eight votes, one of the closest contests in presidential campaign history. the closest ever in the caucus. now he's hoping to do what no other republican nonincumbent has done ever, captured the one-two punch of iowa and new hampshire. >> this is -- this is a campaign night where america wins. we're going to change the white house and get america back on track. >> number two, rick santorum has emerged as the conservative alternative to mitt romney. >> the message i share with you tonight is not an iowa message on an iowa and south carolina message. it is a message that will resonate across this land. it will resonate, i know, in new hampshire. >> santorum did it on the smallest budget imaginable, spending just over $1 million. 1/18 of what mitt romney spent. we'll see who has the money to survive, after the iowa caucus. ron paul settling into third place. newt gingrich, fourth. rick perry, fifth.

michele bachmann, last. she's canceled her trip to south carolina. she has a news conference scheduled just this hour. perry first signaled he'd bow out. >> i decided to return to texas, assess the results of tonight's caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race. >> charles blow is "the new york times" columnist, karen hunter, pulitzer prize winning journalist and publisher. isn't this fun? >> it is. >> mitt romney, according newt gingrich and others he has a big problem. he laid it out this morning. let's play that. >> i think what's striking about last night is that three out of four republicans, once again, repudiated mitt romney. here's a guy who has spent millions campaigning in iowa for five years, and he has a ceiling of 25%. >> does he, charles? that is really it? 75% of the electorate said we want somebody who is not mitt.

>> that is it. you can't take it from that guy, because that guy is so bitter. but he does have that problem, which is, you know, you still only have 25% going for mitt romney. if you look at the county -- you got about the same amount as he got last time. if you look at voter turnout, kind of a record high, went up by a couple thousand votes but mitt romney didn't benefit from that at all. >> he's where he was four years ago. >> he's worse, five fewer people voted for him. >> exactly. >> if you look at the geography of where mitt romney won, he picked up seven counties but lost 14. so his -- kind of sphere of his influence keeps shrinking. that should worry them to death. they can put whatever spin they want and say they're excited about moving forward, but that should really scare them because if you take the ron paul vote and combine it with what santorum got, which is what is

going to happen when one of those guys fall out of this race, mitt romney still has a problem. >> let's talk about santorum, because he might not be your cup of tea, but you've got to be amazed what he pulled off. >> love him. >> almost no money, driving around in a borrowed pickup truck. gave a compelling speech, though he might have thought to do it in prime time, might have been better. can he turn this near-win into something? >> absolutely. i tweeted this morning that mitt romney may have won but he actually lost, and watching that speech last night, santorum did something money can't buy. he worked. he worked every single county, shook every single hand. >> he can't do that in south carolina, florida. >> he said i'm the only candidate who has been to new hampshire more than anyone else 0 out side of john sunwn huntsm lives there. it made him a real person unlike mitt romney because people don't relate to him. >> he's not a real person.

>> he's plastic and insincere. last night santorum solidified his position. >> interesting stuff coming out of entrance polls last night. for example, those people who said defeating obama was most important, picked up romney. but again, to your point, charles, combining two, the base, those who said the most important thing was finding a true conservative, those who said abortion was the most important issue, they went for santorum, and paul. when you look at those true conservatives, 1% went for mitt romney. what does that mean? >> that's a problem because you know first races you have iowa and new hampshire, this thing swings south really fast. and can mitt romney hold up in the south? not necessarily being what most of the conservatives consider to be a true conservative. and the mormon issue is going to be a real issue. i spent my holidays in the south -- >> religion didn't seem to be an issue. >> but i think when you get south and people who, you

know -- >> you came back from the south. >> i'm saying they're not slow, it's just they don't know what a mormon is and they don't know how that registers with what their own personal beliefs are. we can debate issue after issue and how you plan to reduce the deficit and what you want to do about iran, but on a certain level a lot of voters do vote on a gut check. >> if they don't like romney and if perry's gone, and if bachmann, looks like she's gone? >> santorum. he's the only candidate that is clean. you know he doesn't have the -- >> he's not that clean. >> he's clean for the people that he needs to be clean for, okay. even the race issue, that's not a problem for him in the south, that may help him. you know, the abortion thing, that's not going to be a problem for him, that's going to help him. his biggest problem is the man you called mr. bitter. newt gingrich is coming after him. if i can't win, i'm going to make sure that mitt romney's not going to win it. and it's going to be an ugly thing and he already laid down

