won iowa, he won new hampshire. we can say it's by four points more than he won it last time. we can say that he still is, you know, not dominant in not building much of a broader base, but at the same time, he is really consolidating a very strong hold on the nomination. it's going to be very hard to stop him, unless the opposition, the un-romneys, get together. and so far, as you've seen, everyone says they've got a ticket to ride out of here, and they are heading south. huntsman is going to be on a plane in the morning, taking a commercial flight through philadelphia. santorum going south. gingrich certainly is, and

there's a lot of animosity and both gingrich and both huntsman have a lot to prove against mitt romney and they want to. >> thank you, andrea, appreciate it. nbc's michael isikoff more with mitt romney's plans for south carolina. mr. isikoff, what do you have for us? >> actually, just in the last couple of days, starting before tonight's returns, but continuing, the romney super pac has bought up nearly $6 million in ad buys in both south carolina and florida. that exceeds that $3.4 million that the gingrich super pac has bought up that we were talking about earlier. and what it really does underscore is the romney folks are trying to close the deal right now. below away their opponents by the end of the month, and they've got the financial muscle to do it. we've all been talking about sheldon adeleson, who gave that donation to the gingrich super pac. the romney super pac is flush with cash.

it's become quite the financial juggernaut making a major difference in this race. >> michael isikoff, thank. let's go now to chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. he's now with john harwood. >> john's with us now. john, you were talking about before we came on here about santorum. he's kind of the mystery man now. he did so well in iowa, not so well up here in new hampshire tonight. >> he did, but he's got some plans going forward. you were talking with rachel before about the tyranny of the tedium. >> my phrase. >> exactly. mike isikoff's point about the mitt super pac is more tedium. but there's chaos at odds with the tedium, because no one's getting out of the race. rick santorum's campaign raised $3 million in the last week. they did not spend one nickel on broadcast in new hampshire. they started today $15.5 million buy in south carolina. their goal here, they say it doesn't matter what shakes out

between gingrich and santorum for fourth and fifth tonight, because their goal here was not to -- they knew it wasn't a good state for them. but they didn't want gingrich to get any sort of conservative bounce out of here. they were present, they played strongly in the debates, but they prevented gingrich from coming out here, backed by sheldon adelson with that head of steam in south carolina. so now they're in. gingrich is in the with the super pac money. huntsman may be in with super pac money. we've got a lot of people spending a lot of money in a very small state. voters in south carolina are going to hear a lot, positive and negative about these guys. >> we're back to rachel. >> it's true. when you think about the amount of money that's going to be spent in south carolina and the price of tv ad buys in south carolina, it is going to become a very political thing to watch any television of any kind in the palmetto state very quickly. all right, we're going to be seeing chris again at the top of the hour for a special edition

of "hardball" tonight. msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary continues in just a moment.

welcome back to our coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. here's what i think about going forward. yeah, it looks like mitt

romney's got it sewed up. the republican powers that be have to decide whether or not they are desperate for it to be somebody other than mitt romney. if somebody can make a plausible case that it can be them, money is irrelevant. because any one candidate can just tap one really rich guy and the money can flow forever. with the super pac financing right now, it doesn't matter how many donors you have, it doesn't matter whether or not your dad is your funder, it doesn't matter who it is. all you need is one rich guy. and they've all got at least one rich guy who would be crazy enough to dump a huge amount of money to back mitt romney. i think the money is irrelevant to our calculus, because anybody can put together any amount of money going forward. it's the dynamic of the race as to whether or not mitt romney's beatable. >> spoken as somebody who has never been involved in campaign fund-raising. not every one has a billionaire. if rick santorum had a billionaire, he would have picked it up already. >> but if rick santorum were the credible alternative to mitt romney, wouldn't he get the billionaires? >> that's the issue on this texas meeting with the social conservatives saying -- and by the way, there is no party

leadership. there's no such thing. there are no set of wise men in the party, in washington, who can get together and go, okay, we're beginning to make this decision like a board room. democratic party doesn't have it. republican party doesn't have it. but you do have these factions. and that's social conservative faction is the most powerful, in many ways, and the most reliable in the party, and if they get together and if they have a sit-down with gingrich and they say, please, step out. if they say to perry, please stop doing this. and if they say to gingrich -- or to santorum, you're our guy. if they do something like that, it could get interesting. but the likelihood of even that working is very slim. because you have to convince a bunch of people who aren't going to see things the same way to suddenly see things the same way. >> will, those evangelical southerners are strong. they will raise the money. but they are at a point of determination. do they accept mitt romney or do they mount the charge? and it's, for lack of a better term, it's a defining moment for them. it really is.

and they have to determine, they've had some meetings in texas. there's another one coming up this weekend. i've talked to a few conservatives who have told me, flat-out, not mitt romney, not now, not ever. now, whether that's going to coalesce and bring together james dobson and gary bower, who was behind santorum, and tony perkins at the family research council. these folks know how to raise money. they'll find enough conservatives out there. and that's why tonight, when you've got jim demint saying what romney is saying, that's almost a signal. you know, maybe we better lessen our pushback on this. so it's not the kind of drama and love story that chris matthews likes, but it's a new kind of drama that's unfolding in this modern day politics. >> steve, when you look at this, do you see game over? >> i think it's getting pretty close. money matters, but momentum matters more. and mitt romney has all the momentum in the race. since 1980, south carolina, the winner has gone on to be the republican nominee. if mitt romney goes 3-0, it's

very difficult to see how he would lose florida. and certainly if he wins four of the first four primary contests, whether these guys are in the race, out of the race, suspended or not, he'll be the nominee of the party. so he's got all the momentum and he has got to be really happy with where he is. >> very briefly, last thought? >> the problem that i have is true believers in ron paul's camp and possibly in some of the camps of santorum and them, who may not go with whatever deal the evangelicals say or the party bosses say, and the true believers can be very disruptive. if they hang in there, romney came in tonight number one, but obama would have won. >> al sharpton, steve schmidt, ed schultz, lawrence o'donnell, thank you, fellas. i'm rachel maddow. thanks for being with us tonight. chris matthews picks up msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary in just a moment with special live edition of "hardball."

good evening. i'm chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. here's the headline tonight. mitt romney makes it two in a row. we project that mitt romney is the winner and ron paul is projected seconds followed by jon huntsman in third. newt gingrich and rick santorum

in fourth with about 10% each. mitt romney is the first non-incumbent in the primary system to win iowa and then new hampshire. a move into south carolina in a strong position. can anyone, and that's the bottom line, can anyone stop romney from winning the nomination? the political director and michael steel is the former chairman and an msnbc contributor. the news man, chuck todd. when you look down this as an expert and look at the money in the hands of romney and the support for endorsements officially at this point and the money in the hands of the other candidates and their positions, is there any real chance he hasn't got this locked? >> sure there is a chance. he still hasn't won a primary where conservatives put him over the top.

he went from weak front-runner to a strong front-runner, but not the nominee yet. he has to win south carolina or florida to be the defector nominee. that makes him a stronger nominee going into the process and it does weed out the candidat candidates. let's put an affect risk on new hampshire. this is the most nonconservative that the republicans will face. maybe hawaii is more moderate. once you get to hawaii republicans, look at the exit polls and how a majority very much call themselves mod rail on a lot of the social positions. you are not seeing that. look at the next four. two this month. south carolina and michigan and arizona. these are conservative and feel economic pain. he still has a hurdle left. the fact is he is probably going to clear it.

he has every chance and resource to clear it. it's not going to be easy to do because he still -- conservatives, how are they going to react? are they getting on a stop romney train? some of them will say he may be president. i may want to be buddies with him down the road. >> the republicans fall in line, not in love. as we know, falling in line, here's the question. is there anyone to stop him? can you see gingrich reversing here or putting more gas in the car? he did a this a couple of days ago. >> i don't know if i can see gingrich and someone like rick perry who wants to make south carolina a hit for him. they tried to organize with the hiccup out of iowa. chuck has hit it on the head. the reality is south carolina becomes the conservative beach head.

that's where they will go to make their stand and to either have romney -- >> rick perry got about a point tonight. >> that's here to his point. south carolina is a different playing field. you are looking at who can stop and get in the way. rick perry can do that and maybe ron paul can do that in some degree. >> here's the thing. i think i know the message that can stop mitt romney. to be the conservative pop lift. gingrich did so and sarah palin stumbled upon it. the original tea party message of being anti-big government and weary of corporate america and greed and big business. if somebody could credibly make that argument, the problem is i don't know if gingrich is the right 1 to do it. does gingrich go on this commission end up helping rick santorum. one of the scenarios that is likely to happen is that romney

and gingrich tear each other's heads off and santorum does what he did and a very close finish at the end with romney. >> you are telling me with a straight face that rick santorum can defeat mitt romney down the road? >> in south carolina. to social conservatives. >> very effective speech with a great bit of preparation with a teleprompter unlike last week. a deliberate well put together speech that covered all the bases. if you listen to a chunk of it, you get a sense of why romney is running for president. he accused president obama of wanting to turn america into a social welfare state. that's a tough charge. >> the path i lay out is not one paved with ever increasing government checks and cradle the grave assurances that government is always the solution. if this election is a bidding

war for those who can promise the most benefits, i'm not your president. you already have that president. >> tamron hall has been tracking the exit polling on substance and he has a look at how mitt romney won tonight. this will be interesting. >> absolutely. we punched the numbers from the exit poll and there is an interesting story on how mitt romney won tonight. one of the arguments is he is more electable and that seemed to work for him tonight. we have been talking about the ability to beat president obama with the quality that mattered most to voters. today a third said that. the voters who it is electability was the big factor voted for romney by a big margin. 62% with the other candidates far behind. let's look at how romney did compared to four years ago when he lost to in new hampshire. he did well among those with the

highest incomes. he narrowly lost among voters who get 33%. he won this group with 47%. ron paul a distant second with just 19%. voters described themselves as moderate or liberal and registered republicans where he scored 15 points better than what he did in 2008. even after tonight's victory, some may wonder if republicans will rally around romney if he wins the nomination. if today's voters are any indication and is it t does not look like they are rate yet, 55% of non-romney voters say they would be dissatisfied if romney won the nomination. 42% would be satisfied. he has a lot of work ahead of him to win over the voters as he continues on to south carolina. you see the number there is. they speak volumes. >> they certainly do. let's get back to the panel.

we want to go to the republican party former head. i am looking at these things. the old line and i don't want to go back to the tyranny, but your party is giving to excitement over charisma and the guy with the hot happened on the ball in the court. the guy is hitting the ball hits the ball. we did this on the democratic party and you saw it. obama won the first time out. clinton won the first time out. jack kennedy won the first time out. they want to vet the guy over a number of years and make them pay a price in terms of pain and humiliation. it's true we push senior with reagan and i want to move slowly. here you have a candidate, what has romney got that he didn't have four years ago except tenure. has he learned new tricks? >> no, he has not been able to close that gap between him and

the core base of the party. we saw it with mccain and we see it with romney. the parties is at a point where they are having an internal battle. they are looking for particular types of candidates who marries two things. one, the energy to go toe to toe against obama, electability. more than likability is the sustainability of principal. the idea that when you go toe to toe, you will argue from a principaled position foundational to the gop. that's the question they have about romney. whether or not he can do that. >> dear he go there with the speech? against the politics of envy against resentment and defending in some places wealth? >> think he opened that door. i think he as i said it he was preaching for his mouth a new way to the conservative base of the party. whether they hear that in south

carolina remains to be seen. >> i thought it was a good speechl more so than it sounds. >> for you agree on that, let's look at mitt romney tonight. >> president obama wants to fundamentally transform america. we want to restore america to the founding principals that made this country great. he wants to turn america into a european-style social welfare state. we want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity. this president takes his inspiration from the capitals of europe. we looked at the cities and towns across america for our inspiration. >> i think that speech was kind of an acceptance speech. i want to get back to something. you think rick perry is still in the race? >> i don't want to cause any trouble because he's a protestant and the only one in the race.

>> i don't think it's that. i think when he took that momentary pause before he put on the speedo and started running, he and the money folks sat down and said we can create a moment here. let's stay in this thing and see what we can do down here. beyond that, why else do you do this? you are not playing here at all. this becomes his last stand. you skeptical? >> i'm not saying he is going to win it. >> i don't know if he can get 5%. >> maybe not, but you are asking why he is in the race. >> i think he wants one more moment. no doubt, south carolina was built for rick perry. there going to be two plus you have a former two with huckabee. one remember right after the iowa squeaker, mitt romney rolls out with john mccain and did so immediately after. it was an attempt to create

momentum and that didn't go well. in hindsight they probably wish they could have done better. he wants the de facto nominee chattered to begin. what does he roll out? who comes out for romney? probably a bunch of senators and you will see some of them. we will see about that. i think jindal enjoys being able to be on the sidelines with perry still in there. i will be curious to see how much of that happens and don't forget we have the movement conservatives in texas this weekend. what comes out of there? do they make a decision between newt and santorum? santorum in many ways fits the ideology and consistency of the movement conservative, but there is a lot of loyalty to newt in this group. he fought the tough fight. >> i think you are right. it seems that they will sell rick in church. that's where they are coming

from. >> i think there is. he is catholic. south carolina, everything is on the table when you go to that underhanded stuff. everybody's faith will get through there. >> that's why he loves south carolina. >> i hope it doesn't get too much. >> we are in for a rough one. up next, why are huntsman and gingrich staying in the race? why are they all staying in the race? they had disappointing showings, but it's almost personal against romney. seems like it has always been that way and become that way with newt. they don't want the other guy to have a good time. we continue in a moment.

