Page 624 - 08 News Today

good morning. welcome. im soledad obrien. welcome to "starting point." we are coming to you from manchester, new hampshire. we are coming to you live from the airport diner. five day ways from primary day here. our starting point this morning is something that you are bogey to hear on the combine trail today which is the future of the american military. just about four hours president obama will reveal his plan for a slimmed-down force that will no longer be fighting two full-blown gro...

Today. you have to pause and think about how astonishing this is. this could be the gore run for its money. watching this through the nights 19 votes, 33 votes for a long time. it looked like rick santorum would wind up with a hair ahead. if you look at a map wof where e did well, it is the rural counties. we dismissed that a little bit. its what you do when you cant build a big event, right? you go to small bets. but that turned out to really pay out for them. the people turn out for him and on...

Connect with voters, although his wife is doing quite a nice job in that department, if you watched her. >> i watched her fall on her butt in -- remember, she did that cute thing back in 08. shes really a sweetheart. >> shes softened him up, appearing with him, talking to voters and it appears to be working. can he ral are moi republicans arourepublicans -- rally more republicans around his candidacy. thats the problem. >> and good morning, new hampshire. shue have seen my hair. ill take my ex f...

Im joined now by one of his big surrogates here in the state, jim bob duggar, youre actually from arkansas, but the star of the tlc reality show "19 and counting," and that refers to your 19 kids. theyre not all here in iowa. >> weve got 12 of our 19 children here, and we came up here to help rick. hes a great man. hes consistently voted for lower taxes and less government. hes just a great guy. and we are just 100 behind him and were asking all the different conservatives, the people that are l...

Rick santorum lost that state by 18 points in 2006 and his candidacy for president would be a nonstarter there. i think all of that will start to become part of the fabric of the discussion. >> i would say that if this holds up mitt romney did 25% in 08. he is still there now. if he doesnt go higher than this tonight momentum would be on the side of santorum. if he can come out of here near there, get some more endorsements, because we dont know where a lot of them -- we dont know where herman c...

Though. that actually would have been genuinely the most awesome -- tangentially was ron pauls twitter feed trash talking jon huntsman and saying we found your one voter in iowa. you might want to call him and thank him, melissa. >> it is possible though that herman cain had 50 voters in iowa which could be the difference in fact between the two front-runners which would be fascinating. >> who will cain through his support to. >> im not convinced the republican party is as potentially volatile a...

End up being fred tompson, a spoiler role, taking some of the vote up here and denying santorum or a newt comeback. >> a lot of it, as you indicate, depends what santorum does in new hampshire. i think if he were to finnish the top three he could come to south carolina with a head of steam. romney, of course, is thrilled to hear that perrys staying in because hes hoping that perry plays the thompson role, the spoiler, particularly in greenville and spartanburg, around bob jones university, stron...

Going to stick with newt. i do think that what is interesting some of the best days the republican party has had in the last 25 years, since reagan left office, were in the mid-1990s. rick santorum in the senate and newt gingrich in the senate the last time we moved this country to the right. i know this, as long as mitt romney has a flooded field, hes likely to be the nominee. if mitt romney has to go one-on-one with mitt romney he is going to lose this nomination. four years later, he got 66 m...

Regulatory things theyre disappointed about. obama reached $1 million in small dollar donations in october whereas he didnt do that until february of 08 last time around so hes get more small dollar donations than he was four years ago when it was the big story. all these people going online to give him 50 or 70 or $100. >> i want to bring in sue devorski. >> hi, chris. >> i dont know if you were l t listening to our conversation but if you have to call up a would-be caucusgoer in the winter you...

Santorum. >> that vote basically was sloshing around, looking for somebody, various people had their moment in the sun and in the end santorum surged at right time. the second thing you see, this will have real impact when you get to new hampshire, is you look in here, where romney does well in the area of des moines, okay, particularly west des moines. >> suburbs here. >> right. i was at a precinct 223 in west des moines last night. in that one caucus, romney got 80 votes, santorum got 45, paul...