the gauntlet and told us santorum is his man, mitt romney watch your back. >> i think that romney can make a case on some of the racial, the homophobic, the abortion issues. there is a case to be made about electability even on those issues because if you look at how people poll, even on those issues, most people poll a little bit more toward the middle than the extremes. and on a lot of those issues, santorum does not articulate a position that is -- >> hold on. i want to bring in ezra klein. i wanted to talk to ezra about the nastiness of this campaign. look, after getting crushed by an avalanche of ads, newt gingrich is vowing to fight back. he says he's going into new hampshire. he's going into florida. let me play for you a little bit of what he said this morning. >> we are not going to go out and run nasty ads.

i do reserve the right to tell the truth. and if the truth seems negative, that may be more a comment on his record than it is on politics. >> so, we have newt gingrich, who calls romney a liar. i'm running a nice campaign, but you lied about me. santorum says ron paul is disgusting. there was another interesting thing this morning. what was it? newt is a chicken hawk, according to ron paul. hoy nasty is this going to get, ezra? >> this is not -- i would say one thing is it's not that nasty. liar, you lied about my record, that's pro forma. ron paul's an odd duck in a primary when he's outside the republican mainstream, i'm not shocked there. they've been, i think, not only not that nasty with one another but actually, what's bigger for romney, he's not been on the air against one another. what romney fears, what is nasty to mitt romney, is blanketing the airwaves with attacks showing mitt romney saying one thing and saying another, saying one thing, saying another, saying one thing, saying

another. none of his competitors have had the money to do it to him. those who have had enough money to get on the have been attacking the anti-romney. newt gingrich, in addition to getting hammered by the super pacs got hammered. so for newt, for mitt romney, this has been the nicest, cleanest campaign one could possibly imagine. >> so is this going to be the campaign, nastiness coming from the super pacs. this was through december 30 p. ron paul ran almost 2600 ads, half attack ads. the pac that supports romney ran 1,746, all negative and most were aimed at gingrich. so, is that what we're looking at here? we're looking at the candidate who the nasty evidence thing he says is, you lied about something and let the pacs do the dirty work? >> absolutely. he gets down to a plausible

deniable. he gets to say, pacs, i don't know those guys, i by law can't communicate with them. the super pacs, everybody knows what they're doing. a super pac set up by jon huntsman's dad. you think that is not in some basic way allied with the jon huntsman's campaign? the super pacs, what they are basically ares groups can funnel unlimited money to a front group. that group never has to disclose where that money's coming from and spend an unlimited amount in the primary. >> and the voter may not know who the pac is and who they support, when attacking an attack ad against newt gingrich they might not associate it with a specific opponent. is there a limit, karen, is there a limit to what people will -- does there come a point -- we're only in january, we have a long campaign where -- where it's enough already? >> folks struggling to pay their bills, tolls and taxes and

everything else is going up and income isn't going up, what can you do to help me get out of the situation? i think this favors santorum who is going door by door, in the streets, he's talking to people, and i think that's what rez natured with them last night which is why we see the results. i think even if he doesn't have money to negatively attack he can sit back and let newt gingrich do all of the nasty's, because he's going to, and get out in the streets and talk to people and that's going to benefit him. i disagree with you, at the end of the day, charles, it's a passionate vote. people want to vote for someone that they really want to vote, not just vote against obama. >> let me ask you, we have two debates this weekend, i'm out of time, i'm getting yelled out, your sentence on this, what's the general strategy? is the strategy going to be i'm going to look very presidential or especially if you're a newt gingrich or you're rick santorum and see an opening, are you going to go hard? >> newt gingrich is going hard. mitt romney better wear his flak jack sweat helmet.