>>. >> i would say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen. hello, south carolina! >> the question is will they hello back? welcome back to the special edition of "hardball." definitely staying in the race after finishing third in new hampshire. nbc news projecting that mitt romney has won with ron paul in second. newt gingrich and santorum is around 10%. you said hello to the state and why are they staying in it? could it be they do not like romney? howard fineman is an analyst and

editor for the huffing post. occasionally, jennifer and howard, why doesn't someone get the appointment? you find out months later he screwed him six months ago. it made them personal enemies. we know why he may be angry at mitt romney. out in iowa a week ago, 100 years ago he was destroyed by an advertising campaign that is saturated and destroyed he has reason to get the intramural thing with the lds member and both from that part of the country to keep it in. newt gingrich. he pulled in his horns and no personal attacks in his speech

tonight. has authorized his friend who has tons of money to spent 3.something million to go after bane capital in the next week and a half. is he going after him personally and trying to destroy him or pulling back? >> he has been told by everybody publicly and have been told by former members of congress to cut it out because he will make himself a pariah in the party. newt gingrich is motivated on the personal level. i have never seen him covering for years and we are devastated by the bad finish here. it's personal and also the only conceivable way in a small thread newt gingrich could win the nomination is first by destroying mitt romney and then trying to pick up the pieces. he is going to go for broke and be under tremendous pressure to back away from the strategy he is pursuing.

doesn't seem like he is rate to do it. on the way out of the airport they were playing on the bus in my mind i'm going to carolina. >> let me tell you something, specking from the perspective, they have all the ammo they need. they got it this weekend. newt gingrich delivered the poison pill for mitt romney's campaign. he was out there gusting jobs and chop shopping. the very pinpoint of his argument for running, newt gingrich has destroyed intellectually the property rights on that that are public. they can go to the democrats the way the attack on willie horton and letting him free was discover and introduced by al gore in the democratic primary fight and picked up by lee @water and used to destroy them. it can happen the same way. they have property rights now on what the republicans have created. >> that's a brilliant analogy.

gingrich will destroy romney to what they need. the campaign is excited to see gingrich and a man who can't win 10% after getting the union leader endorsement didn't do anything for him. he has a vendetta now. you will see romney probably bloodied a bit. it helps everybody but romney. romney wants a crowded field, but doesn't want ring rich. >> rick santorum, a noble campaign and door-to-door. his family was involved. he didn't have the time to run that. it was wrong footed and getting involved. an exotic issue as contraception law. his point is working class families deserve a break. never could do it. can he restart his campaign down there? >> sheer imprisoned by the nice guy campaign. he is taking questions from all

covers. that's why he was wrong footed and they showed up and asked about cultural issues to mess him up and get him on the wrong foot. he returns to a slashing style and joins in the melee, it will cut against everything that. >> he lets newt gingrich dot butchering, he wins. >> yes. the other point to make is two-fold. number one, the way mitt romney lost the senate race in 1994 was ted kennedy and they did the whole thing about closing plants and the whole jobs thing is happening now. the democrats can use republican words and republican footage in the south especially. you have newt gingrich and rick perry made comments. >> what about the women and the people who lost jobs and had their families ruined by they

claim mitt romney. >> the democrats can say listen to what his fellow republicans say in a state like virginia and north carolina. >> damage already done by newt gingrich. what good is he getting quitting? >> he should stay in for his sake. he doesn't think he will win it and wants to get the message out there. >> they will give in and stop hit him. >> no. i think they hate each other. >> you taught us, you are never forgiven. >> i don't think mitt romney will forgive huntsman. that will erode. independents can vote and huntsman could take vote for romney. >> you never know where newt will go next. >> that's true. >> he could dial back, but it won't work. he cut his ties with romney. who knows where he could end up by this spring or summer. newt is unpredictable and it's about newt and he thinks he is a world historical figure. who knows what he will say and

do. >> there is no witness protection program. noplace for him to hide. she newt gingrich and change everything, but can't change his name. i think he will keep fighting. what about the second place finisher, ron paul. is he planning a third party run? coverage of the new hampshire primary will continue in a minute. >> there was one other acknowledgement i wanted to make. i wanted to thank the union leader for not endorsing me. >> i called mitt romney before he gave his talk. he had a clear cut victory, but we are nibbling at his heels.

>> there was another victory tonight. he had a victory, but we have had a victory for the cause of liberty tonight. no doubt that this effort will not go unnoticed. let me tell you. i think the intellectual revolution is going on to restore libertiy in this country is well on its way and no way they are going to stop the momentum that we have started. >> that was ron paul of texas early this evening from claiming a victory of his own. they are projectioning that romney is the winner and no surprise there, but ron paul won according to nbc. he came in second followed by jon huntsman in third.

newt gingrich and santorum were fighting for fourth with about 10% each. ron paul is a true libertarian making inroads with war-weary voters speaking about ending america's wars overseas. with me now is say senior adviser to the ron paul campaign. congratulations. there was questions about whether he could come in second. he unan uncontested second place. your candidate, the congressman spoke about having a victory tonight. why is coming in second for ron paul a victory? >> because it's mitt romney's home state. he has been up against a very negative portrayal and thank god for al gore and the internet. people can go to the internet and read the faxes. they don't trust professionals whether it's lawyers or doctors.

they google the facts. this is no longer a country for the pundits. >> the good thing about the campaign is it appeals to the original party. not polluted by the segregationist who is joined in the 60s or the moral majority who brought their thoughts in and changed it and the kines that came in later. the droppings of the democratic party hurt the republican party intellectually and screwed it up. your candidate seems to appeal to youth and people who are tired of the wars and the overcommitments overseas. like the older barry gold water appealed to people. distill it down. what does he have that appeals to people in their 20s. my kids won't vote for him, but what is it about him that appeals to kids in their 20s? >> he is incorruptible and

corruption is a big deal. your car mechanic can tell you about the federal reserve and these young staunts paying 8 or 12 or 16% interest on their student loans and they read about this fight to keep the federal reserve from being audit and when he gets a partial audit, we see $16 trillion and the national debt is only $14 trillion. $16 trillion create and given to the banks that sit on the board. very% interest loans and the students pay a 6% interest.

>> how they railed about barry gold water and called him dangerous because if he is elected president he will trigger a nuclear war. now ron paul is dangerous. if he is elected, he won't. the young people don't mind having peace. he will be 77 next year. is he running or is this a

purpose besides ripping in reality? >> she running for president and we like 76. the spirit of 76 and one of the forum writers said 76 trombones led the big parade. for us, he was 89 and still in power and at 76. it's not unprecedented. >> you are serious? okay. to get to the president, you may have to go by another route. are you foreclosed? >> it's not going to happen. it will be fun to talk about it. we see that this as the two-man race. it's more fun to have the horse race and some of us were rooting for huntsman because they wanted to take the votes away and huntsman is not even on the ballot in ilnay or arizona. four greens running and huntsman is not even on the ballot. it's a two-man race right now. >> i think you are going to blow it because there is going to be a third party opportunity out

there. if romney wins, there is a lot of room to his right and somebody else is going to grab it and you guys are going to wish you did. obviously for the white house, that's your call. up next, let's look ahead to south carolina where romney is spending big money to wrap it all up. if he wins south carolina historically, you pick up the marbles. newt gingrich is spending them money and it looks like a last ditch play to bring down mitt that. fight is coming up and will get ugly. msnbc's coverage just ended today will continue in a moment. >> in the last few days we have seen desperate republicans drawing forces with him. this is such a mistake for our party and our nation. the country has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. we have to offer an alternative.

i stand ready to lead us down a different path where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed and not dragged down by a resentment of success.

> this campaign is going to go on to south carolina. i believe if we had a republican house, a republican senate and a

gingrich pedestrian it could be amazing how much we could get done and how rapidly it was back. >> wow! welcome back. that was the former house speaker a short while ago pledging the move on to the next primary in south carolina. with the battle cry we all expected, no one is dropping out with the movies and on television is off the island now. new hampshire results are staying in and the non-romneys in the race have to win some votes somewhere and the next opportunity is the southern state of south carolina. at this point can anyone topple the front-runner? eugene robin skpont favorite son at msnbc. i pulitzer price-winning columnist. the historian and journalist is an analyst. you have deep history going.

i have to search deep to see the optimism. the optimism of any of the other camps. newt didn't keep attacking as he has been the last several days. what is hoo r he in this for except having ads paid? >> he can give off of land for 2011. he gets to explain his ideas. also remember he sees himself as a son of destiny and a figure that churchill had the years in the wilderness. he was just coming out of weeks in the wilderness and he will go on. he truly believes that he will be the nominee. that's how many delusions of grandeur in this gentlemen has. >> snoopy thought he was dueling the red dragon too. why is newt still in the race?

>> ego, i think. i think he will get anywhere for this reason. as long as all the other conservative candidates are in the race and you have romney -- >> and let's get back to the hard gamesmanship. why did he pull a pawlenty. he had his chance the other guy in the face and he didn't do it. >> she going to hit it and he comes out with the documentary. >> he lets the documentary do the dirty work. >> he didn't do it in the debate either. >> remember sunday morning. >> we're never know which newt is going to show up. she completely erratic. one of the more erratic and makes john mccain look like a figure of stability and solidity. >> we have it. i find this a unique

conversation. we have two roman catholics heading down into the bible belt to try to win the hearts and minds. >> from two mormons. >> this is a development if you are a white protestant from the south. who do you pick? >> they will vote for romney is what they will do. >> all the talk about the lds. >> they are so pragmatic. >> they will vote for romney and this will sound crazy, but i talked to a friend who said don't rule out rick perry. >> i can rule him out. >> i tend to also. >> they said this is a crazy thing. >> he is the only process stand in the race. >> but take a look at this. recent poled republicans say romney has a commanding lead already before the bounce from tonight. 37%. he has the bounce up from that in the next week and then

santorum and gingrich. they were not here tonight. paul and perry trail frlth back. here's the question. if you are rick santorum who couldn't get his acting to n new hampshire, but tied him a week ago. he tied him and now he is inevitable. does he have the money and the chops to win down there? >> a lot is about whether his big backers in pittsburgh and other places will put chips on the table. >> how about the people meeting in texas? >> those people are important. you can expect in terms of the themes he will talk about, he will go back to some of these themes and the social conservative themes. remember they do like establishment figures in south carolina. they don't tend to vote for the out liar conservative, but more often for the person whose turn it is. they don't care in new

hampshire. after mccain won new hampshire and got clobbered in south carolina. they are going to look at this. >> do they like the role of certifier of the nominee? >> absolutely. >> they're love that. if they have one strong alternative, i would be putting chips on that candidate e. >> stop for a minute. we want to paint by numbers at this point. you have to attack obama every second of every speech and how can he lose doing that. >> you heard it tonight. >> the socialist program and the european? >> you will hear that kind of language. how can he go far wrong with that? this is the test of the anti-mormon bias in the republican party. >> this is only a couple. >> if it's more than a couple of points, can you say there is an

effect. if it's not and i hope that it doesn't become an issue, but to the extent that there people -- >> religion has to be a debating point and that's important. there have been no issues that are tied to the issue of mormon religion. it only comes up if you think about it because it hasn't come up in the debate at all. >> ralph reed told me once that there is a big chunk of the republican party that simply won't vote for a mormon. this will test whether he was right. i think he was wrong, but we will find out. >> i think they want to beat president obama enough to make an adjustment. thank you, jonathan. great historian and journalist. i don't have to brag. son of the south and overcame that. he came up pulitzer prize winning. coverage in the primary will continue in a moment.

>> you know that our campaign is about more than replacing a president. it's about saving the soul of america.

thank you, new hampshire. tonight we made history. >> welcome back to a special edition of "hardball." we are finishing out with our coverage and nbc projected that

romney is the winner in tonight's big new hampshire primary. we are up in manchester right now. ron paul is projected as coming in second although he called it a win for him. jon huntsman hoped to do better, but came in third and bragged about that. newt gingrich and rick santorum did not brag, but they both came in fourth. joining me are msnbc analysts getting punchy late tonight. i guess i expected more jumping jacks out of republicans. i said tonight they are under the teed yum and they do respect people who wait in line and mitt romney has been defeated up here four years ago by john mccain. he is doing it the way you do it in the republican party. show yourself and take a beating and wait your turn and be a loyalist and you get the nomination eventually. >> you have to say he is almost the prohibitive favorite to rin the nam nation.

it is his turn and this is the way it works out in the republican party time and time again. you will be safe predicting that until something different happens. >> okay, mr. chairman. i have to ask you the question. >> when you play regular school yard basketball, you play winners. the guy that getz the ball in the basket gets the ball, right? when the republicans play the guy that misses gets the ball. they play losers. why is that so different? >> what's with the negative commentary? this is a great night for our party and mitt romney. all due props to him and his campaign. they did what they had to do. he got close to the number at 40% here. that's significant with a lot of people, myself included thought the number would be around 32 or 34% against the field. it's a good night for him. the test remains and i will say this until he proves me wrong or

otherwise. south carolina is going to be the beach head. the conservatives are there waiting to see what he is going to be made of. will he come in to south carolina charged up with the speech he gave tonight that lays down the foundational principal argument for why we should follow him? then you can talk about prohibitive. >> you talk ideology, but you have to smash obama like he did and call it a european socialist. >> it's more than that. we know the hot rhetoric buttons. you can talk about socialism all day and people with great applause line. when you get to the core prince cal stuff and republicanism, when you talk about spending, you talk about debt and deficit, what is your plan? can we trust you not to give us what we saw in massachusetts? >> do you believe he is conservative? >> i do. i want to digest the question.

