also, eric erickson is here. eric, you weren't part of the previous conversation.r thoughts on tonight's debate. >> i was really surprised how forceful gingrich -- i guess i shouldn't have been. he was forceful in the beginning. he locked in all of the momentum of monday's debate with that first question. there are two questions that have been in the news all week. the one was his marriage. the other was romney's taxzs. romney flailed around tonight. he knew the attack was coming. newt gingrich knew the attack was coming and made it an attack on the media, had the crowd applauding, they booed romney on the tax issue. >> do you think that open, the fiery moment in the debate, maybe won it for gingrich in south carolina? >> every candidate had good points tonight. there were good peaks and good valleys for all of the candidates. rick santorum probably gave out the best attack on gingrich. it's the one every behind the scenes had been whispering around, but gingrich had a good comeback and closed well on romney ffs taxes. all people are going to talk about is taxes, i

. >> i want to check in with eric erickson. you have not been a fan of governor romney and his campaign. how did you think he did and how did you think newt gingrich did? >> they did badly. romney got the better of newt over all. the winners were santorum and paul. largely because they stayed out of the fray. the pej lnt of the runners allowed santorum and paul to shine. so many questions, to wolf's credit, were on domestic policy issue and issues related to florida, instead of domestic issues. rick santorum had the best night of any of the candidates on the stage. >> donna brazile, it seems like this race is going to continue beyond florida. >> oh, there's no question, anderson. florida is very important for republicans. this is the last contest before the all-important debates. there are a couple places, but mitt romney knew he had to come in, he had to look newt gingrich in the eye and stare him down. he did very well, but santorum probably did himself good tonight by, you know, not only standing his ground but taking his fi

all of the conservatives, the red state guy, eric erickson, whatnot, it's good to get romney further. but we conservatives would like to see it even further right. >> kimberly: what about her role and future as well with the republican party? >> andrea: she has a bright future. the best thing for rick santorum is for your boy, from texas rick perry, step out of the race for the other candidates. even if newt gingrich doesn't, it's a benefit. the best thing for santorum is have the other g.o.p. candidates step out, and rally. i do think it even benefits mitt romney to be tested finally. even if he makes it out of this thing. >> bob: i agree with that. >> kimberly: maybe he can get the perry people -- >> bob: first, rick santorum. first, whoever was advancing that thing, announced after everybody went to sleep his speech -- but the web page wasn't set up to take any contributions. somebody said he lost $3 million that one night. that is not his fault. that is a problem when you run a shoe string campaign. as i said yesterday, you can get a bunch of money in. but you don't have the appa

eric erickson, is this a story just of newt gingrich being outspent in florida?else went wrong for him in this state? >> you know, a lot went wrong. but i think the advertising has more to do with him than a lot of people want to credit. south carolina was the first race even including the 2008 races where the non-romney candidates were at parity with mitt romney. 15 to 3, 15 to 1? you can't keep up with that. florida is a huge media market. advertising in the state like florida is very necessary. you can't go door-to-door all over the state. if you can't even come close to parity, and that's not close at all, there's no way you can win. >> but also, anderson, we also have to own up to something. that is mitt romney had a strong infrastructure in this state. newt gingrich did not have a lot of money early on, so it's not like he had lots of boots on the ground. the bottom line is, if you're going to have a campaign team on the ground, putting out flyers, going door-to-door, getting volunteers you won't compete. take that with no money, guess what, expect a blowou

bush secretary, ari fleisc r fleischer, eric erickson, and roeld rolen martin. is this surge so powerful he could win tonight? >> absolutely. >> do you think he will? >> i do. i predict newt gingrich is going to win south carolina. i spoke to several leading south carolina republicans today who know the state in and out. and they thought he would win by a small margin. i spoke to a pollster who thinks he's going to win big. the ground has it started shifted monday. i think he wins. >> do you agree with the prediction, and what went wrong for romsny. >> the debate on monday and then the debate last night sealed it for him. gingrich had a huge amount of momentum. after monday, the polling shifted dramatically, and last night locked it in. this was also a proxy fight between the governor who endorsed mitt romney and the speaker who endorsed gingrich. he's fired it up to get grass roots activists to get to the polls tomorrow, and i think newt is going to win. >> if he does win, what do you think that means moving forward? >> the same thing we said on the night of th

particularly an interested in eric erickson, get you to weigh in on this, on governor perry and alsoick santorum, because these guys are very organized. like, i don't know if most know this, but they are very organized. i think santorum has basically been living in iowa for a year. rick perry about 1,000 different captains in the various polling centers, and rick santorum said somewhere around 2,000. so they've got the men on the ground. men and women on the ground in those centers who will be arg gowing for them and trying to pitch their cause. does that, perhaps, bode well for santorum and perry, because they have the boots on the ground? >> to a degree it does. depends on how well the organization is. to an extent, rick santorum has been in iowa a long time but not the money to build a ground game and dependent on evangelical resources to help him. that helped huckabee in 2008 with a lot of insiders then. >> money or not, eric, he's been there. he's been to every one of those 99 counties. i think he's met every iowan at this point. >> he probably has met every iowan, in fact, prob