santorum has to look presidential and stay out of the fray. >> is that what he's going to do? >> right. if you're on the uptick you don't go on the attack. if you're going downhill you have to go on the attack. one thing to add to what ezra zad, not only do pacs have money to go on air what campaigns are doing this time, which is different, they're using social media. you can test a spot on youtube, see if it gets traction, see if people want to see it, and then if people start to click on it, you can say, let's put this on the air and that way you don't necessarily have to bombard people with negative ads all the time. you can test it out. >> ezra, does that argue for a nice, sweet, ckumbaya debate ths weekend? >> no, i think newt gingrich is going hard at mitt romney. for rick santorum, we'll see. he's not been very good in the debates. he's got this aggrieves, whiney tone. he does not look presidentle. >> we'll see. certainly is not boring. ezra, thank you, karen, charles,

thanks to you as well. when you voted in our facebook poll on monday, two of you thought rick perry would drop out of the race first. most people said it would be michele bachmann. again, 11:00 a.m. press conference coming up in 45 minutes. this sunday morning, set your dvrs the gop candidates will be debating on "meet the press." david gregory moderating. if you have a question you'd like to ask the candidates, go to our facebook page and submit it. the nbc news facebook debate live from concord, new hampshire, sunday, 9:00 a.m. eastern on msnbc and your local nbc station. now, check out this video. just moments before mitt romney came out for his victory speech, romney's aides took down the teleprompters. there they go. politico says aides wanted him to, quote, speak from the heart, after a personal speech by rick santorum. i had enough of feeling embarrassed about my skin. [ designer ] enough of just covering up my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. i decided enough is enough. ♪

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a big endorsement expected for mitt romney this morning in new hampshire. john mccain, senator from arizona, and the gop 2008 nominee, will throw this support me behind mitt romney. >> i look back to 1980 as well, reagan got 29% of votes here and ultimately he was able to become our nominee. >> and maybe there's fuzzy math happening. when you look at numbers, ron paul's third. but he says not so fast. >> coming in third essentially in a very, very close race, put the other two together, we're in second they were tied for first. >> that was hilarious. jon huntsman doesn't care about the numbers in iowa, he wasn't there. he's campaigning in new hampshire where he claims he's surging. >> you've got three people

basically sharing a tie and a whole lot of people who are looking for an alternative. and now the marketplace, joe, is going to turn to new hampshire and nobody here really cares about what happened in iowa. >> president obama, meantime, depart for ohio. just a few minutes from now he'll be talking about the economy in the key battleground state that is hurting economically. last night he tried to rally iowa democrats with a live video teleconference. >> so, the only way we're able to do that is if all of you maintain the same determination, the same energy, the same drive, the same hopefulness, the same optimism about this wonderful country of ours as was on display four years ago. >> david corns washington bureau chief of mother jones and political analyst. good morning. >> good morning. >> the argument's being made that president obama was the big winner because the field remains unsettled and as long as the republicans are going after each

other that only helps him. do you buy that argument? >> i think the field is weak. the fact that mitt romney who has been campaigning in iowa for like 17 years now, can't get above 25% even if after spending $30 million or whatever the final figure was. i think it shows that he is inher rently a weak republican and you have the republican craziness. republicans go ahead and nominate someone like rick santorum who is extreme on cultural ideological issues he's against contraception. he's a cultural warrior. is that what people want when the economy's doing bad and other things have to be dealt with? i don't know. i think the republican party has to take weeks, if not months, to sort this out and that's good for barack obama who has his own problems. >> yeah, he's got problems with the economy, basically, and that's to say that he and his team have been working like crazy. he's got an organization that's unparalleled in the history of presidential campaigning and

they thought last night was a dry run in iowa. they got 25,000 people to come out and watch that video teleconference, which isn't bad. 7500 signed up as volunteers would you say that's a successful night? it's a very successful night. remember, iowa and new hampshire as well, remains swing states in the general election. so the obama campaign is using caucuses in the primary as a way to generate interest and get support and get volunteers. their strategy is that this is not going to be a national election. we're going to have any where between 6 to 12 states in play, and what they need to do is maximize their strategy, their communications and their volunteer and grassroots base, and those states to try to overcome what's going to be, you know, impulse, i think, amongst a lot of voters, for change against the president just because the economy, you know, he likely to still be in a pretty bad spot. this was a great test run for them. we saw that in north carolina as well when the -- when obama volunteers worked in the last

election and helped elect democrats throughout the state. david plouffe, jim messina, the grand strategists of all of this, have a customized approach to this coming election and i think so far they're showing that they can make some gains, at least, at least establish what they need to establish for that to have a chance of succeeding. >> to that point of establishing what they -- the points they want to make, they came out with a new campaign video with the president laying out promise his made to americans in 2008 that he kept. let me play a little bit of that video. >> i'll be a president who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single american. i'll be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and put the middle class tax cut into the pockets of working americans who deserve it.