>> my question is who is the alternative. who do they flock to if not romney. i don't see him going. >> rick perry is by definition he has what they call the cards. he's a governor, conservative, good record as governor and creates jobs supposedly and process stand. he fits the bible belt. >> but the wrong kind of southern accent. a texas accent. texas is as alien from south carolina. >> do you want to give us a demonstration? >> i don't want to. >> is this race coming down to romney versus the unknown person or can he be worn down guardually. if he gets 25 or 30% and only gets -- i can't believe it was only 25 or 30% the week after and he gets ground down. he will win michigan. his family is from there. arizona. how do you beat him unless somebody beats him? >> that's a good question.

that's where a lot of the consternation is between the base and the establishment. who are you going to beat him where w? you have not coalesced around someone who can go one on one. i think that south carolina is that moment. it's either going to happen there or not at all. numbers. who has good eyesight. >> 39, 23, 17, 9, 9, 1. >> they didn't get what they needed. they won't get delegates. >> that's a in the delegates. the top three are going to take the 12. >> it's a shutout. >> okay. it comes down to the headline tomorrow. romney wins second race and that means victory. in fact it has never been done before. >> it's a great night and made history. he's the first non-incumbent republican to win both iowa and

new hampshire. he has good mojo. again, that stumble block in front of him is south carolina. >> she blocking back. ron paul. as long as ron paul can come in second he kills prestige for the challenger. >> that's the perry-santorum-gingrich conundrum. >> you can't look good coming in third. no matter who you are. >> i have been in a couple of those races. they are not that bad. that's the problem. . >> there he is right now. let's finish it up. it's late here in new hampshire. i always loved coming up here. it's a great place to come up to. it has a right flintiness and challenges the stream and questions what's going on. this time i am sad to say because it's somewhat tedious as i said before, but confirmed the flow. >> they're confirmed the flow

here in new hampshire and it will be unconfirmed on the way to south carolina. >> you think surprises? >> i think there surprises. >> turned out was anemic this time. not a lot of enthusiasm as romney had before. >> thank you, gene robinson. republicans don't fall in love. they fall in line. i have gotten to like your analysis. i think you tell the truth. you win pulitzer prizes. that's even better. this is it from the late night special. msnbc's coverage of the primary will continue in a moment.

>> newt gingrich fight for example fourth place. ron paul finishes second. jon huntsman finishing third. we will go back to mr. gingrich. >> in south carolina, we will kickoff tomorrow morning a campaign for jobs and economic growth. a campaign for a balanced budget and a campaign for returning power to the states through the tenth amendment. a campaign for a strong national security. a campaign for a stable, solid social security program both for people now on it and the young people who deserve a chance in their time to have a better program with an even greater return because if we are smart,

we can do better things for people. the washington alternatives, how do we raise taxes and cut spending in a way that causes you pain on the spending side and pain on the tax side is backwards. this is part of learning. we were asking a questions about the heating assistance program and it was phrased in a perfectly washington way. are you going to run a bigger deficit to tp more people or hurt them so you can shrink the deficit? what if we brought down the cost and didn't need to help because the cost came down?

that idea of doing it more and better does not exist in the washington lexicon. it makes it hard for our news to cover because it's so strange. what if you just were innovative and had new approaches and did everything americans have always done? the system that attracted people from benjamin franklin to the wright brothers to thomas to bill gates to steve jobs, that model of new approaches and new energy and new opportunities, new technology has raised the standard of living across this span et more than any other system in the history of the world. with your help.

you have been wonderful to us and i am asking each of you not to slow down. make a list of every person you know in south carolina and every person you know in florida because those are the next two great contests. i believe as we get to south caroline, as the choice becomes clear, as people understand that there is a bold reagan conservative approach of lower taxes and less regulations and more american energy, a sound dollar and actually being in favor of creating jobs, the opposite of higher taxes and more regulation and less american energy and attacking the people who create jobs. look at the two models. i believe we can reach out and create a majority that will shock the country and a majority that will put us back in the right track. it is doable and a daung challenge, but consider the

alternatives. if we do not go the extra mile and we do not offer a vision powerful enough to unify americans and we continue down the road that obama has us on. more than obama, but the bureaucracy and the judges have us on and the entire pattern of how washington operates has us on, more years of decay, more years of inadequacy and falling behind. more years of growing weakness. that's the alternative. i believe it will take someone capable of debating barack obama face-to-face, delivering the conservative message, winning the argument in order to overcome his billion dollar machine. with your help, as your spokesperson representing your values on behalf of our children, your grandchildren and our country, i will do

everything i can to win the opportunity to represent you this fall in debating and then defeating barack obama. thank you. god bless you. >> speaker of the house newt gingrich declaring she not out of the race. the man with whom he is fighting it out fourth place rick santorum declaring he is not getting out of the race. nobody getting out of the race after new hampshire. week after the iowa caucuses, mitt romney wins again. now making history by making it 2-2. >> thank you, new hampshire. tonight we made history! >> never before has a republican non-incumbent won in iowa and new hampshire. has the former governor established himself as the man to beat for the gop presidential nomination? is he the prohibitive favorite?

>> it's about saving the soul of america. >> nbc news projecting texas congressman ron paul as the second place finisher tonight. texas congressman declaring himself happy with second place. >> i called governor romney a short while ago before he gave his talk and congratulated him because he had a clear cut victory, but we are nibbling at his heels. >> the look on his face as important as the words he said. the man who bet everything on new hampshire, jon huntsman the apparent third place finisher. the former utah governor vowing to fight on to the next contest of the 2012 nomination. >> i would say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen! hello, south carolina! >> on this night four years ago,

mitt romney had won another silver after having placed second in iowa and new hampshire, he won both this time around. let's go back to chris matthews in manchester. >> thank you. of course the chair of the democratic national committee, we have a fairly expected set of results although there was questions early on even today about who would come in second. it's clear that ron paul took the excitement away from the campaign by crabbing second place and making no other credible democrat have that opportunity to say i'm second to mitt. now it looks like going into your part of the country two elections from now in florida, my question is it looks like romney, it this the guy you were planning to face? >> we have been focused on trying to build our campaign the most significant grass roots campaign in history. we have seven offices open around the state and had 500 effects. 25 house parties around the

state tonight. tomorrow when all the republican candidates pack up, we will be kickoff the most significant grass roots campaign and on to winning the state again for president obama in november of this year. >> it does carry the questions and we came through two states both of which are death le in play, that is correct? neither is safely in the president's column. >> both iowa and new hampshire are usually battle ground state requests and this won't be any exception. it won't be important to make a couple of observations about the outcome tonight. mitt romney got about 36% of the vote. four years ago he got about 32% of the vote. in what is essentially his home state, for him to only do a handful of points better after campaigning for five years, that is really not anything to write home about you can declare it a

loss. he should have blown the doors off in this state. in addition that, the republican turn out was off about 40% from the turn out in 2008, showing that this is not a field that is very enthusiastic about. >> you are saying he is going to be the nominee, but not a strong nominee? >> i would say the supporters in the republican party are not quite fired up and ready to go. >> nothing is going to change in florida. >> i don't detect any more enthusiasm in florida for candidates who believe we should focus on keeping the wind at the backs of people who are already doing well while president obama is fighting for the middle class. >> was there damage done to him and all the charges and santorum and perry with he ran a chop shop and he is not building jobs? >> the scrutiny paid to mitt romney that he has been a turn around specialist that specialized in dismantling

companies in offshoring jobs did him damage and rightfully so. >> you make use of the charges made by the republicans. >> we think the experience that he is hanging on needs to be skrutinized. >> and exploited and destroyed. thank you. u.s. congresswoman from florida and the chair of the democratic national committee. back to you. >> thank you chris and congresswoman. tom brocaw is with us from new york. tom, it's great to have you with us. the americans are looking at the results and what should americans know about what the results mean both for republican party politics and for what happens next? >> there fundamentals for tonight. both in iowa and especially in new hampshire, the voters in new hampshire are able to go in with the sanctity of a voting booth, it appears they were making judgments on electability and who is best able to do something about the economy.

this is an impressive win on the part of governor romney. especially when you look at the number of independents he was able to pull and the republican voting booths tonight and get that group that four years ago were so strong for president obama. we just heard from newt gingrich talking about how he is going to save the economy when he goes into south carolina and into florida in the future. there wassy less of a conservative theology from him so he understands that mitt romney now has a big head of steam going into south carolina. the real issue in that state is what kind of a jihad they will have in the primary and it began a process of civil inhalation. that terrifies a lot of people and a lot of conservatives. mitt romney does have great momentum into south carolina and a tougher state for them. it is striking to me after i

have been absent for a long time. two out of the three leading candidates in new hampshire tonight were mormons. the other ron, ron paul is say libertarian. that was not surprising. politics have changed profoundly in the country. south carolina, here we come. >> in terms of looking ahead, when you look at the dynamics within the republican party and the feeling among other republicans as mitt romney moves forward from strength to strength from warks to new hampshire, is the tone of the attacks on mitt romney taking him on first time at bane capital? the attacks as a vulture capitalist, is that unexpected within the party? >> i don't think it's entirely unexpected. he thought he got strong support today from ron paul saying this was the nature of a free market economy and capitalism. it's unclear just how much

damage bane capital did to really productive companies and many instances as you know they said they had it to go in and change because they were going broke on their own. that's something that will play out in a coarse of the next several days. in south carolina by the way, it's a very conservative state. it's a state with a leader right now is jim demint, probably the most conservative member of the senate. haily is a governor or republican in difficulty. her approval rate is below 50% at this point. there is a real conservative fright going on in that state. most people in south carolina say the big issue is jobs, jobs, and jobs. it's a state hit hard and the voters set aside a lot of the conservative theology as i have been describeing it and going to the voting booth concerned only about the economy. that's good news for mitt romney.

>> we have seen insurgent candidacies of different types on both sides of the aisle. in republican politics to the 1996 candidacy and new hampshire win with pat buchanan. when you look at the ron paul success of the 30 place finish in iowa and the second place finish tonight in iowa, do you see an insurgency of a different kind or is this something we can expect to follow contours that were set out by other republican who is have been sort of outsiders within their own party? >> what is striking to me about his success is the number of young voters he gets. i think that's the tip of the iceberg. a lot of young voter who is are coming out of college with great college debt unable to get a job and worried about the high cost of entitlements for the generation downstream are looking for someone who runs completely counter to conventional politicians. ron paul does that. in his own and i use this in the best sense of the word, homely down home way, he gets the

message across in the debates. >> tom brocaw, thank you. it is invaluable to have you with us on nights like this. thank you. when we return, chuck todd will join us to talk about probably the biggest headline out of new hampshire other than the fact that mitt romney has won. s in, mitt romney has won, but you know what else happened? nobody got out. why did the candidates all decide to stay in the race. we have answers to that question.

> mitt romney is the projected winner of the new hampshire primary. ron paul had 24% of the vote with 71% counted. jon huntsman in 30 place with 17% of the vote. rick santorum and newt gingrich

fighting it out for fourth place with 10% of the vote each. rick perry well behind at just 1%. let's check in with our political director chuck todd who has been looking at the calculus being made by the non-winning candidates who are nevertheless deciding to stay in the race. >> i talk about huntsman and gingrich campaigns about this very issue. the gingrich campaign made this decision and it's south carolina or bust for them. they got the big donation and the casino mogul in vegas to give the big money to an alternative super back to go after romney. they made this and they didn't care where they finished here. they say getting third place means maybe they think it's important for them to go to south carolina because even if they only get 10%, if they can

help deny romney victory in south carolina, it stretches the race and goes to florida, a place maybe huntsman does better, but does the same thing. denies romney victories. the whole strategy for gingrich and for the huntsman campaign is actually the same. deny romney victories. if they can do that, maybe they can stretch it out and find out romney might have more of a glass jaw than he does and we will find out in the next ten days whether he does or not. that's the strategy. stay in the race and in huntsman's case, he is not looking at winning, he is looking at denying romney victories and so he hopes to be pulling votes from romney's left. >> we are starting to see from a lot of candidates the idea to stick around in case romney face plants. stick around in case something happens or something is done to mitt romney to take them out. still be in the race. >> they are all the break glass in case the candidate implodes.

little elephants break the glass. here i am. you see everybody else moved up and down. he is waiting for the moment. maybe the point is if he stays in long enough, something happens. >> one last question. you look at rick santorum and jon huntsman and newt gingrich and rick perry who is not a factor in new hampshire and will be in south carolina, all the candidate who is not only have their on campaign resources and have access to quirky billionaires who may or may not be their dad and may or ha may not want to carpet bomb. is there a difference from any of the four towards mitt romney or are they all on board with the mitt romney corporate raider attack that we have seen newt gingrich play up? >> they are a different strategy. santorum, you saw he is not going to go there. santorum's strategy is clear. play up his cultural

conservative credentials in south carolina and hope that the mud between gingrich and romney that gets exchanged creates a factor that we have seen a lot of times in multicandidate fields. candidate b attacks candidate a and candidate c ends up winning the primary or that election. we will see a straight forward santorum strategy that way, but perry and gingrich seem to be double teaming and you have what we talked about earlier, the romney-paul sort of nonaggression pack, if you will. paul even defending romney against these charges. that's helpful to him at some point because any time you have a sur gas push back it's better. they are all in the deny romney victory strategy. if they want to find their way back and turn on each other, we need to do the simple math.

if you split 50-50, romney wins with between 35 and 40%. gingrich said to me and see how the ads hit and conservatives will consolidate. he thinks because santorum is hoping it's the other way around. at some point there is a meeting of a lot of social conservatives that don't want romney as a nominee. the gel is to see if they can consolidate. maybe that happens this weekend in favor of one over the other. >> with mitt romney having won in iowa and new hampshire. these are desperate times if you don't want romney. now is the time to go for him. we will be checking in with you again. we will go to chris matthews in manchester with howard fineman and others reporting with various campaigns and reactions to tonight's results. chris? >> great, rachel.

