a sea change in maine politics, especially within the republican party. the republicans for the first time took over the legislature and the governorship. and a tea party-backed governor won, became governor with 38% of the vote. so there's been a hard shift to the right in augusta and now in state politics. >> we tend to think obviously of the maine republican party as represented by the two senators from maine, who are both quite moderate, probably at the left-most spectrum of the gop members of the senate. it sounds to me as if the state-level of politics that are happening don't necessarily reflect that political profile. >> it's a complete break with the history of the republican party in maine. it used to be nobody for this kind of new england moderatism and now it's really changed. there's a lot of ron paul momentum going on as well. >> you've had a very contentious battle over the issue of same-day voter registration.

one of the reasons i want to have you on was to talk viewers through that. it's a window into larger fights that are happening all over the country about access to the ballot and the way access to the ballot is going to be regulated or excessively tightened. what happened in maine with respect to same-day voter registration? >> well when republicans came into office, one of the things they went after was maine's history of open democracy, our history of same-day voter registration and making sure people have access to the ballot and to the vote. and so they tried to repeal that. maine was actually the first state to have same-day voter registration, it's worked great for 40 years and there was a real backlash against that, the maine's people's alliance that i work for and many groups and individuals came together and ran something called a people's veto. we gathered a number of signatures, we got it on the ballot and we made sure that it didn't happen. >> and that election was, was in 2011, am i right? >> that's right.

it was in november. and we had to gather 70,000 signatures in the space of about a month to put the law on hold and that kind of grassroots effort had never been done that quickly before. so i think it really says something about the fact that people, while there has been some changes in our politics, maine remains a progressive state and one that cares about our highest in the nation voter participation and cares about democracy. >> the 2011 victory of the people's veto of the move to get rid of same-day voter registration that you organized on, you just mentioned, do you see that as representing a kind of backlash to the conservative ascendency of 2010 and the state returning to an equilibrium more like what it was before 2010? or do you see it as a product of good organizing 0 or passionate about that issue? where is the state as we head into 2012? >> i think we're kind of headed

towards something new here. we saw on the same day that we won the stopping repeal of same-day voter registration here, victories in ohio, victories in other places across the country and something that our polling showed was that the group that was most in favor of same-day voter registration wasn't even democrats or wasn't even young people. it was people that supported the goals of the occupy wall street movement. and that was actually a larger group of people than even there were democrats in the state. so i think there's a real backlash against corporate control in general. i think there's a real backlash about money in politics. and about the extremism that some of these politicians that won in 2010 have exhibited in maine and in other places. >> mike tippings of the maine people's alliance joining us live from maine tonight, thank you so much for your time. >> thanks, chris. a little check-in from maine where we will be hearing results from the maine republican caucus in just a little bit.

i'm joined now back with my panel. the reason i wanted to have mike on is one of the things that is going to play a role in this election season is the state-level politics. particularly in the context of the republican state-level victories, the ledge sladive agenda that those victories led to. and the organizing and popular sentiment that came as a backlash to that. scott walker i think in wisconsin being the most iconic but obviously we have similar situations in ohio and there's a very contentious fight in indiana. i wonder how much the white house is thinking about the approval rating of those republican governors in the swing states. >> part of what is so interesting of what mike is talking about is that both the tea party and the occupy impu e impulses which happened within a year or two, suggested they're not completely separate impulses. we talk about them particularly in national media as though there was this big right

conservative backlash and then the left came roaring back or something. but it feels to me particularly when you talk to somebody like mike tipping on the ground in maine, like it's more of a discontent in general that either had a more conservative or a more progressive intent so while the white house might be worried about public opinion polls, i think what both parties are going to be concerned about is turn-out. the government is not listening to me, these circumstances are not changesing, then i think you have the far bigger problem of withdrawal from the system. >> he said something very much that resonated what mike said. he said we're tired of big corporation s doling out and deciding these elections. that's the danger that both romney and ron paul are going to have. in the sense that everybody is talking about the super pacs and