>> so he's got accomplishments that he can talk about, whether bin laden or the tax cuts but he's going today into a state like ohio where not only is the economy in bad shape but when they do head-to-head matchups he does not do well in the key battleground state. so how does he turn it around? >> if you look at the midterm elections last november, the democrats seem to be running away from everything that obama had succeeded in the previous two years which they had helped him with, the stimulus bill, wall street reform, health care reform. i think the obama campaign has the exact opposite approach. they want to convince voters in ohio and elsewhere that obama did have these very real achievements that kept the economy from getting worse. now this is a hard, you know, case to make. >> very hard case to make. >> that it would be worse without him, but he has some grounds to make that case and he'll be making it more

forcefully than we saw the democrats do last fall. >> david corn, always good to see you. obama 2012 is taking it another step to increase the president's online profile. joining the popular photo sharing website, instagram, a behind the scene shot behind the iowa teleconference. obama 2012 is asking supporters to share their photos. sam: i'm sam chernin. owner of sammy's fish box. i opened the first sammy's back in 1966. my employees are like family. and, i want people that work for me to feel that they're sharing in my success. we purchase as much as we can on the american express open gold card. so we can accumulate as many points as possible. i pass on these points to my employees to go on trips with their families. when my employees are happy, my customers are happy. vo: earn points for the things you're already buying. call 1-800-now-open to find out how the gold card can serve your business.

breaking news. the republicans aren't happy about it, president obama making a recess appointment, he's putting richard cordray former of ohio, tweeting the president will make that announcement in shaker heights later today. senate is on holiday break. politico calling this a defiant display of executive power. again, we'll have that for you

when it happens. but the president deciding to appoint richard cordray. he sees as it important because this is a group that would oversee things like payday lenders and student loan companies. we're going to be hearing from the republicans shortly, i have no doubt. before the iowa caucuses, mitt romney was killing it in new hampshire where the first in the nation primary is next tuesday. but it is a whole new day in the republican race. i'm joined by former new hampshire senator bob smith, a newt gingrich supporter. good morning. >> good morning, chris. >> you saw it newt gingrich came in a distant fourth last night. he's vowed to stay in the race and is going to start hitting back at mitt romney in ads in the next three primary states. are you worried, is it too little, too late? >> new york not at all. this is a long-distance run. we expected that. this is the first quarter. >> you didn't expect him to come in fourth in iowa? >> well, look, no, we want to win. i mean, winning is the best, that didn't happen.

but it's still early. i mean, one election, no delegates picked. you know, now we're in new hampshire. so this is a long distance run. there are 49 other primaries and caucuses. we're in it. we're in in. >> when you got on board with gingrich you were impressed about his debate performances and the surge he saw because there ways time he was at the top of the polls and now that surge belongs to rick santorum, also like you a conservative. do you think he would be a good alternative to barack obama? >> well, look, the point is, all of these polls and all surges and all of this terminology, the truth is, newt was, if you want to go with the polls we don't care about the polls, newt conducted himself in a very, very professional, presidential manner in the polls. he tried to stay focused on the issues and he got the negative attacks. so you know, that's unfortunate because now we're talking about polls and negative politics and we're not talking about reducing the debt, getting people back to work again.

this is unfortunately what happens in politics. but i have to say, i never have been prouder of anybody than i was of newt gingrich. i mean the things that they threw at this guy are unbelievable. we're all big boys and girls, we've been in this game a long time. but to make fun of somebody who loses a little bit talking about his mother who suffered from depression, that's over the top. and i think the people of new hampshire and other people along the way are going to tell mr. romney what what they think about that. >> let me ask you about that. mitt romney has a us new hampshire, the polls show him well in the lead. but obviously there was a huge not romney vote last night. new hampshire's a very different state than either iowa or south carolina. but do you think that with mitt romney right now so far ahead that any of these other candidates can truly challenge him in your home state? >> well, where was rick santorum two months ago when you guys were talking about being ahead in the polls? i mean, polls are today, not

tomorrow. look, 75% of the people in iowa last night said no to mitt romney. 75%. he got six less votes than he got four years ago after spending tens of millions of dollars. the danger for mitt romney is that somebody unites around a conservative like mitt -- like newt gingrich and wins this thing. the people, the republican voters have said very clearly, we do not want a massachusetts moderate to head our ticket. and that's going to be -- that will be the issue throughout this entire campaign and when it's over, at the finish line, newt gingrich, i believe, will be the nominee. >> senator bob smooth. good to see you. thank you. >> thank you. >> michele bachmann is holding a press conference coming up in just about 30 minutes. she got just 5% of the vote last night at caucus. canceled her trip to south carolina. so guess we have an indication of what she might say. if she gets out of the race who gets her conservative