it seems that we have three guys running in the race that are behind and have to do something magical to pick up. gingrich. tonight, no attack in his speech tonight on the man he has been attacking. romney. what's that about? >> that's significant because friends of his have told him to cool it on the looting thing and said you are making a pariah of yourself and even though the mitt romney people claim bring it on and we top the get the debate over now so we don't have to deal with it, they don't like it. newt has a choice to make. i covered him for many years and never seen him look that deflated and unhappy. >> that's tonight. >> we cried out in iowa because he was tired. here he looked like a guy being denied the opportunity he wanted. he started with i, i, i, i. it's about his feeling thwart and defeated. the problem he faces is if he

goes down the looting road and what the governor called the socialist road, he does at some point paint himself into a corner and that's what his friends were telling him. >> can he forgive that in the blanketing campaign basically on behalf of rom sidney. >> he can't, but the emotional and political choice he faces, does he continue to exact revenge and get satisfaction out of that? nobody thinks he will ep win the nomination or does he stand down and avoid really becoming a truly attack figure from everybody else in the republican party which is possible. >> fire assume if he doesn't go in the heart attack he will lose to romney. >> that's right. that's his only way is to destroy him. >> does santorum have a chance? >> having interviewed rick santorum, he told me he changed by his 17-point defeat in pennsylvania the other year

where he was a negative attack dog and he got clobbered. also the store family and the fact that he has got this daughter who he cares very much about and all that. he tried very hard maybe for tactical and personal reasons not to be an attack dog in the campaign. he was known as the senator and he put that aside. if you noticed, he has been very, very wary for the most part of attacking any of the other candidates. he said he is setting a different tone. whether he can keep doing it or not, i don't know. his hope is to be the guy who does not attack and have that weave into his cultural conservative values. that's his line. >> the sense that santorum was gunning for a candidate post. he may have done well, but not that well. he is trying to sort of hug up against romney rather than attack him. >> if you have noticed, he has

es chewed almost every chance he had. >> one last chance, we don't think and i shouldn't say we on behalf of anyone, but ron paul does not look like a candidate, but a person who wants to get a message across neither a platform or probably more forcefully in the words of the winner. what's his goal? >> i just got done e-mailing with jess whoa is his main guy right there next to ron paul and practically a member of the family. he claims they raised at least $10 million in the month of january alone. they are already organizing in the states down the road going for maximum delegates and leverage they can get and then there will be a moment. romney and paul are sort of being nice to each other and not attacking and paul defended him. there will be a reckoning. ron paul refused to say he will stay in the party and even

support the nominee. he will go with as many delegates as he can and get whatever he can out of the party and think romney's big challenge of the next many months is to keep him in the party. i don't think it will work. ultimately ron paul will go off on his own and have the money to finance his own independence. his people, we have been at his rallies. his people want no compromise. he will lose his credibility with all the people he spent years and years winning the support of if he stays in the party. i think in the end heel leave. >> i believe it's an opportunity to the right of romney. someone will take it. >> especially romney. >> rachel, it's a sultry night for those erupted change tonight. it looks like encores. it's the next guy's turn. it's romney's turn just like it was with reagan and bush skpeern dole and mccain. the tyranny of the teed yum of

the republican party. they give the job to the guy whose turn it is. don't look for excitement in the grand old party. >> the tyranny of the teed yum. that was amazing. >> it's so sultry. i'm sorry. >> in terms of looking for an eruption, he said about what he expects from the ron paul candidacy and the beliefs and desires of the ron paul believers, put that in a bottle and keep it on the shelf. that is say time capsule of what's going and that may be very, very important many months down the road. that was very important. we are going to take a quick break. when we come back, we have news on what's happening in south carolina. nobody getting out of the race tonight and mitt romney locking up iowa and new hampshire, south carolina has never been more important. power brokers in south carolina who can make the difference in the state. new news coming up next.

welcome back to the new hampshire republican primary with 74% of the vote recorded. mitt romney in a clear first place. ron paul in second. 23% of the vote. jon huntsman six points behind ron paul. gingrich and santorum and perry in fourth, fifth, and sixth. the distance is very close. looking ahead to south carolina, jim demint is an important conservative. perhaps slightly wounded in the standing in the state in terms of her tenure as governor. >> there is a lot of things unfolding here in the last hour. you got the conservatives now. i think starting to lineup behind mitt romney. jim demint which was one of the

endorsers in south carolina is saying to the radio show i'm sitting here listening to the acceptance speech and hitting a lot of the hot buttons and balancing the budget and i'm concerned about a few republican who is have criticized some of what i consider free market principals. the super pack backing mitt romney tonight that the super michele bachmanning just spent $7 million in new ads in both south carolina and florida combined and going for the knock out punch. the story out there, conservatives are starting to rally around mitt romney with 38%. you have hannity and limbaugh and jim demint. ann coulter is saying that mitt romney is all about capitalism. he invites in the "new york times" and they intent to cast

romney as the founder of bane capital and a defender of capitalism and a principal of republicanism and to suggest that those who have the mainstream. they told him to back off. that's what i could read. they were circling the wagons and the money factor in mitt's favor. it's 2-0 and hard pressed for anybody to win the nomination in this part except of course the chance would be ron paul and continue to build moment um. it seems to me that the republican party is making a statement tonight that we are starting to damage our brand too much. we have too much in fighting and have to clean it up. >> if he believes there is an audience on the republican party for the kind of anti-bane attack he has been making and wants to continue to make against mitt romney with a ton of money to do

it, does he say listen, republican elite, i don't care. they ought to hear this. in fact it's indefensible. does newt gingrichify the elite? >> i don't think he cares. i was struck listening to the report about this fact that all of these campaigns have lost control of the destiny except for mitt romney. it's a sign of fundamental weakness when the calculus changes from this is how we are going to win to this is how we will try to impact the race so that guy loses. mitt romney in command of the race and howard fineman asked the most important political question of the race. what is ron paul going to do looking ahead. will he leave the republican party and mount a third party challenge? i think he won't and it destroys the future of his republican

senator's son. this is the biggest and most important question when you give consideration to the general election ahead. who knows the answer. >> the unemployment rate in iowa is 5.7%. in new hchl shirt 5.2%. in south carolina it's 9.9%. >> there is a market for populism, aspect mitt romney populism. that would replace it. >> if they intend to pursue that, south carolina can be very interesting, but i think what the established order there for the governor demint going where they are going, romney gets more strength than one would think and he comes in 2-0. the two factors that we keep saying will be paul and i think he will be just as much of a problem in the tent for the republicans as he will be out.

i think that you are sleeping on romney's message tonight. i think it will help energize the moderate independence and the democrats. he is running on appeasement and cannot get anywhere after bin laden and all and running on talking about the economy and certainly is going to have have to and he is running on the politics of working class people. working class people are not eni havous, they are injured. the economy is jaded. if he comes out with those three points he made in the speech tonight, he set up a lay upshot for president obama in november. >> will the republicans be doing themselves a favor by taking hard shots at mitt romney now to test whether he has a glass jaw? will they be doing a disservice by letting mitt romney go so that they don't leave all the

testing to obama? >> he has a glass jar. it's worth noting what actually really factually happened here tonight. delegates. some 12 delegates is the grand total in the state. five people are going to share those 12 delegates. the threshold is 10% or above. you have those delegates and it's romney and paul and huntsman and then gingrich and santorum. 10% level is crucial. they were both looking as though they were going to get above that. the threshold matters. al was right to point out the ron paul delegates, but i don't see where ron paul picks up an amount of dell gets going forward to the convention where he could end up being a factor. i think you have the issue about how they are going behave. that's an interesting issue in the convention.

>> inside or out. a problem in either case. coverage of the new hampshire primary continues in a moment. stay with us.

>> welcome become to msnbc's live coverage for the primary. i'm rachel maddow. there was a democratic primary tonight. guess who won. looking ahead towards south carolina, the question is not just the polling and not just the spending, but the character of the south carolina

electorate. whether or not the message that mitt romney has been able to parlay into wins in iowa and new hampshire reason settates in the state and a different situation in terms of unemployment and the activists in the tea party. more on that in manchester, new hampshire. >> one they think is important is the unemployment rate is twice what it is here in new hampshire. economic concerns diagram nate, but it's a different kind. they are concerned about budget deficits. there is tea party strength. he has the support and he is discussing, nicky haley is not as popular as you will. jim demint's comments gaving rit nominee not as an endorsement, but as a hint. because of jim demint being mr. conservative, romney split

the conservative vote exit polls here in north new hampshire with rick santorum. again new hampshire conservatives are a different breed of cat. mitt romney goes south with a big head of team and no discounting that he won iowa and new hampshire. it's by four four points more than last time and he still is not dominant in not building much of a broader case. at the same time he is really consolidating a stronghold on the nomination. it's going to be hard to stop him unless the opposition of the unromneys get together. everyone said they have a ticket to ride and they are heading south. huntsman will be on a plane in the morning. taking a commercial flight through philadelphia. santorum going south and gingrich is and there is a lot of animosity. they have a lot to prove and

they want to. >> thank you, andrea. appreciate it. with more on mitt romney's plans for south caroline, what do you have for us? >> actual lie just in the last couple of days starting before tonight's returns and continuing, the romney super pack has brought up nearly $6 million in ad buys in both south carolina and florida. that exceeds that 3.4 million that the gingrich super pack has bought out that we were talking about earlier. what it really does underscore is the romney folks are trying to blow away the opponents bite end of the month and they have got the financial muscle to do it. we have been talking about them and they don't send the billionaires the big donation. the romney super pack is flushed

with cash and they are growing and succeeding and has become the major difference in the race. >> thank you. let's go to chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. >> thank you. john is with us now. you were talking about before we came on about santorum. he is a mystery man right now. he did so well in iowa and not so well in new hampshire tonight. >> he did, but he has plans going forward. you were talking about rachel about the tyranny of the teed yum. this was more teed yum. ka sos at odds because nobody is getting out of the race. rick santorum said they raised $3 million in the last week and they did not spend one nickel of that on broadcast television in new hampshire. they started today a $1.5 million buy in south carolina. the goal here, it doesn't matter what shakes out between gingrich and santorum for fourth and

fifth tonight because their goal was not to -- they knew it was not a good state for them. they didn't want gingrich to be to get a conservative bounce. they were present and played in the debates, but they prevented gingrich from coming back with that head of steam in south carolina. they are in. gingrich in is in with the super pack money. his dad was at the rally. he may be in. we have a lot of people stepping a lot of money in a small state. positive and negative about these guys. >> rachel? >> when you think about the amount of money spent in south carolina and the price of tv ad buys in south carolina. it will be a political thing to watch any television of any kind in the palmetto state quickly. we will be seeing chris again at the top of the hour for a special edition of "hardball." coverage continues in a moment.

>> welcome become to our coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. here's what i think about it going forward. looks like mitt romney has it sewn up. the powers that be have to decide whether or not they are

desperate for it to be someone other than mitt romney. if it can be them, money is irrelevant. any one candidate can just tap one really rich guy and the money can flow forever. with the financing, it doesn't matter how many donors have have and it doesn't matter who it is. all you need is one rich guy and they have one who would be crazy enough to dump money in order to defeat mitt romney. the money at this point is irrelevant because anyone can put together any amount going forward. the question about whether or not he was beatable. >> not every one of them does have a billionaire. >> he would have picked it up already. >> rick santorum were the credible alternative, would he get any of it. >> that's the issue with the social conservatives and by the way, there is no party leadership and there no set of

wise men in the party in washington who can get to make the decision. the democratic party doesn't have it and you have these factions. that social conservative faction is the most powerful in many ways in the most reliable party. if they get together and they f they have a sit down with gingrich and say please, step out. if they say please stop doing this, if they say to gingrich and santorum, you are our guy, if they do something like that, it could get interesting, but the likelihood of even that working is very slim. you have to convince a bunch of people who are not going to see it the same way. >> those evangelical southerners are strong. they will raise the money. they are at a point of determination. do they accept mitt romney or do they mount the charge? it's a lack of a better term, a defining moment for them. it is. they have to determine that they

had meetings in texas and there is another one coming up this weekend. i talked to a few conservatives not now, not ever. whether that will coalesce and bring together james dob son and gary bauer who was behind santorum and the family research council, they know how to raise money and they will find enough conservatives out there and tonight when you have jim demint out there, it's almost a signal and maybe we better lessen the push back on this. it is not the drama and love story that chris matthews likes, but it's a new drama that is unfoaling in this modern day politics. >> do you see game over? >> it's getting close. money matters, but momentum matters more. the winner has gone on to be the nominee. if mitt romney goes 3-0, it's difficult to see how he would

lose florida and certainly if he wins four of the first four, whether they are in or out of the race or suspended or not, he will be the nominee of the party. he has all the momentum and got to be really happy with where he is. >> very brief. >> we will have true believers in ron paul's camp and possibly in the catches of santorum and then who may not go or whatever deal with the evangelicals say and the party bosses say and the believers can be disrupted. if they hang in there, romney came in number and obama would have won. >> thank you, fellahs. i'm rachel maddow and thanks for request with us. just a moment with the special live edition of "hardball."

good evening. i'm chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. this late night special edition of "hardball." here's the headline tonight. mitt romney makes it two in a row. we project that mitt romney is the winner and ron paul is projected seconds followed by jon huntsman in third. newt gingrich and rick santorum in fourth with about 10% each.

mitt romney is the first in the system to win iowa and new hampshire. # a move into south carolina in a strong position. can anyone, and that's the bottom line, can anyone stop romney from winning the nomination? the political director and michael steel is the former chairman and an msnbc contributor. the news man, chuck todd. when you look down this as an expert and look at the money in the hands of romney and the support for endorsements officially at this point and the money in the hands of the other candidates and their positions, is there any real chance he hasn't got this locked? >> sure there is a chance. he still hasn't won a primary where conservatives put him over the top. he went from weak front-runner to a strong front-runner, but not the nominee yet.