it's the first time in our election history where someone can dole into as much money into a candidate without having their fingerprints on it. so all of a sudden at the same time it doesn't have to be a message brought to you by, and it allows people to be negative to your point. is that going to make the republican base actually stay home? and then at the same time you have the social media saying we're going to take that ad and we're going to dissect it on so much media and share it with our network of friends, let's show you how the people power really plays. >> my understanding of the legal architecture of the super pac is that super pacs have disclosure filings, they're just much more delayed than the normal ones. the funny thing about fingerprints is if you're a candidate you don't want a ton of stories about your eccentric billionaire backer which has been one of the dominant story lines that's emerged in the super pac era. >> the other aspect, i think that's why maine is an interesting state to be having this conversation in is voting. what happened in maine in 2010,

you alluded to there with paul lepage, the face of tea party governors in this country. what happened in the republican primary that got him elevated, it was a political tsunami in maine, he was not supposed to win. no poll picked you up on it. he spent almost no money in the primary. spent $4 per vote. he was running against sort of somebody who is very similar to mitt romney. a ski area executive, a guy who ended up paying $110 per vote in the primary, less otten. paul lepage merged a blue collar narrative with tea party anti-government rhetoric. he talked about being homeless at the age of 11, being one of 18 kids, working his way up and married it to the anti-government tea party rhetoric and it caught fire in the primary there. you talk about let's see ha happens tonight. if ron paul ends up beating mitt romney. ron paul might be tapping into something kind of similar there. >> what you just said about the

political dynamics of maine do not lead me to think that mitt romney will be strongest. it will be between mitt romney and ron paul, who is contesting there and who is putting in effort. we'll be hearing from the head of the gop party in maine, announcing the caucus results in just a little bit. here on special coverage on msnbc of tonight's maine caucus. michael brendan doherty, what do you think of the diedynamics? >> i think there's a populist anger that's out there. and we've seen it expressed. it's hard to translate that into real politics. i think that might be ron paul's challenge tonight. ron paul appeals to a lot of people who have been alienated from politics for decades, that's why you see all of these strange, political barnacles on the "hhs paul" is that these people haven't been in politics for long and they express

themselves through the internet. but it's hard to motivate them to participate in a caucus system, which you know, is a major political effort. and what i've heard and what i've seen in reporting that mike holly grace wilder has done as business insider is that ron paul has one hard-core following that will go to war with him if he asks them to. >> you may be acquainted with him, with those people if you've written about ron paul on the internet. >> but then there's this other group that where these discontented people that don't have a taste for politics normally and they like paul because he seems anti-political in so many ways. >> but that's an unsustainable foundation to build a political campaign for the president. >> it's very difficult. but i do think it's important for his movement to win maine tonight. i think it's important to show growth. they can say four years from now, if they're running rand paul, remember maine, we did it, we're able to do it. and that's not happened for that movement. i think it will give it legitimacy within the party.

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we hear those same voices today, that we have to learn our lesson. that we should no, that we need to compromise, do what's, what's politically reasonable and go out and push someone forward who can win. >> i think we have learned our lesson. and the lesson we've learned is we will no longer abandon and apologize for the principles

that made this country great for a hollow victory in november. >> rick santorum telling the attendees in cpac what they would like to hear in that clip. standing up to straw men left and right. he does have a point, however, this is which -- here's how i would be thinking, were i a conservative republican. we did try this with john mccain. i mean, we did go the route with john mccain. of the establishment candidate. the one who would run before. the one who had all sorts of heterodoxies in the past, but he tould us he was now really with us. he turned around on x, y and z and we got drubbed. why should we do it again with mitt romney? >> the difference is they didn't do this before in the sense that the reason the people who could win are not running is because there's an incumbent president. what happened last time was almost unprecedented. two open-seat races, right? it was political nerd heaven to have both parties unsure of whom they would be facing in the fall, really fighting it out

around their questions of ideology and who they were as a party. >> and identity. >> and identity, as we recall. all of that was going on. this is quite different. the real sort of issue is that the very best, most conservative and most viable candidates are waiting for mour years because they would prefer to run in an open-seat race. >> i think, it sounds like we have susan collins speaking right now, addressing folks in maine. where we have heard there's a record turn-out. there she is, right there. talking to the folks in maine about tonight's results. we don't have the results yet. we have heard, however, that there is a record turn-out, which may indicate good things for dr. ron paul. if in fact it's a show of the ability of the organizers to turn their folks out. steve, i'm sorry i interrupted you. >> it's an interesting thing, you look at the story of the republican party and the post-bush era, they basically launched a two-front war.