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we have been mentioning that michele bachmann earlier this morning canceled her trip to south carolina and scheduled an 11:00 a.m. news conference. kelly o'donnell just got to the note west demine where we expect to hear from bachmann. it points to all signs of her dropping out. any intel there? >> reporter: we don't have it confirmed that would be the tempo of how these things go when a candidate's had a rough night. this is the room where she addressed supporters. it's been reshaped. there's balloons in the corners that why leftovers. it was a mad dash to get things set up. aides say she spend the hours into the wee hours talking with families, supporters making decisions about going forward. not moving on to south carolinas a big indication. she hoped to take the springboard of better support in iowa to a state like south

carolina where she believes that her christian values and the appeal that she has to that kind of voter would carry her as well as the other tea party issues that she has represented but her showing was so much less than what they had expected, after being with her in juning when she announced in waterloo, iowa, a great deal of support around her, the ames straw poll victory. in talking with voters of the ground i heard from so many that they liked her, they shared many of her ideas but did not believe she could go the distance and that was a real drain on her support. also got a sense from some churchgoers that we interviewed that they had some discomfort with a woman going forward. that will be sorted out. but she has certainly fought very hard. she's had good debate performances and tough times along the way. but we expect significant announcement from michele bachmann in just a short while. chris? >> kelly o'donnell, thank you. one of the people suggesting by the way that michele bachmann

might want to think about getting out was sarah palin. we'll see where she goes next, if she might support maybe rick santorum. there you see that is marine one and the president should be coming out. and he, of course, will be getting on air force one, heading to cleveland, ohio, heading to suburban shaker heights, talking about compete and that's something we'll hear time and time and time again as he gets into campaign mode here in 2012. we'll be keeping our eye on the president when he goes to ohio. mitt romney wasting no time unleashing his political machine in florida. his campaign spent $825,000 on their first ad buys. this commercial is the beginning of the romney ad onslaught ahead of the sunshine state's january 31st primary. in iowa, $16 million spent by campaigns and super pacs. so which candidate got the most bang and the most votes for the buck? richard lui looked into that.

i find this fascinating. >> it is fascinating when you look at the numbers. good morning. campaigns, they hope for big returns on money spent and one measure, as you intimate, cost provoked. the worst first for you, each rick perry vote cost $468 each. that's campaign and super pac money decided by votes. the cost drop, mitt romney at $143 each vote finishing tops in the caucus worst the investment it appears. not far behind with $107, ron paul. ron paul, many ads attacking newt gingrich who finished fourth in the caucus. number four. even though votes cost $77 each, it wasn't the trade-off gingrich probably wanted, though. the best of both worlds, rick santorum, lowest cost, $19 per vote, and just shy of the highest vote count, came in number two. could have been different, though. half of all money spent was on negative ads which caused some

controversy. >> romney can say, i want all of the negative advertising to stop. what prevents him from saying that? >> well, what prevents him from saying that is the plain wording of the law -- >> no, i'm saying he can say, i don't want negative advertising in this campaign. >> well, that's about gingrich. gingrich living and dying by the sword. that is, the tv ad. he surged using ad but was when anti-newt ads surged, gingrich faltered. santorum did not. and he won 62 counties. he couldn't afford any other way. when he surges, voters remembers, santorum was tangible. time luxury dissipates now. after new hampshire, candidate need doppelgangers to increase gains. tv stations they charge by the eyeball. look at this, in coming states, they've got millions more eyeball than in iowa which means

successful, small strategies used in iowa disappear. >> no small thing. again, not too much of that door-to-door we see on newt gingrich in concord, new hampshire, already. he's making his case and as always, we see ka listta, his wife by his side. retail politics and heavy tv advertise, moving south, south carolina, florida, newt gingrich predicts a huge stumble for mitt romney. >> by the time he gets to south carolina and florida, it will be obvious, this is not a conservative republican. he is not going to win the nomination. and he is not the most electable candidate. >> well, let's start with south carolina. chad conley, chairman of the south carolina republican party, and the chairman of the south carolina democratic party. gentlemen, welcome back. chad, 17 days to going, mitt romney flooding the airwaves, newt gingrich is refining his message for south carolina. but here's my question. given last night, can rick santorum get an organization together in south carolina in time to do something?