he has to win south carolina or florida to be the defector nominee. of those two. if he does in south carolina first, that makes him stronger. # nominee going into the process and it does weed out the candidates. let's put an affect risk on new hampshire. this is the most nonconservative that the republicans will face. maybe hawaii is more moderate. once you get to hawaii republicans, look at the exit polls and how a majority very much call themselves moderate on a lot of the social positions. you are not seeing that. look at the next four. two this month. south carolina and michigan and arizona. these are conservative and feel economic pain. he still has a hurdle left. the fact is he is probably going to clear it. he has every chance and resource to clear it. it's not going to be easy to do

because he still -- conservatives, how are they going to react? are they getting on a stop romney train? some of them will say he may be president. i may want to be buddies with him down the road. >> the republicans fall in line, not in love. democrats fall in love as we know. as we know, falling in line, here's the question. is there anyone to stop him? can you see gingrich reversing here or putting more gas in the car? he did a this a couple of days ago. >> i don't know if i can see gingrich and someone like rick perry who wants to make south carolina a hit for him. they tried to organize with the hiccup out of iowa. chuck has hit it on the head. the reality is south carolina becomes the conservative beach head. that's where they will go to make their stand and to either have romney --

>> rick perry got about a point tonight. >> that's here to his point. south carolina is a different playing field. you are looking at who can stop and get in the way. rick perry can do that and maybe ron paul can do that in some degree. >> here's the thing. i think i know the message that can stop mitt romney. to be the conservative pop lift. gingrich did so and sarah palin stumbled upon it. the original tea party message of being anti-big government and weary of corporate america and greed and big business. if somebody could credibly make that argument, the problem is i don't know if gingrich is the right 1 to do it. does gingrich go on this commission end up helping rick santorum. one of the scenarios that is likely to happen is that romney and gingrich tear each other's heads off and santorum does what

he did and a very close finish at the end with romney. >> you are telling me with a straight face that rick santorum can defeat mitt romney down the road? >> in south carolina. to social conservatives. >> very effective speech with a great bit of preparation with a teleprompter unlike last week. a deliberate well put together speech that covered all the bases. if you listen to a chunk of it, you get a sense of why romney is running for president. he accused president obama of wanting to turn america into a social welfare state. that's a tough charge. let's watch. >> the path i lay out is not one paved with ever increasing government checks and cradle the grave assurances that government is always the solution. if this election is a bidding war for those who can promise the most benefits, i'm not your president.

you already have that president. >> tamron hall has been tracking the exit polling on substance and he has a look at how mitt romney won tonight. this will be interesting. >> absolutely. we punched the numbers from the exit poll and there is an interesting story on how mitt romney won tonight. one of the arguments is he is more electable and that seemed to work for him tonight. we have been talking about the ability to beat president obama with the quality that mattered most to voters. today a third said that. the voters who it is electability was the big factor voted for romney by a big margin. 62% with the other candidates far behind. let's look at how romney did compared to four years ago when he lost to in new hampshire. he did well among those with the highest incomes.

he narrowly lost among voters making over $100,000 a year. he won this group with 47%. ron paul a distant second with just 19%. voters described themselves as moderate or liberal and registered republicans where he scored 15 points better than what he did in 2008. even after tonight's victory, some may wonder if republicans will rally around romney if he wins the nomination. if today's voters are any indication and is it t does not look like they are ready yet, 55% said they would be dissatisfied in romney won the nomination. 42% would be satisfied. he has a lot of work ahead of him to win over the voters as he continues on to south carolina. you see the number there is. they speak volumes. >> they certainly do. let's get back to the panel. we want to go to the republican party former head. i am looking at these things.

the old line and i don't want to go back to the tyranny, but your party is giving to excitement over charisma and the guy with the hot hand on the basketball court and the guy hits the ball gets the ball. # we did this on the democratic party and you saw it. obama won the first time out. clinton won the first time out. jack kennedy won the first time out. they want to vet the guy over a number of years and make them pay a price in terms of pain and humiliation. finally get the nominations. it's true we push senior with reagan and i want to move slowly. here you have a candidate, what has romney got that he didn't have four years ago except tenure. has he made the party fall in love with him? has he learned new tricks? >> no, he has not been able to close that gap between him and the core base of the party.

we saw it with mccain and we see it with romney. the parties is at a point where they are having an internal battle. they are looking for particular types of candidates who marries two things. one, the energy to go toe to toe against obama, electability. more than likability is the sustainability of principal. the idea that when you go toe to toe, you will argue from a principaled position foundational to the gop. that's the question they have about romney. whether or not he can do that. >> did he go there tonight with the speech against politics of enskpree defending capital and wealth? >> i think he opened the door. i think he as i said it he was preaching for his mouth a new way to the conservative base of the party. whether they hear that in south carolina remains to be seen. >> i thought it was a good

speech for a florida conservative more so than a south carolina conservative. >> president obama wants to fundamentally transform america. we want to restore america to the founding principals that made this country great. he wants to turn america into a european-style social welfare state. we want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity. this president takes his inspiration from the capitals of europe. we looked at the cities and towns across america for our inspiration. >> i think that speech was kind of an acceptance speech. i want to get back to something. you think rick perry is still in the race? >> i don't want to cause any trouble because he's a protestant and the only one in the race. >> i don't think it's that. i think when he took that momentary pause before he put on the speedo and started running,

he and the money folks sat down and said we can create a moment here. let's stay in this thing and see what we can do down here. beyond that, why else do you do this? you are not playing here at all. this becomes his last stand. you skeptical? >> i'm not saying he is going to win it. >> i don't know if he can get 5%. >> maybe not, but you are asking why he is in the race. >> i think he wants one more moment. no doubt, south carolina was built for rick perry. there going to be two plus you have a former two with huckabee. i will be curious to watch this for a couple of things. one remember right after the iowa squeaker, mitt romney rolls out with john mccain and did so immediately after. it was an attempt to create momentum and that didn't go well. in hindsight they probably wish they could have done better.

he wants the de facto nominee chattered to begin. what does he roll out? who comes out for romney? probably a bunch of senators and you will see some of them. we will see about that. i think jindal enjoys being able to be on the sidelines with perry still in there. i will be curious to see how much of that happens and don't forget we have the movement conservatives in texas this weekend. what comes out of there? do they make a decision between newt and santorum? santorum in many ways fits the ideology and consistency of the movement conservative, but there is a lot of loyalty to newt in this group. he fought the tough fight. >> i think you are right. it seems that they will sell rick in church. that's where they are coming from. >> i think there is. he is catholic.

south carolina, everything is on the table when you go to that underhanded stuff. everybody's faith will get through there. >> that's why he loves south carolina. >> i hope it doesn't get too much. >> we are in for a rough one. thank you for the inside look at the party. up next, why are huntsman and gingrich staying in the race? why are they all staying in the race? they had disappointing showings, but it's almost personal against romney. seems like it has always been that way and become that way with newt. they don't want the other guy to have a good time. our coverage continues in a moment.

>> i would say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen. hello, south carolina! >> the question is will they hello back? welcome back to the special edition of "hardball." jon huntsman is definitely staying in the race after finishing third in new hampshire. nbc news projecting that mitt romney has won with ron paul in second. newt gingrich and santorum is around 10%. jon huntsman is going to south carolina and so is newt gingrich. you said hello to the state and why are they staying in it? could it be they do not like romney? howard fineman is an analyst and

editor for the "huffington post." occasionally, jennifer and howard, why doesn't someone get the appointment? you find out months later he screwed him six months ago. they had an old fight or the same girlfriend or some stupid thing that made them personal enemies. we know why he may be angry at mitt romney. out in iowa a week ago, not 100 years ago, he saturated iowa and was destroyed. advertising campaign that is saturated and destroyed he has reason to get the intramural thing with the lds member and both from that part of the country to keep it in. i will ask you about the obvious one. newt gingrich. he pulled in his horns and no personal attacks in his speech tonight. has authorized his friend who has tons of money to spent

3.something million to go after bane capital in the next week and a half. is he going after him personally and trying to destroy him or pulling back? >> he has been told by everybody publicly and have been told by former members of congress to cut it out because he will make himself a pariah in the party. newt gingrich is motivated on the personal level. i have never seen him covering for years and we are devastated by the bad finish here. it's personal and also the only conceivable way in a small thread newt gingrich could win the nomination is first by destroying mitt romney and then trying to pick up the pieces. he is going to go for broke and be under tremendous pressure to back away from the strategy he is pursuing. doesn't seem like he is rate to do it. on the way out of the airport

they were playing on the bus in my mind i'm going to carolina. >> let me tell you something, speaking from the perspective across the board, they have all the ammo they need. they got it this weekend. newt gingrich delivered the poison pill for mitt romney's campaign. he was out there gusting jobs and chop shopping. he wasn't creating jobs. # the very pinpoint of his argument for running, newt gingrich has destroyed intellectually the property rights on that that are public. they can go to the democrats the way the attack on willie horton and letting him free was discover and introduced by al gore in the democratic primary fight and picked up by lee atwater and used to destroy mike dukakis and the general. it can happen the same way. they have property rights now on what the republicans have created. >> that's a brilliant analogy. gingrich will destroy romney to what they need.

i think the obama campaign is excited to see gingrich stay in the race. a man who can't win 10% after getting the union leader endorsement didn't do anything for him here. he has a vendetta now. you will see romney probably bloodied a bit. it helps everybody but romney. romney wants a crowded field, but he doesn't want gingrich in it. >> rick santorum, a noble campaign and door-to-door. his family was involved. he didn't have the time to run that. it was wrong footed and getting involved. an exotic issue as contraception law. he never got on the right foot to say his point is working class families deserve a break. can he restart his campaign down there? >> sheer imprisoned by the nice guy campaign. he is taking questions from all covers. that's why he was wrong footed and they showed up and asked

about cultural issues to mess him up and get him on the wrong foot. he returns to a slashing style and joins in the melee, it will cut against everything that. santorum claimed he has been for. >> i love the way you think. he lets newt gingrich do the butchering and he wins. >> yes. the other point to make is two-fold. number one, the way mitt romney lost the senate race in 1994 was ted kennedy and they did the whole thing about closing plants and the whole jobs thing is happening now. the democrats can use republican words and republican footage in the south especially. you have newt gingrich and rick perry made comments. >> what about the women and the people who lost jobs and had their families ruined by they claim mitt romney. >> the democrats can say listen to what his fellow republicans say in a state like virginia and

north carolina. >> damage already done by newt gingrich. what good is he getting quitting? >> he should stay in for his sake. he doesn't think he will win it and wants to get the message out there. >> they will give in and stop hit him. >> no. i think they hate each other. >> you taught us, you are never forgiven. >> i don't think mitt romney will forgive huntsman. that will erode. independents can vote and huntsman could take vote for romney. >> you never know where newt will go next. >> that's true. >> he could dial back, but it won't work. he cut his ties with romney. who knows where he could end up by this spring or summer. newt is unpredictable and it's about newt and he thinks he is a world historical figure. who knows what he will say and do. >> there is no witness protection program. noplace for him to hide.

he is newt gingrich and he has changed everything, but he can't change his name. i think he will keep fighting. what about the second place finisher, ron paul. is he planning a third party run? coverage of the new hampshire primary will continue in a minute. >> there was one other acknowledgement i wanted to make. i wanted to thank the union leader for not endorsing me. >> i called mitt romney before he gave his talk. congratulate him. he had a clear cut victory, but we are nibbling at his heels.

there was another victory tonight. he had a victory, but we have had a victory for the cause of liberty tonight. no doubt that this effort will not go unnoticed. let me tell you. i think the intellectual revolution is going on to restore libertiy in this country is well on its way and no way they are going to stop the momentum that we have started. >> that was ron paul of texas early this evening from claiming a victory of his own. nbc news is projecting that romney is the winner and no surprise there, but ron paul won according to nbc in second. he came in second followed by jon huntsman in third. newt gingrich and santorum were fighting for fourth with about

10% each. ron paul is a true libertarian making inroads with war-weary voters speaking about ending america's wars overseas. with me now is a senior adviser to ron paul's campaign. congratulations. there was questions about whether he could come in second. he unan uncontested second place. your candidate, the congressman spoke about having a victory tonight. why is coming in second for ron paul a victory? >> because it's mitt romney's home state. he has been up against a very negative portrayal and thank god for al gore and the internet. people can go to the internet and read the faxes. they don't trust professionals whether it's lawyers or doctors.

they google the facts. this is no longer a country for the pundits. >> the good thing about the campaign is it appeals to the original party. not polluted by the segregationist who is joined in the 60s or the moral majority who brought their thoughts in and changed it and of course the kinds that came in later. the droppings of the democratic party hurt the republican party intellectually and screwed it up. your candidate seems to appeal to youth and people who are tired of the wars and the overcommitments overseas. like the older barry gold water appealed to people. distill it down. what does he have that appeals to people in their 20s. my kids won't vote for him, but what is it about him that appeals to kids in their 20s? >> he is incorruptible and corruption is a big deal.

your car mechanic can tell you about the federal reserve and these young staunts the young students paying 8% and 12% on student loans. about this fight to keep the federal reserve from being audit and when he gets a partial audit, we see $16 trillion and the national debt is only $14 trillion. $16 trillion create and given to the banks that sit on the board. very% interest loans and the students pay a 6% interest. >> how they railed about barry gold water and called him dangerous because if he is elected president he will trigger a nuclear war. now ron paul is dangerous. if he is elected, he won't. the young people don't mind having peace. here's an old country doctor who

won't take the pension who gives back some of his own allowance to the u.s. treasury who is incorruptible. you couldn't make up something like this. >> he is always antiwar, right? generally speaking he comes off as a person who is not for the overseas adventure. is it fair to say that is a big part of his appeal? >> in 1964 how they called him dangerous. he will trig a nuclear war. if he is elected president, he won't. they don't mind having peace. >> let me ask you about the realities of life. i have nothing against hill personally, but 76 and will be 77 next year. is he running to be president of the united states or is this another purpose here besides winning in reality. >> he is running for president.

we like 76. the spirit of 76. 76 trombones led the big parade. for us, he was 89 and still in power and at 76. it's not unprecedented. >> you are serious? okay. to get to the president, you may have to go by another route. are you foreclosed? going by the third party route if you don't win the republican nomination. >> it's not going to happen. it will be fun to talk about it. we see that this as the two-man race. it's more fun to have the horse race and some of us were rooting for huntsman because they wanted to take the votes away and huntsman is not even on the ballot in illinois or arizona. # four greens running and huntsman is not even on the ballot. it's a two-man race right now. >> i think you are going to blow it because there is going to be a third party opportunity out there. if romney wins, there is a lot of room to his right and somebody else is going to grab

it and you guys are going to wish you did. >> you are ready to forego. # obviously for the white house, that's your call. up next, let's look ahead to south carolina where romney is spending big money to wrap it all up. if he wins south carolina historically, you pick up the marbles. you win the nomination. newt gingrich is spending them money and it looks like a last ditch play to bring down mitt that. fight is coming up and will get ugly. msnbc's coverage just ended today will continue in a moment. >> in the last few days we have seen desperate republicans drawing forces with him. this is such a mistake for our party and our nation. for our nation. the country has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. we have to offer an alternative. i stand ready to lead us down a different path where we are lifted up by our desire to

succeed and not dragged down by a resentment of success.