the conservative base of the party. one is a war every time a democrat becomes president. the on the other hand they had to explain how the democrat took power. they explained for the last decade we had the george w. bush and the republicans selling out conservatism. they've been looking for this vision of purity. it's difficult to define, but all they know is that mitt romney represents the forces that sold them out. >> the other side of the exact same argument, which i think is the argument that rick santorum was pointing to in the sound byte is when you look at 2010, there was some genuine upheaval within the republican primaries in a way that was completely unpredictable. joe mill anywhere alaska, sharon engel in nevada. i think the people sort of the guardians of republican pragmatism can point to all three of those races, all three of which were absolutely winnable races, right? and say, this was a disaster, this cost us seats in the

senate. this cost us a lot of money and national reputation. let's not do that again. i think to a certain extent another way of interpreting post-2010, michael, i'd be glad to hear you weighing in on this. is that the tea party has been successfully kind of brought into the tent. has been successfully brought into the kind of coalition bowedly and is not going to go chasing after the next christine o'donnell. >> i think that's partly true. and to some extent, the tea party was very quickly very pragmatic themselves. they rallied behind scott brown in massachusetts, knowing full well what a squish he is on a lot of their issues. and also there were other elections where there was an establishment candidate, like kentucky, where dick cheney was getting behind trey grace and how great that would be and rand paul came in and punched him in the throat and is now a star in the senate. writing books about the tea party comes to washington. >> and mike lee in utah who at the party convention in utah,

unseated incumbent robert bennett. that was also incredibly surprising and he's now a united states senator. >> there's been a little political marriage here of convenience during the obama years and i think that's going to continue to be the case. i mean if there's a mitt romney presidency, though, you could see the mike lees and rand pauls, getting a little bit more ornery and maybe not being as disciplined as the senate and the house was under bush. >> maria? >> well i think part of the thing, though is that the 2012 election was one that wasn't highly participatory by a lot of the majority of voters -- >> 2010? >> 2010. including a lot of moderate republicans, so even though santorum is trying to signal saying i could be that person. he still appeals to the extreme right. mitt romney will bring out a lot of the moderate independents. >> the dynamic of this race to me reminds me a lot of, and i've said this before on air, it reminds me of the 2004 race for democrats. in so far as you know, i

remember fellow liberals, i remember looking myself in the mirror, all right, john kerry, get psyched, going to do it. i'm excited about john kerry. and you know, it was not, i was not that excited about john kerry. but that was sort of at the end of the day, you looked at the options, who was in the diagram of who shared your politics and who could win. >> but isn't the difference in 2004, all the democrats looked at him and said, all right, fine. and now the republicans, we're seeing them look at mitt romney and say, wait a minute. >> that's good point. >> let's look at the primaries that are coming up. california, texas, they're all going to have, they have heavy delegates and they're not going to go for santorum, they're moderate. when you start looking at what's ahead, the individuals that are going to capture the imagination, if you can say that

of romney are actually going to be those delegates. >> it has to with which states are front-loaded. >> and the final thing is in terms of what the strategy is rachel maddow had a fantastic piece about the delegate count and how ron paul appears to be leading in delegate counts under one set of understanding how the delegates are apportioned which is to me, incredibly opaque and we all do this for a living in terms of who has the most delegates, a lot of delegates, places like iowa haven't had the state party conventions yet, which will apportion the delegates. if it's a tight and long race, all the little delegate choices at the margins mater. which means you can look at tonight's coverage of the maine caucus, as a turning point. the results coming any minute now. we'll bring you the announcement when it happens.

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maine republican caucus, at this moment. where they are set to announce the results from tonight's caucuses. >> i'm now going to announce the winner of the maine gop presidential poll. and that winner is mitt romney. [ cheers and applause ] >> excuse me, excuse me. thank you, thank you. >> let me go on, mitt romney received 39% of the vote. a total of 2,190. ron paul received 36% of the vote, a total of 1,996 votes.