>> chris, good morning. thanks for having me. i think people will be surprised because senator santorum's got a good ground game. he's got talented people on board and working the ground game hard. in south carolina, our republican primary voters expect to see him on the ground here. >> do you think santorum needs romney to make a mistake to really have a good chance, dick? >> i don't think so. i agree with chad. we've seen rick santorum here time and time again over last several months. it's important to understand, look at numbers last night, "new york times" did some exit polling, the conservative republicans went with santorum. the evangelical republicans went with santorum. and mitt romney came in to iowa 25%, came out with 25%, got less votes this time than he did four years ago and the most exciting thing for democrats is, only 122,000 republicans voted yesterday or went to the caucuses yesterday. that's half of what turned out

for barack obama in and hillary clinton in the race in '08. there's a tepid effort on the part of the republicans and rick santorum surging. so, you know, in this -- this state is going to boil down to that dichotomy between the republican party between the tea partiers and the conservative right wingnuts and the mainstream folks. the republican party is becoming the al monday joy party, some days they feel like a nut, some days they don't. >> it's a good line. it's a good line, i'll grant you that. let me ask you this, chad, it wasn't that long ago people thought rick perry was the one to beat. looks like he's gone, officially reassessing. where does his support go in where does michele bachmann's support go? >> certainly a lot of decisions have to be made after a state like iowa votes. it's a coupling out state and they move on to new hampshire. bottom line, this race will be decided in south carolina. history shows us that this is

the state that's the fire wall or the bull work or whatever the candidates want to call it this is the place where it's the best cross section of republican primary voters in the nation. it's a carveout state. it's a place where candidates and the media and the nation know to look to. we have a great blend of the social, fiscal, military conservatives. face it those are common sense conservative values that all of america's attracted to. >> south carolina has picked all of the winners since 1980. does mitt romney have to win? even if he wins, obviously already iowa, and then new hampshire? >> i think mitt romney's got to win here. and i think he's got got our governor nikki haley campaigning for him here and she's going to new hampshire. an interesting issue. santorum's spending so much time in the upstate with the christian conservative evangelicals are, mitt romney, a mormon, with an indian born sikh

campaigning with him. that's an interesting mix in south carolina on the republican side. mitt's got to win here. i think by no means is he assured to winning here. >> gentlemen, it could be very interesting. more interesting thank than we thought. primary calendar, big contest after south carolina, is florida. more people requested absentee ballots there than all voters in iowa and new hampshire lenny c chairman in florida. a huge state, 370,000 republicans have requested absentee ballots how different is florida from other early states in what do folks need to know about your state? >> well if you take iowa, for example, it's obviously not the media markets that we have. there's an opportunity for candidates that aren't well-funded to do retail politicking, which is good and healthy for the process. but when you goat floriet to fl million republicans, 10 media

markets, and we, as a state, truly reb what america represents. we are a melting pot where people from all backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds come together and try to make a better life. we represent the vision that america has been for many years. >> to your point about the media markets and the size of the state, the "miami herald" assessed campaign organizes and put romney first, he's got money, staff. but to the point of money, he's already running ads. we showed one earlier. unless some of these campaigns, like say a rick santorum, start getting an infusion of cash, can they compete there? >> you have -- in florida you have to play on television. so coming out of iowa, i think that you'll see santorum and even ron paul, they'll have the abt to raise some money. i know that they've already been here and they're going to be back doing retail politicking. but television is critical in a state the size of florida.

>> lenny curry, thank you so much. i'm sure we'll be talking again in the days and weeks to come. i'm sure you're very busy, getting ready. thank you for being with us. >> always a pleasure. >> there it is. the podium, michele bachmann, where the speculation is she will officially end her candidacy for president of the united states after getting just 5% of the iowa caucus. we'll have it live right here on msnbc. sni [ sniffs ] i took dayquil but my nose is still runny. [ male announcer ] truth is, dayquil doesn't treat that. really? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms, plus it relieves your runny nose. [ deep breath] awesome. [ male announcer ] yes, it is. that's the cold truth! [ tires squeal ] an accident doesn't have to slow you down.

