welcome, everybody. as i mentioned we're at chez bouchon. we move right to the cake in is actually what i like to have for breakfast. this is a pistachio cake. the owner, everybody calls him b but his name is robert. he makes this for his mom every year for her birthday. this is a green cake with slightly green icing. we're going to try that this morning. i like that, sugar to get us going. we're really talking this morning about a historic night in new hampshire. and yesterday we were talking about what was going to be a historic night and, of course, it happened as many people predicted. mitt romney is the first non-incumbent republican to win in iowa and then right in new hampshire. he did it very convincingly, with 95% of the votes counted, romney had 40%. ron paul had 23%. jon huntsman came in third at 7 17%. the rest of the field, gingrich with 10%, santorum with 9%, rick perry has had that 1% number really for the last week plus. >> john conley of the 21st century. >> which is not the greatest tight to hold, i think. >> that's right. >> let get right to our panel. ron brownstein, cnn senior political. he is a former speech writer for president george w. bush. jamal simmons is national democratic editor for govote.com for atlanta. cnn's christine romans. she's got the exit polls for us this morning. let's get going. i'm going to start with you, christine, because you have the numbers. >> look at independents first. ron paul won this category no, surprise there. kind of surprising is that -- maybe not surprising to your political guests there. mitt floromney had 29% of the independent vote. how it plays out in south carolina will be a different story. huntsman got this one, people not satisfied the gop candidates. people were holding their nose for romney when you looked at electability issues. huntsman edging out ron paul for those not satisfied with the candidates. looking at christian evangelical, romney beat out santorum in new hampshire and ron paul came in third there. huntsman came way down. and then i want to look at income real quickly and wrap it up. romney comes out for people with $50,000 to $100,000 a year and then paul comes in after that with $23,000. this is the exit polling. had a good turnout, too. a good turnout overall. but this demographic is very different from south carolina. >> it really is. if you look toward south carolina, completely difference story. let's start with maying a little bit of what governor romney said in his acceptance -- everybody did an acceptance speech. he was the real winner, though. so let's play his acceptance speech part of it first. >> we know that the future of this country is better than 8% or 9% of unemployment. it's better than $15 trillion in debt. it's better than the misguided policies and broken promises of the last thee years and failed leadership of one man. the president has run out of ideas. now he's running out of excuses. sxwl >> he literally turned his attention to obama. >> he won despite very modest performances among key republican groups like evangelical christians and tea party supporters. he ran every group except for yun voters and independents me won convincing my among every group. the rest of the field fell in order. ron paul, second, candidate with a low ceiling blocking anyone else. and the big winner iowa, rick santorum, like many social conservatives before him came to new hampshire and spent a couple of days fighting about gay marriage and whether it would lead to polygamy and ended up 6% of the vote of non-evangelicals. jon huntsman, months and months of commit m of the state, won 10% of self-identified republicans. depending on voters at the periphery -- >> the question is where does he go. one of my favorite speeches was ron paul's speech because it was, i laughed out loud when i heard this. this was his thank you at the end of last night. let's listen. >> there was one of her acknowledgement i wanted to make. i wanted to thank the new leader for not -- for not endorsing me. how much steam, how much power does he roll out of a nfr win and into south carolina? sort of a good news/bad news story for him. >> it was a big night for ron paul so i think, you know, mitt romney had a good night. ron paul had a good night. the problem for ron paul, some of the states, going to south carolina, doesn't have the same libertarian, independent streak. particularly in south carolina, one of the states that sends a lot of people to the military. his chances on cutting back military spending are not going to go over so good down there. >> independents are not moderates. independent part of the american electorate has grown over the past four or five years because of bleeding from the right wick of the republican party. jonathan raush, a writer for "national journal" called them debranded republicans. what you see are people angry at the republican party for not being conservative enough. >> people who are going to go and beat democrats. >> exactly. not reaching for barack obama. as mitt romney emerges as the choice of the party, there are people going to pull back to him because they are going to say -- they are the people who deslike barack obama the most. >> before we goat to thget to t let's bring in debbie. come to breakfast. we're going to throw a mike on you. have a piece of pie. it's quite delicious. as you're getting miked up i'm going to ask you this question because you had a tweet. i get that your gig is the spin. i totally 100% understand that. but this was your tweet. romney's failure to perform better in #nhprimary. how can you say major setback when, really 40%, that was higher than many people predicted. showed the exit polls which showed him high in all the categories that many people thought he couldn't be strong. how is that a major setback? >> there was a pretty significant dropoff in the republican turnout. that's as a result of the voters in new hampshire, particularly on the republican side being pretty unenthusiastic about the entire field. i think mitt romney was at 39%. this is his home state. he's got a family home here. governor of the state next door. so to not crack 40% in a primary that you should have droves of republicans coming to the polls