> this campaign is going to go on to south carolina. i believe if we had a republican house, a republican senate and a

gingrich presidency, it would be amazing how much we could get done and how rapidly it was back. >> wow! welcome back. that was the former house speaker a short while ago pledging the move on to the next primary in south carolina. with the battle cry we all expected, no one is dropping out with the movies and on television is off the island now. new hampshire results are staying in and the non-romneys in the race have to win some votes somewhere and the next opportunity is the southern state of south carolina. at this point can anyone topple the front-runner? eugene robinson and the favorite soften that cradle of liberty is at msnbc. i pulitzer price-winning columnist. the historian and journalist is an analyst. you have deep history going. i have to search deep to see the optimism.

let me start with you, john. the optimism of any of the other camps. newt didn't keep attacking as he has been the last several days. what is he in this for except for having ads paid for? >> he can give off of land for 2011. he gets to explain his ideas. play the professor when which he likes to do. also remember he sees himself as a son of destiny and a figure that churchill had the years in the wilderness. he was just coming out of weeks in the wilderness and he will go on. i think he truly believes he will be the nominee. that's how many delusions of grandeur in this gentlemen has. >> snoopy thought he was dueling the red dragon too. it isn't matter except objectively. why is newt still in the race? >> ego, i think.

i think he will get anywhere for this reason. as long as all the other conservative candidates are in the race and you have romney -- >> and let's get back to the hard gamesmanship. why did he pull a pawlenty. he had his chance to sock the other guy in the face and he didn't do it. everybody knew where he was head and he didn't do. >> he is going hit him and he is coming out with a documentary. >> he lets the documentary do the dirty work. >> he didn't do it in the debate either. >> remember sunday morning. >> we're never know which newt is going to show up. he is completely erratic. one of the more erratic and makes john mccain look like a figure of stability and solidity. >> we have it. i find this a unique conversation. we have two roman catholics one a convert and one born

catholic. heading down to the bible belt. to try to win the hearts and minds. >> from two mormons. >> this is a development if you are a white protestant from the south. who do you pick? >> they will vote for romney is what they will do. >> all the talk about the lds. >> he's the front-runner. >> they are so pragmatic. >> they will vote for romney and this will sound crazy, but i talked to a friend who said don't rule out rick perry. >> i can rule him out. >> i tend to also. >> they said this is a crazy thing. >> he is the only prot stand in the race. >> let's take a look at this. >> he is the only process stand in the race. >> but take a look at this. recent poled republicans say romney has a commanding lead already before the bounce from tonight. 37%. he has the bounce up from that in the next week and then santorum and gingrich. they were not here tonight.

paul and perry trail further back. if you are rick santorum who couldn't get his acting to n new hampshire, but tied him a week ago. he tied him and now he is inevitable. a week ago he is still tying him. does he have the money and the chops to win down there? >> a lot is about whether his big backers in pittsburgh and other places will put chips on the table. >> how about the people meeting in texas? >> those people are important. you can expect in terms of the themes he will talk about, he will go back to some of these gay marriage themes and those themes and the social conservative themes. remember they do like establishment figures in south carolina. they don't tend to vote for the out liar conservative, but more often for the person whose turn it is. they don't care in new hampshire. after mccain won new hampshire and got clobbered in south carolina.

they are going to look at this. >> do they like the role of certifier of the nominee? >> absolutely. >> they're love that. if they have one strong alternative, i would be putting chips on that candidate. >> it doesn't take a lot. we want to paint by numbers at this point. you have to attack obama every second of every speech and how can he lose doing that. >> you heard it tonight. you will hear it again and again. until the south carolina vote and that kind of language. how can he go far wrong with that? this is the test of the anti-mormon bias in the republican party. >> this is only a couple. >> if it's more than a couple of points, can you say there is an effect. if it's not and i hope that it doesn't become an issue, but to

the extent that there people -- >> religion has to be a debating point and that's important. there have been no issues that are tied to the issue of mormon religion. it only comes up if you think about it because it hasn't come up in the debate at all. >> ralph reed told me once that there is a big chunk of the republican party that simply won't vote for a mormon. this will test whether he was right. i think he was wrong, but we will find out. >> i think they want to beat president obama enough to make an adjustment. thank you, jonathan. great historian and journalist. i don't have to brag. son of the south and overcame that. he came up pulitzer prize winning. one of the best ever. coverage in the primary will continue in a moment. >> you know that our campaign is about more than replacing a president. it's about saving the soul of america.

thank you, new hampshire. tonight we made history. >> welcome back to a special edition of "hardball." we are finishing out with our coverage and nbc projected that romney is the winner in tonight's big new hampshire primary. we are up in manchester right now.

ron paul is projected as coming in second although he called it a win for him. jon huntsman hoped to do better, but came in third and bragged about that. newt gingrich and rick santorum did not brag, but they both came in fourth. joining me are msnbc analysts getting punchy late tonight. i guess i expected more jumping jacks out of republicans. i said tonight they are under the tedium and they do respect people who wait in line and mitt romney has been defeated up here four years ago by john mccain. he is doing it the way you do it in the republican party. show yourself and take a beating and wait your turn and be a loyalist and you get the nomination eventually. >> you have to say he is almost the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.

it is his turn and this is the way it works out in the republican party time and time again. you will be safe predicting that until something different happens. >> okay, mr. chairman. i have to ask you the question. >> when you play regular school yard basketball, you play winners. the guy that getz the ball in the basket gets the ball, right? when the republicans play the guy that misses gets the ball. they play losers. why is that so different? >> what's with the negative commentary? this is a great night for our party and mitt romney. all due props to him and his campaign. they did what they had to do. he got close to the number at 40% here. that's significant with a lot of people, myself included thought the number would be around 32 or 34% against the field. it's a good night for him. the test remains and i will say this until he proves me wrong or otherwise. south carolina is going to be the beach head. the conservatives are there

waiting to see what he is going to be made of. will he come in to south carolina charged up with the speech he gave tonight that lays down the foundational principal argument for why we should follow him? then you can talk about prohibitive. >> you talk ideology, but you have to smash obama like he did and call it a european socialist. >> it's more than that. we know the hot rhetoric buttons. you can talk about socialism all day and people with great applause line. when you get to the core prince cal stuff and republicanism, when you talk about spending, you talk about debt and deficit, what is your plan? can we trust you not to give us what we saw in massachusetts? >> do you believe he is conservative? >> i do. i want to digest the question. >> my question is who is the alternative. who do they flock to if not romney.

i don't see him going. >> rick perry is by definition he has what they call the cards. he's a governor, conservative, good record as governor and creates jobs supposedly and protestant and fits the bible belt. >> but the wrong kind of southern accent. a texas accent. texas is as alien from south carolina. >> do you want to give us a demonstration? >> i don't want to. >> is this race coming down to romney versus the unknown person or can he be worn down gradually. if he gets 25 or 30% and only gets -- i can't believe it was only 25 or 30% the week after and he gets ground down. he will win michigan. his family is from there. arizona. how do you beat him unless somebody beats him? >> that's a good question. that's where a lot of the consternation is between the base and the establishment.

who are you going to beat him where w? you have not coalesced around someone who can go one on one. i think that south carolina is that moment. it's either going to happen there or not at all. >> can somebody read the numbers. who has good eyesight. >> 39, 23, 17, 9, 9, 1. >> they didn't get what they needed. they won't get delegates. >> that's a in the delegates. the top three are going to take the 12. >> it's a shutout. >> okay. it comes down to the headline tomorrow. romney wins second race and that means victory. in fact it has never been done before. >> it's a great night and made history. he's the first non-incumbent republican to win both iowa and new hampshire. he has good mojo. again, that stumble block in front of him is south carolina.

>> he is blocking back. ron paul. as long as ron paul can come in second he kills prestige for the challenger. >> that's the perry-santorum-gingrich conundrum. >> you can't look good coming in third. you just can't. no matter who you are. >> i have been in a couple of those races. they are not that bad. that's the problem. >> there he is right now. the votes are coming in. we have final words. let's finish it up. it's late here in new hampshire. i always loved coming up here. it's a great place to come up to. it has a right flintiness and challenges the stream and questions what's going on. this time i am sad to say because it's somewhat tedious as i said before, but confirmed the flow. >> they're confirmed the flow here in new hampshire and it will be unconfirmed on the way to south carolina. >> you think surprises?

>> i think there surprises. >> turned out was anemic this time. not a lot of enthusiasm as romney had before. >> thank you, gene robinson. republicans don't fall in love. they fall in line. i have gotten to like your analysis. i think you tell the truth. you win pulitzer prizes. that's even better. this is it from the late night special. it's been a treat to end the evening this way. msnbc's coverage of the primary will continue in a moment.

>> newt gingrich fighting it out for fourth place. ron paul finishing second and jon huntsman finishing third. >> in south carolina tonight, we will kickoff tomorrow morning. a campaign for jobs and economic growth, a campaign for a balanced budget and a campaign for returning power to the states through the tenth amendment and a campaign for a strong national security. a campaign for a stable, solid social security program both for people now on it and the young people who are here who deserve a chance in their lifetime to have a better program with an even greater return because if we are smart, we do better things for people.

the washington alternatives, how do we raise taxes and cut spending in a way that causes you pain on the spending side and causes you pain on the tax side is exactly backwards. this is part of learning. when we have a debate, we were asking a question about it and the heating assistance program. it was phrased in a perfectly washington way. are you going to run a bigger deficit to help more people or cut people off and hurt them so you can shrink the deficit? nobody on the panel asking the questions seems to consider an alternative. what if we went out and developed american oil and guess brought down the cost of heating oil and didn't need to help people until the price came down. that idea of doing it more and

better does not exist in the washington lexicon. it makes it very hard for our friends in the news media to cover because it's strange. what if you were innovative and had approaches and did everything that americans have always done? the fact is the enterprisial free enterprise system which attracted people from benjamin franklin to the wright brothers to henry ford to thomas edison to bill gates to steve jobs. that model of maximizing the development of new approaches, new energy, new opportunities, new technology has raised the standard of living of people across this planet more than any other system in the history of the world. with your help, you have been wonderful to us here. i am asking each of you not to

slow down. in the next couple of days, make a list of every person you know in south carolina and every person you know in florida because those are the next two great contests. i believe as we get to south caroline and the choice becomes clear and people understand that there is a bold reagan conservative approach of lower taxes, less regulations, more american energy, a sound dollar and actually being in favor of creating jobs, the opposite of the obama program of higher taxes, more regulation, less american energy and attacking the people who created jobs. look at the two models. i believe we can reach out and we can create a majority that will shock the country and a majority that will put us back in the right track. it is doable and a daunting challenge, but consider the alternative. if we do not go the extra mile

and we do not offer a vision powerful enough to unify americans and we continue down the road that obama has us on, but more than obama, the bureaucracy has us on and the judges have us on and the entire pattern of how washington operates, more falling behind, more years of growing weakness. that's the alternative. i believe that it will take someone who is capable of debating barack obama, face-to-face, delivering the conservative message, winning the argument in order to overcome his billion-dollar machine. with your help, as your spokesperson, representing your values, on behalf of our children, our grandchildren, and our country, i will do everything i can to win the opportunity to represent you this fall in debating and then defeating barack obama.

thank you and good luck and god bless you. >> former speaker of the house, newt gingrich, declaring tonight that he is not out of the race. the man with whom he is fighting it out, the man who he is fighting it out with for fourth place, rick santorum, also declaring tonight that he is not getting out of the race. nobody getting out of the race after new hampshire tonight. one week after the iowa caucuses, mitt romney wins again in new hampshire. mitt romney now making history by making it two for two. >> thank you, new hampshire! tonight we made history! >> never before has a republican non-incumbent won in both iowa and new hampshire. has the former massachusetts governor established himself as the man to beat for the gop presidential nomination? is he the prohibitive favorite? >> it's about more than replacing a president, it's about saving the soul of america. >> nbc news projecting texas congressman ron paul as the

second place finisher tonight. the texas congressman tonight declaring himself happy with second place. >> i called governor romney a short while ago, before he gave his talk, and congratulate him, because he certainly had a clear-cut victory, but we're nibbling at his heels. >> the look on his face is as important as the words he said. also, the man who bet everything on new hampshire, jon huntsman, the apparent third place finisher tonight. the former utah governor vowing to fight on to the next contest of the 2012 republican presidential nomination. >> i'd say third place is a ticket to ride, ladies and gentlemen! hello, south carolina! >> on this night, four years ago, mitt romney said he had won another silver, after having placed second in iowa and second in new hampshire. he's won both iowa and new

hampshire this time around. let's go back to chris matthews in manchester. chris? >> thank you, rachel. i'm here with debbie wasserman schultz, the u.s. congresswoman from florida, but also, of course, the chair of the democratic national committee. here we feel a fairly, i guess, expected set of results, although there were questions early on, even today, about who would come in second. it's clear now that ron paul has taken the excitement away from the huntsman campaign by grabbing second place, making no other credible democrat have that opportunity to say i'm second to mitt. now it looks like going into your part of the country, two elections from now, they'll be in florida, my question is, it looks like romney, is this the guy you were planning to face? >> well, we've been focused on trying to build our campaign the most significant, robust grassroots campaign in presidential history. we've got seven offices around the state of new hampshire. we've had 500 events. we had 25 house parties around the state tonight. and tomorrow, when all of the republican candidates pack up and go on to south carolina, we

will be kicking off the most significant grassroots campaign that new hampshire's ever seen and on to winning the state again for president obama in november of this year. >> well, let me ask you -- let's go to the micro questions. we've now come through two states, both of which are definitely in play. is that correct? neither state is safely in the president's column, neither iowa nor new hampshire? >> both iowa and new hampshire are usually battleground states. this cycle won't be any exception. i think it's important, though, to make a couple of observations about the outcome tonight. mitt romney got about 36% of the vote. four years ago, chris, he got about 32% of the vote. i mean, in his, what is essentially his home state, for him to only do a handful of points better than he did four years ago, after campaigning for five years, that's really not anything to write home about. you could really declare it a loss, because he should have blown the doors off in this state. in addition to that, the republican turnout was off about