santorum received 18% of the vote, with 989 votes. and gingrich received 6% of the vote, with 349 votes. there were 61 votes cast for others, besides these four nominees. we would -- we would like to congratulate mitt romney on his win in this maine caucus. [ cheers and applause ] >> thank you, thank you. >> we would also like to thank both mitt romney and ron paul for personally visiting our state and that's a big deal. >> many people were excited to cast their first vote against the obama agenda and our

activists are excited to be working with our republican presidential nominee, to defeat barack obama in maine. maine -- >> all right. that, those are the results from the maine gop caucus. the apparent winner, mitt romney with 39 % of the caucus votes cast. ron paul coming in a very, very close second. with 36% of the votes. behind him, rick santorum at 18% and newt gingrich at 6%. all of those results are according to the maine gop republican party, running the caucus. so mitt romney does, appears, we should say, as we learned our lesson on, in iowa, that it doesn't necessarily mean these are the final numbers and perhaps some other headlines might be appearing down the road. but i'm saying tomorrow morning's pains like it's 1965. but for the people checking twitter in the next 30 seconds,

mitt romney is the apparent winner of the maine caucus. and that does, i think at least arrest the losing streak that he was, he was on. >> we set this up as sort of the top of the show, talking about the ppp poll that has him down to 20% nationally. if the narrative is four out of five losses in february, that number could drop. let's butt it in perspective. in 2008 mitt romney was well over 50% in maine this wasn't even a race up there, this is his home region. and my question, i would be interested, my understanding is the caucuses, the locations that did not participate are in the far eastern part of the state which i think would be a more ron paul-friendly area. i'm wondering how many people that involves and i'm wondering if that might be a repeat of the iowa thing. >> steve kornacki busting out his knowledge of politics, which has left us agape. i'm glad you're here with us tonight. we have 95% of the caucus votes are in, there's 5% of the caucusing that doesn't even happen until after tonight, i

believe. so it is possible those votes change. but michael brendan jordan. mitt romney, the campaign has two, a good headline, which is, wins the cpac stroll poll, wins in maine, good day for romney, back on track. >> absolutely. i think we've seen that the media has this amazing influence over the race. good story lines in the week before a contest can lead to a 10-point surge as we saw for santorum in iowa. we saw for huntsman, went from 7 to 17 in new hampshire in about two days. we saw it from newt in south carolina. so momentum is really i think even more important than the votes sometimes or the preelection polls. so it's very good for mitt romney. i think this is also very bad for ron paul. i think it shows that he, his campaign made a big mistake not investing more in the get out the vote efforts in south carolina and florida. and it went from, beating expectations in iowa and new hampshire, to underperforming

and i think it's hard for his supporters to get this sort of secretly we're collecting delegates, strategy. when it could have been a big headline tonight, that hey, ron paul won a state. >> actually won a state. >> is ron paul actually running for president? i don't mean that to be funny at all. people run for president for a variety of different reasons. so it, you know, part of how national media cover paul. but i think part of how paul self-presents, it feels like he's not running for president, he's running to preserve libertarian issues. it sounds like he made a big mistake by not winning some of these other ones, it sounds like you're talking about a presidential campaign to win the nomination. >> agree with you he's not exactly running for president, i think what he's doing is barn-storming the country, getting his issues out and identifying activists,

identifying phone numbers and addresses that his people can call, write letters to and solicit fundraising from for maybe rand paul in another race. and i think they've seen trying to run a serious race in 2008 gave him a national voice that he didn't have for years before. so this is about a long-term movement-building enterprise. but i still think victories -- >> victories make a difference in terms of how seriously you are taken. >> and in arizona, how strong you can hit up people this year and next year. >> newt gingrich finished 4 fourth with 6% of the vote. rick tyler is joining us. i want to get your reaction to the result both at the cpac straw poll and in maine tonight. which i do appear to be at least interrupt the wave of negativity in which mitt romney, the front-runner, had been engulfed since tuesday. >> i think it's true. i think that you know, rick

santorum had a big win in three states. so he wanted to carry the momentum forward. maine is a much smaller state. we're looking at 5,000 voters have stopped the momentum for rick santorum. i agree with the previous commentary that mitt romney should have won this much bigger. he won it much bigger in 2010. but again maybe the large story here is ron paul. i think ron paul's hope for ron paul's supporters is actually named rand and maybe not ron. and maine is really the only state that ron paul probably would have had any chance of winning. he didn't win it tonight. well only by 194 votes here. so -- >> we will be checking in on ron paul, who we believe will be speaking soon. but two pieces of news i want to get your reaction to. the ppp poll we cited at the top of the show, which showed santorum opening up a considerable lead in national polling. 38% over romney at 23% and newt