to vote for you, that's a problem. he's here as -- he came out of this primary now as a wounded candidate. >> barack obama, back in 2008, he got 36.6% of the vote. he -- >> but he didn't live in the state next door and served as governor for four years. mitt romney has a family home here, was governor in the state next door for four years. basically been campaigning for president here for seven years and was not able to crack 40% of the vote. >> how bad is that going to be ultimately down the road? >> it's a dropoff in the turnout, soledad. there is really a lack of enthusiasm for mitt romney in particular, for the whole field. i mean, they should have been blowing the doors off the turnout. if their singular goal is to beat barack obama they should increase the turnout from the last primary. >> you're going no, no, no, no, no. >> no, that's completely wrong. given the mood of the republican party today, given how angry it is and how much to the right it has moved, a candidate here would have racked up a huge republican total, 60% of the vote, would have been unele unelectabunelec unelectable in the general election. all the rchbs that they have been cooled for mitt romney would make him a formidable candidate. in this electorate seems as a bug. in the general electorate, the fact that he can do that, that would be a feature. he is somebody hugging the middle. that's going to be his benefit with the nation. >> he's going to flip from being for health care now against the health care plan for the primary and then back -- he has never disavowed the health care plan. >> can i go back and ask something else you said. >> sure. >> apart from the results what do you think democrats learned about romney as a candidate, particularly in the last few days as he came under heavier fire from other republicans? >> well, clearly that he won't shy away from demonstrating how dramatically out of touch he is with working families and middle class voters. to say -- and i know you're going to come back and say it was out of context. so say out loud that you enjoy firing people, no matter what -- >> it was out of context. he was talking about insurance companies. i can get it. it was really, really not smart to say that when tapes are rooming and going to repeat it. >> any time an employment relationship comes to an end, it's never enjoyable. so for him to say that was demonstrative of how out of touch he is. like when he said corporations were people. like when he said that we should let the foreclosure crisis hit bottom and have investors come in and scoop up the properties and do nothing for people. >> all the gaffes, he is theoretically, he's a smart man, he's going to improve on his per r performance. you were calling it self-inflicted wounds. he got better in the debates as he went along. we have to say that he will get better. does that help the democrats that this is out this early or hurt the democrats? at some point do they talk and we talked about bain, we talked about bain six months ago, move on. >> what i think is that mitt romney has won a couple of bigi. what is he is in the midst of now an on slout of attack from rivals and democrats about his senior at bain. he has not come up with a compelling way to explain that part of his life. you know what, this reminds me of an awful lot of a ten-day period in 2004 when john kerry count come up with a way to respond to the swift vote attacks. >> if it happens now and eventually enif you muddle through it, that by the time -- september is a much worse time to be trying to figure that out. >> soledad, this election is going to be a dramatic contrast between mitt romney or whoever they end up nominating, if it's mitt romney, and president obama because mitt romney clearly is support v of making sure that keep the wind at the backs of people doing well, millionaires a billionaires. >> i hear the talking points. >> no, it's not talking points. it's reality in is a guy who has consistently said we should extend the bush tax cuts as opposed to standing up and fighting for the middle class. >> i think more is going to come out. the answer is is that this is not the end of the day. >> just the beginning. >> the argument you can make in the republican primary is that the opponents are attack for enterprise, that's going to be election effective. it's going to need a more compelling way to explain. as i said yesterday, i think it is an absolute pivot point of this election. get to november and most americans believe improve the economy or -- >> lies and one-line answer. stop, stop. >> stop, stop, commercial break. i have lost control of my panel. nice to have you here. >> thank you. >> have pistachio cake. it's delicious. >> thank you so much. >> dig? >> you want to stay with cnn for the best political coverage on tv because we don't stop. tonight at 6:00 p.m., of course, john king will have a one-on-one with rick perry and 9:00 p.m. eastern time piers morgan with newt gingrich. first, though, other news, christine romans is doing that duty for us with stock market news. >> good stuff there again today, soledad. nice to see you. good news in the stock market, growing optimism over the handling of europe's dent crisis. growth in the u.s. economy. both of those reasons push the dow to the highest level yesterday since july. you know, dow down 7% for the year. this morning, you know, a little bit of trepidation. fears about europe creeping back in. stock futures for the dow and nasdaq all trading lower ahead of the opening bell. ratings agency fitch warning, quote, cataclysmic collapse of the euro if the bank does not buy up more eurozone debt to stabilize that region. in just a few hours iranian president ahmadinejad arrives in cuba continuing a whirlwind tour of latin america. he is meeting with cuban president raul castro today and the trip is an effort to strengthen diplomatic and economic ties in the region. a live report from havana coming up next hour. penn state losing another paterno. quarterback back's coach jay paterno resigned after 17 years on the job. his pfather was fired in the fallout from the jerry sandusky child sex abuse scandal. jay paterno's was expected. smoking pot is not hazardous to your health, at