40% from the turnout in 2008, showing that this is not a field that their side is very enthusiastic about. >> so you're saying that he's going to be the nominee, but he won't be a strong nominee. >> i would say that there are supporters in the republican party, aren't quite fired up and ready to go. >> and nothing's going to change in florida? >> well, i don't detect anymore enthusiasm in florida for candidates who believe that we should focus on keeping the wind at the backs of people who are already doing well, while president obama's fighting for the middle class and working families. >> last question, was there damage done to him and all these charges by newt gingrich and the others, santorum and perry, to the effect that he ran a chop shop. that he's basically in the business of taking apart companies, not building jobs? >> the scrutiny that's been paid to mitt romney, that he has been a turnaround specialist, that specialized in can dismantling companies and offshoring jobs certainly did him some damage and rightfully so. >> will you guys make use of that?

those charges made by the republicans? >> we think the economic experience that he's hanging his candidacy on needs to be scrutinized and we'll be making sure we help people do this. >> and utilized and destroyed. thank you, debbie wasserman schultz, u.s. congresswoman from florida and the chair of the democratic national committee. >> thank you, chris, and congresswoman wasserman schultz. tom brokaw is with us from new york. tom, great to have you with us. americans looking at these results tonight. what should americans know about what these results mean both for republican party politics, but also for what happens next? >> i think there's some fundamental truths to come out of tonight. first of all, both in iowa, and especially tonight in new hampshire, the voters, especially those in new hampshire, who are able to go under the sanctity of a voting booth, it appears that they were making their judgments on electability and who's best able to do something about the economy. this is an impressive win on the part of governor romney tonight, especially when you look at the number of independents that he

was able to pull into the republican voting booths tonight and get that group that four years ago were so strong for president obama. we just heard from newt gingrich, obviously, talking about how he's going to save the economy when he goes into south carolina and into florida in the future. there was less of the conservative theology from him tonight, so he understands that mitt romney now has a big head of steam going into south carolina. the real issue in that state, and i've been talking to a number of people down there, is what kind of a jihad they're going to have in the republican primary? will it begin a process of self-immolation, and that's what terrifies a lot of people, including a lot of conservatives. but tonight mitt romney does have great momentum to going into south carolina. could be a much tougher state for him. it's quite striking to me, after i've been at this for a long time, as you know, that two out of the three leading candidates in new hampshire tonight were

mormons. and the other one, ron paul, was a libertarian. that was not so surprising. so politics has changed profoundly in this country. and south carolina, here we come. >> in terms of looking ahead to that south carolina contest, tom, when you look at the dynamics within the republican party and sort of, i guess, the feeling among other republicans, as mitt romney moves forward from strength to strength, from iowa to new hampshire, is the tone of the attacks on mitt romney, taking him on first time at bain capital, these attacks of him as a looter, as a vulture capitalist, is that unexpected within the party? >> no, i don't think it's entirely unexpected. he thought he got some very strong support today from ron paul, saying this is the nature of a free market economy and capitalism, and it's unclear just how much damage bain capital did to really productive companies. in many instances, as you know, they say that they had to go in

and change those companies, because they were going broke on their own. that's something that will play out in the course of the next several days. in south carolina, by the way, it's a very conservative state. it's a state, the punitive leader of the state right now is jim demint, probably the most conservative member of the united states senate. nikki haley, the governor, a republican, is no some difficulty. her approval rate is well below 50% at this point. so there's a real conservative fight going on in that state. but most people in south carolina say the big issue, jobs, jobs, and jobs. it's a state that's been hit hard. and if the voters of south carolina set aside a lot of the conservative theology, as i've been describing it, and go into the voting booth concerned only about the economy, that's good news for mitt romney, obviously. >> tom, we have seen insurgent candidate sis of different types, on both sides of the aisle, but in particular in republican politics, i'm looking back to pat buchanan.

when you look at the ron paul success, with a strong third place finish in iowa and this second place finish tonight in iowa, do you see an insurgency of a different kind, or is this something we can expect to follow, contours that were set out by other republicans who have been sort of outsiders within their own party? >> you know what's so striking to me about his success is the number of young voters he gets, rachel. and i think that's the tip of the iceberg. a lot of young voters who are coming out of college with great college debt, unable to get a job, worried about the high cost of entitlements for their generation downstream are looking for someone who runs completely counter to conventional politicians. and ron paul does that. and in his own -- and i use this in the best sense of the word now -- homely downhome way, he gets his message across, especially in those debates. >> tom brokaw, thank you. it is invaluable to have you with us on nights like this.

i really appreciate it, sir. >> thank you very much. when we return, chuck todd will be joining us to talk about probably the biggest headline out of new hampshire tonight, other than the fact that mitt romney has won. yes, mitt romney has won. but you know what else happened tonight? nobody got out. why do the candidates who did not win tonight all decide that they would stay in this race? chuck todd joins us with some answers to that question when we come back.

tonight in new hampshire, tonight in new hampshire, nbc projects that mitt romney is the winner of the new hampshire republican primary. in second place, texas congressman ron paul, at this point with 24% of the vote, this is with 71% of the vote counted, mitt romney at 38, ron paul at 24, jon huntsman in third place tonight with 17% of the vote. rick santorum and newt gingrich fighting it out for fourth place, each with about 10% of the vote right now. and rick perry well behind at just 1%.

let's check in with our nbc news political director, chuck todd, who's been looking at the calculus being made by some of those non-winning candidates tonight who are nevertheless deciding to stay in the race. chuck? >> well, rachel, i've talked to both the huntsman and gingrich campaigns about this very issue, right? and the gingrich campaign, obviously, they made this decision. it's south carolina or bust for them. they got the big donor, the big donation, sheldon addison, the casino mogul out in vegas to give the big money to an alternative super pac to them to go after romney. they made this calculus. they didn't care where they finished here in new hampshire. but huntsman was interesting. and in talking with their strategist, they say this. getting the third place means maybe -- they think it's important for them to go to south carolina, because even if they only get 10%, if they can help deny romney victory in south carolina, it vetches the race, impose to florida, a plac maybe huntsman does a little bit

better, but does the same thing. denies romney victories. the whole strategy now for the gingrich campaign, for the huntsman campaign, is actually the same. deny romney victories. and if they can do that, maybe they can stretch it out. maybe they find out romney might have more of a glass jaw than maybe he does. i think we're going to find out in the next ten days whether he does have a glass jaw or not. but that's the strategy. stay in the race. and in huntsman's case, he's not looking at winning any of these states. he's simply looking at denying romney victories. so he hopes to be pulling votes from romney's left, rachel. >> it's interesting. we're starting to see that from a lot of the different candidates right now, the idea is to stick around in case romney face-plants. stick around in case something happens to mitt romney or something is done to mitt romney that takes him out. still be in the race when that happens. >> they're all "break glass in case candidate implodes" candidates. and the little elephants break the glass, here i am, you know? and if you're huntsman, you're seeing everybody else has moved

up and down and moved up and down. he's still waiting for his moment. so maybe the point is, if he stays in long enough, something happens. >> let me ask you one last question, chuck, you look at rick santorum, jon huntsman, newt gingrich, rick perry, who has not been a factor in new hampshire, but will be a factor in south carolina. all of these candidates who not only have their own campaign resources, but have access to quirky billionaires who may or may not be their dad, who may or may not want to give them money to carpet bomb in the next couple of states. is there any difference in strategy from any of those four toward mitt romney, or are they all on board with the mitt romney corporate raider attack that we've seen newt gingrich play up so much in the last couple of days? >> no, they actually have different strategies. santorum, you saw, he's not going to go there. he's not going to touch it. i think santorum's strategy is pretty clear. play up his cultural conservative credentials in south carolina, hope that the mud between gingrich and romney,

that gets exchanged, creates a factor that we've seen a lot of times in multi-candidate fields, which is candidate "a" attacks candidate "b," candidate "b" attacks candidate "a," and candidate "c" ends up winning that primary or election. so i think we'll see straightforward strategy that way. and then you've got the romney/paul sort of non-aggression pact, if you will, and paul even defending romney against these charges. that's helpful to him at some point, because anytime you can have a surrogate push back rather than having to do it yourself, it's always better. but they all are in this sort of deny romney victory strategy. if they ever want to find their way back. and at some point, they're going to turn on each other. newt gingrich told me today, i said, when you do the simple math in south carolina, if you and santorum split conservatives, 50/50, romney wins with somewhere between 35 and 40%, and gingrich said to

me, you know what, let's see what happens early next week. let's see how these ads hit and maybe conservatives will start consolidating around him. he thinks, of course, santorum is hoping it's the other way around. but at some point, you know, there's a big meeting this weekend of a lot of social conservatives, movement conservatives that don't want romney as the nominee, and their goal is to try to figure out if they can consolidate behind one of the two, gingrich or santorum. maybe that happens this weekend in favor of one over the other. >> and with mitt romney having now one in iowa and new hampshire, anybody who really wants it to not be mitt romney, these are desperate times. and if there are desperate measures available, now's time to go for them. chuck todd, thank you for this. we're going to go to chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. he's with howard fineman and others who have been reporting with various campaigns and their reactions to tonight's results. chris? >> great, rachel. you know, howard, it seems we've got three guys now running in this race that are behind and have to do something magical to

pick up. let's start with the most fascinating -- gingrich. tonight, no attack in his speech tonight on the man he's been attacking, romney. what's that about? >> well, i think that's significant. partly because i know that some friends of his, former members of congress, have called him to cool it on the looting thing. they say, you're making a pariah of yourself in the party. and even though the mitt romney people claim, bring it on, we want to get this debate over now so we don't have to deal with it in the fall, they don't like it. they definitely don't like it. but newt has a choice to make. by the way, i've covered him for many years. i've never seen him look that deflated and unhappy. >> as tonight? >> as tonight. you know, he cried out in iowa because he was tired. here he just looked like a guy who was being denied the opportunity that he wanted. he started that speech with i, i, i, i, i. it's all about him feeling thwarted and defeated and you saw that. but the problem he faces is if he goes down the looting road, he really does at some point paint himself into a corner in

the party. that's somewhat some of his friends are telling him tonight, i understand. >> can he forgive what was done to him in personal terms in iowa, in that blanketing campaign? basically on behalf of romney? >> no, he can't. but the emotional choice he faced, the political choice he faces. does he continue trying to exact revenge and get some kind of satisfaction out of that? nobody thinks he's going to win the nomination at this point. or does he stand down and avoid really becoming a truly, you know, attack figure from everybody else within the republican party, which is quite possible. >> fair to assume, though, if he does go on the hard attack, he'll lose the battle to romney. >> the only way is to destroy him. >> what about santorum? does santorum have a chance of taking him down, romney? >> i interviewed rick santorum the other day. he told me that he'd changed. he'd been changed by his 17-point defeat in pennsylvania the other year, where he really was a negative attack dog. it didn't work. he got clobbered. and also, you know, the family story, the fact that he's got

this daughter who he cares very much about and all that. and he's tried very hard, maybe for tactical as well as personal reasons, not to be an attack dog in this campaign. you know, he was known as senator slash. he's put that aside. and if you've noticed, he's been very, very weary, for the most part, of attacking any of the other candidates. he thinks he's sitting a different tone. whether he can keep doing that or not in south carolina, i don't know. but i think his hope, as small a hope as it may be, is to be the guy who's not attacking the other candidates and somehow benefit and have that weave into his cultural conservative traditionalist values. that's his line. >> i've always had the sense that santorum was really gunning for a cabinet post. that he may have done well in iowa, but he never thought he'd do that well, and he's really sort of trying to hug up against romney rather than attack him. >> if you've noticed, he's eschewed almost every chance he had to attack romney. >> one last chance. we don't get -- i guess most

people, i shouldn't say "we" on behalf of anybody, but ron paul is simply a person who wants to get a message across to the party at the convention, perhaps either on a platform or probably more forcefully, in the words of the eventual winner. what's his goal now going into south carolina? >> well, his goal win just got done e-mailing with jesse benton, his main guy, he was right there next to ron paul and is practically a member of the family. he claims, at any rate, that they've raised at least $10 million in the month of january alone. they're already organizing in all the states down the road. they're going for maximize delegates they can get, maximize leverage they can get, and then there will be a moment. right now romney and paul are sort of in a -- they're being nice to each other, not attaching each other. paul defended him on free enterprise and so on. there will be a reckoning at some point. ron paul has refused to say that he will stay in the party, that he will even support the nominee. he'll go with as many delegates as he can, get whatever he can out of the republican party, and

i think romney's big diplomatic challenge of the next many months is to keep him in the party. i don't think it will work. i think, ultimately, ron paul will go off on his own and he'll have the money to finance his own independent --? this time? >> yes, his people. look, we've been at his rallies. his people want no compromise. and he will lose his credibility with all the people that he's spent years and years winning the support of if he stays in the party. i think, in the end, he will leave. >> my belief is with you, because i believe there's an opportunity to the right of romney, somebody will take it. >> especially with romney. >> rachel, it's a desultry night for those think that the republican party was going to go through some disruptive change tonight. it looks like encores. it's romney's turn. it's been his turn like it was with reagan and bush sr. and dole and cain. the relentless tedium of the tyranny of the republican party. they give the job to the guy who's turn it is. >> the tyranny of the tedium.