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greatly reduces quality of life. hi, everybody, good morning i'm thomas roberts. michele bachmann canceled her trip to south carolina, after her sixth-place finnish iowa. the congresswoman holding a live press conference at 11:00 a.m. is she throwing in the towel? ed schultz will join me at the top of the hour along with chuck todd. rick santorum riding high on his close second place finish. one member of his family is not impressed, his nephew, supporting ron paul, will join me. i'll ask him why. think about it, the iowa eight, all that it takes to make mitt romney the winner in the hawkeye state. but can romney win in the south? we'll ask a key south carolina republican. that and a whole lot more coming up in the next hour. >> if you're look for more than ideological difference between mitt romney and rick santorum, you only had to watch their speeches last night. romney, very much like his stump speech. but santorum was very personal, remembering his grandfather and

blue collar roots in an emotional speech. >> he left to the coal fields of southwestern pennsylvania. he worked in the mine at a company town, got paid with coupons, he used to call them. lived in a shack. he ended up continued to work in those mines until he was 72 years old. digging coal. >> steve mcmahon, the democratic strategist and michelle bernard political analyst. good morning to both of you. >> good morning. >> steve, working class appeal for rick santorum, can it work? >> well, i mean, i think getting personal with voters and letting people in to your life story and helping them understand you better and what motivates you and why you're fighting the fight that you're fighting always deepens the connection with voters and helps you politically. i think he was smart to do that. i think one of the criticisms of mitt romney has been that he doesn't connect with people and one of the reasons is because he doesn't tell these kind of

stories. he doesn't get personal. i think it was a very good and very smart pull on his part. >> arguing this morning that despite his background, rick santorum really does not offer much different than any other republicans to struggling americans. do you think he can pull it off? the one thing about rick santorum, for the vast majority of americans he's a blank slate. he don't know anything about him except he's this come from behind kid. >> that's what comes with becoming the come from behind kid. we've seen it with every candidate to date in the republican field. we're now going to see the spotlight shine very brightly on rick santorum, and i would venture to guess that the american public is going to start learning a lot about him. it's just what happens when you come from behind and you become the front-runner. you know, whether or not he's going to be able to do it, normally i would absolutely say he's not able to pull this off. but no one ever expected him to do what he did in iowa. if you recall, chris, if we

looked aat all of the republican debates, remember he had a look on his face like, hey, i'm here, ask me a question. you know, i'm in this race also. and he pulled off something magical in iowa last night. so if he can hire staff if he can raise money, we don't know exactly what will happen. >> steve, he was the guy always far out there, now if you think with your political acup men and really analyze this race by what we know in past, mitt romney's going to win this. are we just talking or is there a chance? i'm thinking about the president going to ohio where the blue collar workers, frankly who voted for him, feel now like they might be looking for an alternative and i don't know if it's a mitt romney for them. could it be a rick santorum? >> well, i mean, it's going to be whoever wins the republican nomination and you know, to sell rick santorum short now would be committing the same error twice. here are a couple of things. first is, it looks like two

candidates are about to get out. rick perry and michele bachmann. if you take their 15 points and put them on either rick santorum or newt gingrich, they become the front-runner in this thing again. i don't know if those 15 points go to one place, but that's the play here for both newt gingrich and rick santorum. they both want to become the single, lone alternative to mitt romney. that's how mitt romney gets defeated. and it's probably the only way he gets defeated. the field needs to get winnowed, the fracturing needs to stop, conservatives need to unite behind one candidate or mitt romney will be the nominee. 3 out of 4 voters in iowa last night went in to vote for somebody other than mitt romney in every single alternative was flawed in some way. so the conservatives are not there yet. >> unfortunately we have to leave it there. we have to get to the michele bachmann news conference. michelle, steve, thank you both. today's tweet of the day comes from new york city based comedian sam grchlt rittner.

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breaking news this hour on msnbc. live pictures from west des moines, iowa where any minute michele bachmann is peexpected discuss the future of her campaign. the congresswoman could be bowing out of the race after finishing in single digits in the iowa caucuses. hi, everybody. i'm thomas robert. a huge defeat for ms. bachmann who hoped iowa would catapult her