least not if you use it in moderation. the ruts of a 20-year study just p published found that occasional marijuana use doesn't do the kind of damage to your lungs that cigarettes do the fda scrambling this morning to test orange juice imported from brazil for traces of a chemical fun ji side that is not approved for use on oranges in the u.s. brazil is the world's largest provider of orange juice. it provides 10% of the u.s. supply. soledad? >> all right, christine. thank you for the update. "starting point" continues after this short break. this is the governor pardoned nearly 200 people including 14 killers. of course victims' family members are devastated this morning. we're going to check in with jeff toobin and talk about how this could happen. mitt romney fresh off his big victory last night is going to join us in 15 minutes. some strong opposition faces him though with some new attack ads in south carolina. we'll talk about that and what his strategy is. and a town that's buried under 18 feet of snow but there's something critical they are lacking. you're watching "starting point." i want healthy skin for life. [ female announcer ] improve the health of your skin with aveeno daily moisturizing lotion. the natural oatmeal formula improves skin's health in one day, with significant improvement in 2 weeks. i found a moisturizer for life. 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what if... what if i can't make it through dinner and a movie? what if i suddenly have to go? what if... but what if the most important question is the one you're not asking? what if the underlying cause of your crohn's symptoms is damaging inflammation? for help getting the answers you need visit knowcrohns.com/tv and use the interactive discussion guide to speak with your gastroenterologist. welcome back, everybody. we're coming to you from chez bouchon from northemorning. beautiful shot from manchester, new hampshire. we're talking this morning about mississippi governor haley barbour. he just left office. right before he did he pardoned just about 200 criminals including a guy named david gatlin. back in 1993 gatlin shot and killed his estranged wife. she was literally holding their baby when she was killed. her mother, the woman's mother was absolutely heartbroken. here's what she said. >> is governor barbour going to pardon us for our aches and pains and heartache that we have to suffer? >> jeff toobin is cnn's senior legal analyst and the huffington post, he wrote about haley barbour's pardon record in 2009. i should mention you are joining us, radly, by skype because your shot is not as good as jeff toobin's shot. jeff, we're going to start with you. explain to me the power that the governor has to basically pardon whoever he chooses to. where does that power come from? how does it work? >> it really goes back to before the american revolution in is the power of kings. this is a vestige of the absolute power that leaders used to have before we had our american revolution. and this is one of the very few powers that is carried over almost entirely intact. there is no check on a governor or a president's power pardon. there is no check on -- there is no way to undo it. and it is an absolute power so that any governor can pardon someone and it's not just like their sentence has ended. it is like the conviction never took place. so anyone who receives a pardon can vote -- >> we have an executive order -- >> the executive order from the state of mississippi which we have here says that david gatlin has a full, complete, and unconditional pardon. so you were saying he can vote. does that mean he can bear arms. he basically has the rights of any other citizen, is that right? >> exactly. that's it. >> so, radly, i want to ask you a question about the history of haley barbour in terms of pardoning. there was a point kind of early on where he wasn't pardoning anybody. what changed? >> well, just to add a little bit to mr. toobin's point. the founders intended to pardon power to be sort of a last check on injustice. in cases where somebody might have been wrongfully convicted or they were correctly convicted but their conviction was -- resulted in some sort of injustice, wrong application of the law or a harsh sentence. up until a couple years ago, basically one of his aides told me for an article i had written about a death penalty case down there that he wouldn't even read pardon petitions, that he was so against the pardon. and then the strange thing started happening a couple years ago where he was having these trustees working in the governor's mansion assigned tasks there, and, you know, he would get to know them and he started, you know, giving them pardons or commuting their sentences. and the odd thing that think sort of all had in common is that they had all killed their wive or girlfriends. so here was this governor -- >> radley, let me stop you there for a second. in these cases there was no sense that maybe there was a flaw in their trial. there was no sense that, you know, maybe these guys didn't do it and pardoning them was the morally right thing to do, was there? >> yeah, i mean, from what i can tell. and i haven't reviewed obviously all of these 200 new pardons and actually a few of them that i have seen there are some case where's there are questions of guilt but there are a lot where there aren't. but particularly these pardons that he started with a couple years ago with these trust trees, yeah, there was no, you know, question of guilt. these are guys in some cases they pled guilty, in other cases it was very clear they had done it. and so it was a very sort of bizarre way to start using the pardon power. and, you know, it raised a lot of questions. i've written about a lot of cases in mississippi where there are very troubling questions about guilt and certain of expert witness testimony and a lot of other problems with the justice system down there. so it's very sfrang that he would start using the pardon power in these cases where guilt wasn't even in question. >> let me ask jeff toobin our final question this morning. you say there's no way to undo them. what can the victims who are obviously daefs stated, the family members of