>> it's so desultry, i'm sorry. >> in terms of looking for an eruption, what howard fineman just said right now about what he expects from the ron paul candidacy going forward and about the beliefs and desires about the ron paul true believers, put that in a bottle and keep it on the shelf. that is a time capsule of what's going on right now in this campaign, and that may become very, very, very important many months down the road. howard, i think that was very important. we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, we've got some news out of what's happening in south carolina. obviously, with nobody getting out of the race tonight and with mitt romney having locked up now iowa and new hampshire, south carolina south carolina has never been more important. what is going on in terms of spending in south carolina? and power brokers in south carolina who can make all the difference in that state. new news on that coming up next.

welcome back to msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. with 74% of the vote reported, mitt romney in clear first place. 38% of the vote. ron paul in second, 23% of the vote. jon huntsman, 6 points behind ron paul. gingrich, santorum, and perry in fourth, fifth, and sixth. the distance between gingrich and santorum, very close there, as you see. looking ahead to south carolina, obviously, jim demint as an important conservative in south carolina. nikki haley, as tom brokaw was pointing out, perhaps slightly wounded as her standing in the state. what are we expecting next in terms of south carolina? >> there are a lot of things unfolding in the last hour, rachel. you've got the conservatives now, i think, starting to line up behind mitt romney. jim demint, who is probably one of the most coveted endorsers in south carolina is saying tonight to mark levine on his radio show, i'm just sitting here and

listening to romney's acceptance speech and he's hitting a lot of the hot buttons for me and balancing the budget and i'm a little concerned about some of the republicans who have criticized my free market principles. the super pac backing mitt romney, reported by michael isikoff tonight, that super pac backing him has just spent $7 million in new ads in both south carolina and florida combined. they're going for the knockout punch. the bain story continues to be out there. conservatives are starting to rally around mitt romney with his win tonight at 38%. you've got michelle maukin, hannity, limbaugh, and ann coulter are now saying that mitt romney is all about capitalism. the advice in "the new york times" tonight that the advisers tend to cast romney as the founder and chief kperkt of bain capital, as a defender of market capitalism, a bedrock principle of capitalism, and suggest that

those who assail his business background are outside the party's mainstream. what tom brokaw was talking about earlier, that jihad, the republican party is on newt gingrich tonight, telling him, back off. that's what i can read in all of this and that they are circling the wagons fast and realizing that the money factor is in mitt's favor. he's 2-0. it's going to be hard-pressed for anybody else to come out and win the nomination at this part, except, the chance would be ron paul, and he could continue to build momentum. but it seems to me that the republican party is making a statement tonight that we're starting to damage our brand too much. we've got too much in-fighting, we've got to clean this thing up. >> but if newt gingrich believes there is an audience in the republican party for the kind of anti-bain attack that he's been making and wants to continue to make against mitt romney, with a ton of money to do it, does he say, listen, republican elites, i don't care. the republican rank and file ought to hear this, since democrats are going to use this against him, and in fact, it's indefensible.

does newt gingrich defy the elite on this? >> i don't think newt gingrich particularly cares. but i was struck listening to chuck todd's report earlier today about this fact. that all of these campaigns have lost control of their destiny, except for mitt romney. and it's a sign of your fundamental weakness when your streak calculus changes from how this is going to how we're going to win the election as to this is how we're going to try and impact the race, so that guy loses the election. and that's one step away from being out of the race. so i think we come out of tonight with mitt romney in command of the race, but i also think that howard fineman, you know, asked the most important political question of the race. what is ron paul going to do looking ahead? will he leave the republican party? will he mount a third party challenge? howard thinks he will. i think he won't, because i think it destroys the future of his republican senator son. but this is the biggest and most important question when you give consideration to the general election ahead.

and who knows the answer. >> and the dynamic in south carolina is going to be different. the unemployment rate in iowa is 5.7%. in new hampshire, it's 5.2%. in south carolina, unemployment, 9.9%. >> so if there's a market for populism -- >> that would be it. >> anti-mitt romney populism, going after his vulture capitalism, as they've been saying, that would be the place for it. >> and a company that was the victim of bain in south carolina, if they intend to pursue that. so south carolina can be very interesting. but i think, what the established order there from the governor, now demint, going where they're going, romney gets a little more strength than one would think. he comes in 2-0. i think two factors, he's going to be paul and i think he's going to be just as much of a problem in the tent for the republicans as he will be out. and i think that you're sleeping on romney's message tonight, i think, will help energize the moderate independents and the

democrats. because he's running on appeasement, which he cannot get anywhere with after bin laden and also. he's running on talking about the economy. and he's certainly going to have to deal with bush's legacy there. and he's going to have to start some of these hundred thousand. and he's running on the politics of envy. working class people are not envious, they're injured. we're not jealous in this country. the economy's jaded. and if he comes out with those three points, those are the three points he made in his speech tonight, he just set up a layup shot for president obama in november. >> lawrence o'donnell, will the republicans be doing themselves a favor by taking hard shots at mitt romney right now, to test whether or not he has a glass jaw? would they be actually doing the party a disservice by letting mitt romney go, essentially, so that they don't test him too hard, to leave all the testing to obama? >> they have run the test, he has a glass jaw. so they know exactly how that test comes out. you know, it's worth noting what

actually really factually happened here tonight. delegates. some 12 delegates. that's the grand total in the state of new hampshire. five people are going to share those 12 delegates. the threshold is 10%, be at 10% or above, you get some of those delegates. so it's romney, it's paul, it's huntsman, then gingrich and santorum. that's why this 10% level for them is crucial. they were -- they're both looking as though they're going to get above that, probably. but that threshold matters. and so al was right to point out earlier the ron paul delegates, but i don't see where ron paul picks up an amount of delegates going forward to the convention where he could actually end up being any kind of factor. i do think you've got that issue about, how are they going to behave? the ron paul delegates. that's an interesting issue in the convention. >> inside the tent or out a problem in either case. msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary continues in just a moment.

stay with us.

welcome back to msnbc's live coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. i'm rachel maddow. should be noted, there was a democratic primary in new hampshire tonight. guess who won? looking ahead to south carolina, the question is not just the polling and not just the spending, but the character of the south carolina electorate. whether or not the message that mitt romney has been able to parlay into wins in both iowa and new hampshire resonates in a state with a different character

of an electorate and a different situation in terms of unemployment, also a different structure of the state republican party, especially vis-a-vis the activists in the tea party. nbc's andrea mitchell joins us now with more on that from manchester, new hampshire. andrea? >> one thing that's very important about south carolina is that the unemployment rate is twice what it is here in new hampshire. so economic concerns will dominate, but it's a different kind of economic concerns. they are concerned about jobs more than budget deficits. there is tea party strength. he does have the support of nikki haley, but as you've been discussing, nikki haley is not a popular figure at all. jim demint, as ed schultz was pointing out, his comments favoring mitt romney, not an endorsement, but certainly a broad hint. that would be very helpful, because of jim demint being mr. conservative in south carolina. interestingly, romney split the conservative vote, the exit polls tell us, here in new hampshire with rick santorum, but, again, new hampshire

conservatives are a very different breed of cat than south carolina conservatives. so mitt romney goes south with a big head of steam. there's no discounting the fact that he won iowa, he won new hampshire. we can say it's by four points more than he won it last time. we can say that he still is, you know, not dominant in not building much of a broader base, but at the same time, he is really consolidating a very strong hold on the nomination. it's going to be very hard to stop him, unless the opposition, the un-romneys, get together. and so far, as you've seen, everyone says they've got a ticket to ride out of here, and they are heading south. huntsman is going to be on a plane in the morning, taking a commercial flight through philadelphia. santorum going south. gingrich certainly is, and there's a lot of animosity and both gingrich and both huntsman have a lot to prove against mitt romney and they want to. >> thank you, andrea, appreciate it. nbc's michael isikoff more with mitt romney's plans for south carolina.

mr. isikoff, what do you have for us? >> actually, just in the last couple of days, starting before tonight's returns, but continuing, the romney super pac has bought up nearly $6 million in ad buys in both south carolina and florida. that exceeds that $3.4 million that the gingrich super pac has bought up that we were talking about earlier. and what it really does underscore is the romney folks are trying to close the deal right now. below away their opponents by the end of the month, and they've got the financial muscle to do it. we've all been talking about sheldon adeleson, who gave that donation to the gingrich super pac. the romney super pac is flush with cash. it's become quite the financial juggernaut making a major difference in this race. >> michael isikoff, thank.

let's go now to chris matthews in manchester, new hampshire. he's now with john harwood. >>ion's with us now. john, you were talking about before we came on here about santorum. he's kind of the mystery man now. he did so well in iowa, not so well up here in new hampshire tonight. >> he did, but he's got some plans going forward. you were talking with rachel before about the tyranny of the tedium. >> my phrase. >> exactly. mike isikoff's point about the mitt super pac is more tedium. but there's chaos at odds with the tedium, because no one's getting off the race. rick santorum's campaign raised $3 million in the past week. they started today $15.5 million buy in south carolina. their goal here, they say it doesn't matter what shakes out between gingrich and santorum for fourth and fifth tonight, because their goal here was not to -- they knew it wasn't a good state for them. but they didn't want gingrich to

get any sort of conservative bounce out of here. they were present, they played strongly in the debates, but they prevented gingrich from coming out here, backed by sheldon adelson with that head of steam in south carolina. so now they're in. gingrich is in the with the super pac money. huntsman may be in with super pac money. we've got a lot of people spending a lot of money in a very small state. voters in south carolina are going to hear a lot, positive and negative about these guys. >> we're back to rachel. >> it's true. when you think about the amount of money that's going to be spent in south carolina and the price of tv ad buys in south carolina, it is going to become a very political thing to watch any television of any kind in the palmetto state very quickly. all right, we're going to be seeing chris again at the top of the hour for a special edition of "hardball" tonight. msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary continues in just a moment.

welcome back to our coverage of the new hampshire republican primary. here's what i think about going forward. yeah, it looks like mitt romney's got it sewed up. the republican powers that be have to decide whether or not they are desperate for it to be somebody other than mitt romney. if somebody can make a plausible case that it can be them, money is irrelevant.

because any one candidate can just tap one really rich guy and the money can flow forever. with the super pac financing right now, it doesn't matter how many donors you have, it doesn't matter whether or not your dad is your funder, it doesn't matter who it is. all you need is one rich guy. and they've all got at least one rich guy who one crazy enough to dump a huge amount of money to back mitt romney. i think the money is irrelevant to our calculus, because anybody can put together any amount of money going forward. it's the dynamic of the race as to whether or not mitt romney's beatable. >> spoken as somebody who has never been involved in campaign fund-raising. if rick santorum had a billionaire, he would have picked it up already. >> but if rick santorum were the credible alternative to mitt romney, wouldn't he get the billionaires? >> that's the issue on this texas meeting with the social conservatives saying -- and by the way, there is no party leadership. there's no such thing. there are no set of wise men in the party, in washington, who can get together and go, okay, we're beginning to make this decision like a board room. democratic party doesn't have

it. republican party doesn't have it. but you do have these factions. and that's social conservative faction is the most powerful, in many ways, and the most reliable in the party, and if they get together and if they have a sit-down with gingrich and they say, please, step out. if they say to perry, please stop doing this. and if they say to gingrich -- or to santorum, you're our guy. if they do something like that, it could get interesting. but the likelihood of even that working is very slim. because you have to convince a bunch of people who aren't going to see things the same way to suddenly see things the the same way. >> whole, those evangelical southerners are strong. they will raise the money. but they are at a point of determination. do they accept mitt romney or do they mount the charge? and it's, for lack of a better term, it's a defining moment for them. it really is. and they have to determine, they've had some meetings in texas. there's another one coming up this weekend. i've talked to a few

conservatives who have told me, flat-out, not mitt romney, not now, not ever. now, whether that's going to coalesce and bring together james dobson and gary bower who was behind santorum, and tony perkins at the family research council. these folks know how to raise money. they'll find enough conservatives out there. and that's why tonight, when you've got jim demint saying what romney is saying, that's almost a signal. you know, maybe we better lessen our pushback on this. so it's not the kind of drama and love story that chris matthews likes, but it's a new kind of drama that's unfolding in this modern day politics. >> steve, when you look at this, do you see game over? >> i think it's getting pretty close. money matters, but momentum matters more. and mitt romney has all the momentum in the race. since 1980, south carolina, the winner has gone on to be the republican nominee. if mitt romney goes 3-0, it's very difficult to see how he would lose florida. and certainly if he wins four of the first four primary contests, whether these guys are in the race, out of the race, suspended or not, he'll be the nominee of

the party. so he's got all the momentum and he has got to be really happy with where he is. >> very briefly, last thought? >> the problem that i have is true believers in ron paul's camp and possibly in some of the camps of santorum and them, who may not go with whatever deal the evangelicals say or the party bosses say, and the true believers can be very disruptive. if they hang in there, romney came in tonight number one, but obama would have won. >> al sharpton, steve schmidt, ed schultz, lawrence o'donnell, thank you, fellas. i'm rachel maddow. thanks for being with us tonight. chris matthews picks up msnbc's coverage of the new hampshire primary in just a moment with special live edition of "hardball."