gingrich at 17%. in that poll, they asked gingrich supporters who they would favor if gingrich weren't in the race and they would favor romney. the other piece of news is reporting about shelden adelson. the billionaire casino owner who has given, he and his wife have given $10 million to the super pac which you run. talking about quote-unquote turning off the spigot. how long could newt gingrich remain competitive in the race, given the numbers tonight, the numbers we saw on tuesday, if in fact there is, you cannot raise the kind of money you've been able to raise for the super pac that you run? >> i'm not sure mr. adelson said that, i've read that but i'm reasonably sure he did not say that. i think mitt romney cannot do is raise the most money, but raise a conservative army. he's capal of doing it. newt is in my opinion, the most experienced, he has the most

command of the issues, he is the most conservative and he was the subject of 13,000 ads. i think it was very damaging to him and i think it was very damaging to mitt romney. he paid for it with independent voters. ever since south carolina we've had a suppression of voter turnout, not an increase of voter turnout. we've taken an excited base 20 beat barack obama, and now we have a depressed base. >> rick tyler given that, given the decline we've seen in two things simultaneously, turn-outs post south carolina. south carolina was the high-water mark for turnout in the gop race. >> gingrich won it. >> who won that again? >> gingrich. >> and actually we're going to hear ron paul who is speaking live in maine after the results from the maine caucuses. you are looking at a live picture of ron paul, the only

candidate i believe in the state of maine. he is there tonight addressing supporters right now. that's also ron paul's sign. that's a sign of ron paul. and ron paul, there's ron paul. >> i do want to recognize the staff, all of you, all the volunteers and all the work that's been done, it's been fantastic. thank you very much and encourage us, it's an important issue, thank you. >> you know, i have one slightly discouraging announcement, i wish all the caucuses had met today. because i was disappointed, there was one caucus that i think we would have done very, very well. but we won, we lost by i guess almost 200 votes, 190 votes, it's almost like we could call

it a tie. but anyway, the votes will be counted. all the caucuses will meet. but i do want to make a prediction. if i were a betting man, and i do not have $10,000 to bet. if i were a betting man, i would bet we will control the maine caucus when we go to tampa. [ cheers and applause ] >> it would have been great to win outright the straw vote, but it will even be greater to win the delegate vote. >> and that's go to happen. the momentum is going to continue. we're not going away. we're going to be in all these places where we're going to pick

up, continue to pick up the delegates. for one good reason -- we have the message that america needs at this particular time. >> the wonderful thing is the message is not complex. everybody understands it. and the message is, liberty. that is the message. that means we want our freedom. we want each and every individual to have their freedom. not because they belong to a group, not because they belong to one state or another. it's because we are individuals, that we are born with our freedom and we have natural right to our liberties, it's a god-given right and it follows that if you have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, run your life as you choose in both the social and an economic means. and if that is the case, the goal that we have is for all of us to be able to keep the fruits of our labor.

>> this is a not a brand-new concept, it's an american concept. we tried it, it was working very well and unfortunately, many, many decades ago, we started slipping away and took it for granted. we turned into a society that thought only that you redistributed wealth both by force and coercion and lobbying. and we forgot about what, what brought about prosperity and production. and it's only free people that can do that. the understanding of property rights, the understanding of a contract rights. and one important issue for prosperity to thrive, you have to have an honest monetary system.

>> those are the end of fed chant that we have come to know and love in their own way. the full-hn throated endorsements of our fellow citizens who would like to do away with the federal reserve started after the great panic of 1907 which almost completely imploded and destroyed the american economy and we haven't had an explosion that badly ever since, i guess except for the great depression. the gold standard, let's not talk about it right now. ron paul, who -- >> chris, just any time it could happen for you, can't it? we just get another conversation and -- >> where did i go, okay where am i. that's ron paul addressing supporters in the great state of maine tonight. after i think what was a robust, but ultimately disappointing showing for ron paul. seeing as how anthony tyrell, a reporter embedded with ron paul