bush secretary, ari fleischer, eric erickson, and rolen martin. is this surge so powerful he could win tonight? >> absolutely. >> do you think he will? >> i do. i predict newt gingrich is going to win south carolina. i spoke to several leading south carolina republicans today who know the state in and out. and they thought he would win by a small margin. i spoke to a pollster who thinks he's going to win big. the ground has it started shifted monday. i think he wins. >> do you agree with the prediction, and what went wrong for romsny. >> the debate on monday and then the debate last night sealed it for him. gingrich had a huge amount of momentum. after monday, the polling shifted dramatically, and last night locked it in. this was also a proxy fight between the governor who endorsed mitt romney and the speaker who endorsed gingrich. he's fired it up to get grass roots activists to get to the polls tomorrow, and i think newt is going to win. >> if he does win, what do you think that means moving forward? >> the same thing we said on the night of th

eric erickson is an influential blogger.e and think they should nominate one. >> that was the guy who said rick perry was the savior of the republican party, so let's put his remarks in context. but i think what this shows is a realignment of a reconsideration of this very silly, very counter productive attack that went on all week, that essentially has belly flopped horribly for them, now you have rush limbaugh and club for growth, jim demeant coming to romney's rescue. >> the irony of this is that if there was a singular alternative, mitt romney would be in trouble. the reason he's not in trouble is there's no single alternative. >> there's no mitch daniel, there's no john boone. the expectations from romney now as a general election candidate are so low, he's got nine months to clean it up. everybody talks about him as bob dole, john kerry. >> what's their low? let's not get carried away here. >> people talk about how barack obama is so beatable. >> sure. >> but you look at how mitt romney is just a bad politician, and a

mark, let me talk about the fact that laura ingraham and eric erickson came out saying he needed to drop out. how hurtful are their voices? >> well, we saw at the beginning of the entry the weak debate performances, and the oops moment in michigan, he never got back up. it's analysis nating. he had a lot of people in the talk radio world who wanted him to get back up, wanted him to be the alternative to mitt romney. he had plenty of money for television ads, he got the message out, he never was able to get back up and have a comeback. i think a big part of it, as wayne suggested, those debate performances were so widely covered and so weak, republicans didn't have the confidence in hmm to be the one to take on mitt romney, and then take on the president. >>> joining ultimate conversati -- us in the conversation is carey dann, embedded in the campaign. when this news broke, what were the rumblings that may have caught people off-guard. >> reporter: i'm told, thomas there were conversations that had been sort of bubbling ongoing, recognizing that perry was not getting traction, despite kin

democratic strategist james carville, republican alex, and eric erickson. james, whether the talk is about the jobs that obama created or didn't create or the jobs that romney created or didn't create, it's still going to be all about the economy, right? >> yeah. sure it will. i think today positive news for the president and they'll have it out and the record of bane capitol will be a legitimate issue. it looks like r50i9 now for the moment we've go the a little wind at our backs which has not been the case for a lot of his administration. so they've got to be feeling a little better today. >> eric, clearly obama administration wants to turn what many see as mitt romney's greatest attribute, his time in the private sector, what he calls a job creator, they want to turn that into a negative, story after story of workers who have been fired and huge profits at bane capitol. do they have a story to tell on that front? >> to a degree they do. this is mitt romney's biggest vulnerability. poll after poll after poll show that while americans don't care for barak

[ applause ] >> reporter: penn state alumni, questioning president rodney eric erickson. >> the bondetween the administration and the board has sometimes been too close. >> reporter: alumni voiced frustration and missteps. but many people, including 40 questions submitted ahead of time, included outrage over the firing of head coach joe paterno. >> what you did to coach joe paterno is unconscionable. >> i feel that as a university, we turned our back on coach paterno. seems to me that the board should step down and a new one created. >> that statement, submitted online, drew a 30-second applause. erickson told them, they must begin to remind the world about the strong positive messages and successes penn state has to offer, both academically and athletically. >> there are a lot of questions out there, many of which don't yet have answers. there's a lot of emotion out there yet that i know so many of us share. >> i think some of the questions he just can't answer. he's not responsible for some of some of the decisions the board of trustees said. >> other meetings are planned in philad