said the campaign thought that was their shot at an outright victory. the headline in the "new york times" and "huffington post" says ron paul actually wins a state. that, as far as we know with 95% of the straw vote polls counted is not to be. the mitt romney is the apparent winner with 39% of the votes. the number you see to the right of 39%, is not, that is the actual number of votes cast. that is not denominated in thousands or something. that is 2,190 people who cast votes. and nbc news has called it, that mitt romney is in fact the winner of the maine caucus, 21 delegates at stake in the maine caucus, mitt romney the winner with 39% of the vote. coming just behind in second is ron paul at 36%. rick santorum who had a huge night earlier this week with three victories on tuesday night in colorado, minnesota and in

missouri, he comes in third with 18%. and coming up fourth, newt gingrich at 6%. newt gingrich, has had i think a hard time since south carolina, rick tyler was saying before that he was the subject of a lot of negative ads. one of the things that we've seen, however, is i wonder how much the fluidity of the race means, that there's even a possibility of a third look at newt gingrich? is that a possibility? has he spent down his chances of that at this point? >> i think there were two ways of looking at this race. one is sort of a regional perspective. which is that you've seen mitt romney do really well in the northeast. you've seen him do well in the west. you've seen rick santorum do well in the midwest and you've seen newt gingrich in the south and south carolina and the panhandle of florida. under that theory, newt gingrich can rise gn on super tuesday, when the action goes to georgia, mississippi and tennessee. not only is newt gingrich collapsing in national polls with the support sort of moving to santorum. there was a poll that came out

in tennessee the other day, post tuesday. and it showed santorum ahead, romney in second, gingrich falling back to like 15% to 16%. that suggests to me that the issue can be can rick santorum, an italian-american pennsylvania catholic, can he sell to the evangelicals down south. the south sees this as romney versus santorum, they'll go with santorum. >> what is dominating headlines for the next weeks? is it going to be economic news? which i think mitt romney has a certain strength on and a plausibility on. or is it going to be birth control. you're watching msnbc's live coverage of the maine caucuses.

welcome back to msnbc's coverage of the maine republican caucus. mitt romney, the winner tonight with ron paul a close second. you can see the results right there. mitt romney with 39% of the vote. ron paul at 36%. ron paul supporters had hoped he could pull out a victory in maine. it would be the first outright victory that he had in any of the states in the gop contests

so far. let's bring in perry bacon, who is with the grio, perry, how are you? >> doing well. >> what is your reaction to tonight, i guess our general feeling, that the temperature of the room is that there was some down side risk for mitt romney tonight, if in fact he lost. but he's averted that disaster. what's your feeling? >> for romney, not a lot changed. he does sort of stop the bad news headlines from happening over and over again. i think for paul, as you have talked about a little, the defeat for him, he's trying to build a movement and he needs to win a state that would help in some ways. you heard him talk about the fact that he actually basically said i'm trying to win delegates, not primaries. in his speech. his goal is to amass enough delegates to have big role in the convention in a few months. so losing a state, not as

important as long as he can get delegates in the process. >> this is what the ron paul folks are saying, they're taking the long view, studying the barack obama campaign model of 2008. but it seems to me the history of presidential nomination battles is that essentially delegates stop mattering at a certain point because the nominee wins essentially by acclamation, right? vengsly there's a consolidation that happens. that's been the history. delegates mattered for much longer than we thought they would matter in 2008. but ultimately they're not a coin of the realm once you get to the convention, right? isn't that a problem with that strategy, perry? >> if you're trying to win the nomination, then that strategy doesn't matter and is bad. because eventually you'll quit running once the money runs out. paul is not trying to win, i think he wants to have enough delegates where he can make a push where either he or rand can

make a speech at the convention. to talk about libertarian republicans, that's what they're running for. so for that, i think this, if you get enough delegates, are you actually succeeding, even if you never actually win a state. >> perry bacon of the grio, thanks so much for joining us tonight. appreciate it. >> thanks, chris. mitt romney, the winner of the maine republican caucuses tonight. ron paul finished a few points behind him. we will have more from maine, when we come back.