because eric erickson, i am here to tell you that i recorded the exact time of day at 5:09 a.m.g with my colleague zoraida, you said, i'm glad he asked that question first. and i did not expect you of all people to say that. i didn't expect you were going to actually agree that john king's question was appropriate first because it sort of felt you would come after king, too. >> you know, i absolutely think it needed to be asked. everyone knew it was a question that needed to be asked. it would have been a question that hung over the entire debate had it not been asked. cnn and john would have been attacked had he not the asked first. he might as well go on and get it out of the way, give gingrich his moment to answer. the key tr that john did good with is when you ask a question like that you can't put him on a one-minute time line you've got to let him answer the question. he filibustered but you can't give him a minute to answer and say, time's up. john did it the same way. >> i'm a big fan of john king. not just because i work here. i've been working here for two decades. he

eric erickson was at that evangelical summit last week.id originally they thought they wouldn't be able to come up with somebody to support. they're going to support rick santorum. we're going to talk about what's happening over that weekend. >>> joe paterno is telling his side of the story in penn state scandal. we'll talk with the columnist who landed that first interview with joe paterno.out ther . but one is so clever that your skin looks better even after you take it off. neutrogena® healthy skin liquid makeup. 98% saw improved skin. does your makeup do that? neutrogena® cosmetics. they sound awesome tonight. and when i do find it, i share it with the world. you landed the u.s. tour ? done. this is fantastic ! music is my life and i want to make the most of it without missing a beat. fly without putting your life on pause. be yourself nonstop. american airlines. and it hasn't been going exactly as planned. cut. cut! [ monica ] i thought we'd be on location for 3 days -- it's been 3 weeks. so i had to pick up some more things. good thi

i think you will hear more people like bill crystal, and eric erickson talking about a broken convention. >> mike murphy, look what we have here. we have three big contests. >> uh-huh. >> we have three big top runners. this thing could go on for a while. >> yeah, if it becomes a delicate contest. romney is in vulnerability here, and he has a lot of aspects, too. and i think the romney guys made a forgivable error. but there's a bigger problem. the last five days, he lost his message and for a guy like romney who has done well getting conservatives who are lukewarm to vote for him to be up there in a defensive crowd and be unable to release taxes and defend his wealth sends a subtext message, and maybe he can't be obama, and that's kryptonite for obama. and romney has to make the race back and tweak his message and do full offense on gingrich. there are no firewalls in primaries. >> tax releases, does that help now? put it to rest? >> well, yeah, i say made a suit made out of your tax returns and defends it and make your argument because that's what people need to see to win. they have to

you know, eric erickson said no way on romney. richard vigry is never going for romney. how in god's name are conservative and evangelicals going for a guy that's now going glenn beck -- >> they're not the ash terrrbit of conservative vote. there are plenty of conservatives hedging their bets on mitt romney and who think smartly and pragmatically that he is -- whatever he is not he's at least the most electable. that's what counts. >> he wins on electable but "the des moines register" poll, ron paul gets 42%. >> let's state how much republican voters are coming around to mitt romney even if he wins iowa. the other question is, maybe he wins tonight in this muddled seven-way race but what percentage of the vote does he get? mitt romney has not beb able to move above 30%, outside new hampshire in a single national poll or a single key early state poll this year. meanwhile, a guy like rick perry zoomed to 42% in september. newt gingrich got up to 40%. i think this is the most important statistic to keep in mind about the iowa election night, 62% of voters in 2008 identified

let's get more perspective from cnn contributor, editor of conservative blog red state eric ericksonto start with you. coming out of 2010 and into 2012 everybody said wow, the tea party was the biggest new element, the surging element in the republican party. and forgive me but it's pretty obvious, tea party did pretty good in iowa in 2010. it was the tea party element in new hampshire pretty strong one in 2010. mitt romney is not a darling when you talk a to tea party activists yet 2-0 heading into another state where the tea party was a booming force in 2012. will we see it this year? >> i think south carolina is going to be a game changer. because i think that's where you're going to really see the power of the tea party movement. and like you said, we saw it in 2010 with their state elections there and then going into florida you're going to see the same thing again. i've talked to governor romney and his staff. and the thing with the tea party movement is the mandate. and the people across this country don't want a mandate regardless if it comes if it co state or federal governm

. >> we also have eric erickson of redstate.com. nice to see you this morning as well. let's talk about electability a little here. because that's the key word that everybody's throwing around now. who actually can beat president obama? as we head into new hampshire, who do you think that is? would it be a gingrich, or would it be a romney? >> lord, i'm not sure that it would be any of them. i mean, when you look at it, the narrative that romney has had working in his favor the whole time is that he's the most electable. according to the entrance polls, he lost republican voters to rick santorum by a point. he's now spent six years campaigning for president, and he's gone from 23% of the polls to 23% in the polls. that doesn't sound like electability. newt gingrich is such a wild card, though. there are a lot of republicans who are scared he'll implode along the way. i would not be surprised if iowans say we hate all of them. someone come rescue us. >> you ready? >> don't do this. >> i know, at 4:24 in the morning eastern time. i know that we don't have any really relia