mitt romney is the winner of the maine republican caucuses. ron paul finished second. check back in with nbc embed anthony tyrell covering the paul campaign. >> ron paul just moments ago took the stage and he said he would consider this a tie because not all the votes were counted today. earlier when i got here, some staffers were telling me some crucial caucuses here in the state, including washington county postponed their caucus. so senior campaign sources tell me back stage before ron paul came on is that once all the votes are counted, this could be a tie. ron paul says the greater win, like we spoke about earlier is the delegate win. they believe their supporters have stuck around the caucus

meetings and been elected delegates which will go on to the state and then on to tampa in august. dr. paul moments ago saying don't be disappointed. he's telling supporters that the greater wins are the delegates. >> anthony tyrell, where do you see the paul campaign with the calendar going forward? >> they're looking at a lot of the caucus states, i'm told they're going to take a swing west to look at idaho, washington and alaska. they're looking at some caucus states, not a lot of the candidates will be going to. they think that ron paul does well in caucus states, that's why they're focusing on the swing out west before they go to the debate in two weeks in arizona. >> thank you, anthony tyrell embedded with the paul campaign. all right, the paul campaign i think the actual vote total difference was 194 votes if i'm not mistaken. so it's possible we could see

the vote total change. and i mean the one thing you wouldn't want, right, to project forward is for romney, if you're the romney campaign, you do not want a rerun, reprisal of iowa, where a week from now you get the story again, actually it turns out. >> it would be a bad thing, i think for romney is that oh, here's another fake win for mitt romney. we got every chit in from and suddenly, he's a loser again. so every meth head in jackman that went in and voted for ron paul, it's a turned over and it would be a disaster for romney if that happened. i think it's just so embarrassing, right. >> and it's embarrassing, but what he really wants is the new cycle, the headlines tomorrow saying he won. so a week from now, if all of a sudden ron paul comes in, it's a little too late. >> i thought that with iowa. i thought all that mattered was he won that night and it doesn't matter essentially that santorum

won afterwards. but it did matter in terms of the way the story was assembled around the -- >> but with -- >> when it happens, but the other thing i think we can say about the results is think back to tuesday when the returns were coming in. late at night it looked like romney would have had a shot at winning colorado. if he would have won colorado. at that point when they lost, he said we need to make an effort in maine, we need to spend money and put some ads up. if they hadn't done that, ron paul wins tonight. >> the tactical decision made then was probably the right one. >> you think ahead to the other caucuses they're talking like for ron paul. alaska, pat buchanan won the alaska caucuses before. i don't think romney will target those, so ron paul may pick up that. >> the biggest difference between santorum winning iowa and ron paul winning maine. >> he did not win, he came in

second. >> but the possibility of. yes, ron paul seven days later can actually beat them, but unfortunately, what happens is that at the end of the day, i think who cares, but santorum is very viable so that's why they're so afraid of him winning colorado and then all of a sudden mitt romney coming in second. >> it could be difficult for santorum to pick up the momentum. then there's going to be a story by the time we get around to super tuesday, santorum is not on the ballot in virginia, a gigantic state that republicans would love to have in november. and it's just going to be a ron paul/mitt romney contest again. >> should we care about overstating the viability of santorum's candidacy. >> more viable that ron paul? sure, but still really quite a ways off from mitt romney. >> the big test for -- >> it's going to be michigan, i think. michigan is going to be the big test. because he actually basically embodies the michigan blue collar worker. coming from pennsylvania. whereas romney does not. i think --

>> even though of course he's a native son of the great state of michigan and his father was the governor of the state of michigan and there are deep local romney roots that should help him. >> the margin over mccain for romney in 2008 was about five points. the other thing that michigan forgets is western michigan has a pretty sizeable evangelical community. you marry the blue collar santorum voters with the evangelicals, that could be trouble for mitt romney. >> i didn't want to imply that every person in jackman is a meth head. >> thank you for correcting that. >> i want to say is that the republican race is kind of an anti-power ranger. every person in the race exposes the other person's weaknesses. it's in a way, you know, we've seen that romney doesn't do well in the south because gingrich did well there. he can't do well with blue collar voters, he can't do well

with tea partiyers and radicals, ron paul is doing well with them. >> it's less than the sum of its parts as we go further out. which is different, i believe, than 2008, in which it seemed that hillary clinton and barack obama kind of made each other better, ultimately as campaigners. all right. thank you, michael, brendan doherty, politics editor of business inseeder, msnbc's melissa harris perry. her new show starts next weekend. we could not be more excited up on the eighth floor. salon's steve kornaca, and maria melissa kumar. coming up next, lock-up.