get there. i'm wolf blitzer, you're in "the situation room." mitt romney certainly had big wins on super tuesday. the gop frond runter won six states and padded his lead in delegates, but ohio was very, very close. rick santorum captured three states, while newt gingrich also had a win. romney has not put his rivals out of business, as republicans grow concerned about a drawnout race, the candidates are calling on one another to quit. here's jim acosta. >> reporter: wolf, with team santorum telling newt gingrich to drop out and team romney telling everybody to drop out, it's starting to feel lie deja vu all over again. falling short of expectations on super tuesday and facing what could now be a mad scramble for delegates to win the nomination, mitt romney is urging the gop to stay calm. >> you know, when we have a nominee, we will come together, because -- because barack obama has organized a conservative community. let's put it that way. >> holding a command been lead, they're making the case the math is on their side. in this campaign memo, romney's political director argues the calendar ahead offers them dwindling opportunities to close the gap, and the only person's odds of winning of winning are president obama's. >> he continues to grind out a tactical kind of victory, you know, tactical victories in kind of a death march here. >> in a conference call with reporters, president obama's reelection team sounded openly giddy with a long delegate war after winning three states and finishes a close sect, rick santorum's campaign has earned a one on one battle with romney. which explains argued in this statement that ice time to exit the nominating process. >> as i believe it's going to be possible for a moderate to win a general election. >> reporter: with romney playing the role of nominal front-runner. >> if the strategy ultimately becomes we can't witness the delegate count, we can't win the nomination on the legit, so we will apply the kitchen sink strategy and tear down senator obama and see if we can destroy him in order to advance our own candidacy, that is damaging. >> reporter: the thought of romney as obama was too much for team san tore to resist. >> it's another issue where mitt romney lines up perfectly with obama. first it was the issues now it's campaign strategy. got to love it. >> reporter: the romney campaign joked it would take another act of god for another candidate to -- but the road ahead, heading straight for the bible belt. wolf? >> jim acosta, thank you. what have we learned from the super tuesday results? let's discuss with gloria borger. he won the most states, got the most delegates, but still has certain problems with certain segments of the republican base. >> when you talk to folks on the romney campaign last night, they were feeling great about their win in ohio, even though at the jeffs bi1%, but the win also continued to raise a lot of nagging questions about mitt romney's appeal. let's take -- take a look at the income, 50,000 to 100,000, blue collar republican voters. look at the margin, 11 points between rick santorum and mitt romney. that's a problem for mitt romney. also, let's take a look at very conservative voters in the state of ohio. here you have an even larger 18-point margin. is the problem with mitt romney is that the republican party has changed. it's not even the party he ran on in 2008. it's a more pop you list party, a more insurgent population. and the establishment republican candidates is not the person they were really looking for this time around. >> romney was on cnbc earlier this morning. listen to this little clip. i want to discuss it with you. >> i'm prepared to fight all the way to become the nominee, and, you know, i was pleased with our success last night. obviously we have a very strong lead in delegates, a very strong lead in terms of the number of people who actually voted for our campaign. >> he's right on both of those fronts, but right now it's all about delegates. it is a bit like the barack obama/hillary clinton race in 2008, because whoever wins will probably crawl across the finish line. take a look at our current delegate numbers we at cnn compile. rom notice is about a third of the way there. the campaign makes the case there's not going to be another super tuesday, because delegates are awarded proportionally. but the other half of that is that there's no incentive for rick santorum or newt gingrich to get out of the race right no, so long as they have that super pac funding. they don't have to raise the money in their campaigns. they can continue running advertising in these states, continue to give romney heartburn, rack up some delegates and just continue to make life very difficult for him. in the enthey may help barack obama, what an irony, because these people will be arguing with each other for the next few months. >> are you one of those that believe it's in romney's best interest to have both santorum and gingrich in the race instead of one dropping out? >> yes. whoever thought mitt romney would need newt gingrich, because it divides up that conservative base. >> exactly. you have the conservativeses, tea partiers, as long as mitt romney can keep those people divided, he can continue and divide and conquer. if one of those people drops out, particularly if newt gingrich were to leave the race, rick santorum may be able to make the case, i am an alternative, i can get elected, i can get elected in the midwest, so that could really cause mitt romney some problems. as long as both are in, he's happy. >> thank you very much, gloria for that. meanwhile, president obama made what amounted to a campaign trip of his own today, in north carolina he toured a truck plant and talked about hot button issue in this election year, the high price of gasoline and what to do about it. let's go live to our correspondent dan lothian in charlotte. why did the white house choose to talk about fuel efficiency standards today? >>. >> reporter: well, one big reason is the current energy climate. you have high gas prices, there's the volatile out market, so the president is really pushes green energy, came to this daimler plant to showcase a line of trucks that they have here that run on natural gas. at the same time the president was blaming the high gas prices on a cycle that happens just about every year on problems in iran, on some speculation on wall street as well, and while this was billed as an official event, the president did take a shot at his critics who were promising, a el as he called it, quick fixes. >> they get out on the campaign trail, and you and i both know there are no quick fixes to this problem, but listens to them, you would think there were the next time you hear some politician trotting out some three-point plan for natural gas, you let them know we know better. tell them we're tired of hearing phony election-year promising. >> reporter: the president also rolled out a new proposal, a program of $1 billion program for cities that makes a commitment to purchase these energy-efficient vehicles, the money that would come from the government would help them set up infrastructures for electric vehicles, at the same time the president trying to find a way to entice consumers back into the market to buy these alternative fuel vehicles, pushing to expand the tax credit currently given for electric vehicles, which is $7500, he wants to see that up to $10,000 as a rebate you would get right at the truck lock. much of this would need congressional approval. a lot of republicans are already say the president's energy policy has not lived up to the speeches. >> dan, it's not accident, no coincidence he's visiting north carolina. tell our viewers why politically it's so important for the president to show up in north carolina, especially after super tuesday. >> reporter: that's right. we've seen the vice president, the first lady campaigning here in the state of north carolina. it's a key battleground state, the president narrowly won here in 2008. it's no accident that the democratic convention will be held here in september, but there's a big problem for the president, because unemployment here in the state of north carolina well above the national average at 10.4%. that's why you see the president making that connection between investment and green energy and job crazy. >> dan lothian traveling with the president in north carolina, thank you. jack cafferty is watching president obama as well. it all has him wondering about a second term. jack wants to know what you're thinking. he's standing by with "the cafferty file." also fellow democrats and former friends in battle, now -- and is iran cleaning up evident of the nuclear activities? 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[ male announcer ] stop the uh-oh fast with kaopectate. jack cafferty is here with "the cafferty file." >> it seems increasingly likely now that president obama's on his way to winning a second term. the biggest factor working in the president's favor -- the republicans. in an nbc/"wall street journal" poll taken before super tuesday, only 1 in 10 adults said that the republican primary has given them a more favorable impress of the republican party. when asked to describe the gop nominating process, people used words like unenthusiastic, less are of two evils, painful, uninspiring, depressed. this might be part of the reason why president obama's approval rating has been rising, hitting 50% in our latest poll. the president also tops mitt romney in hypothetical matchups. the remarkably accurate online predictor in trades puts his chances of reelection at 60%. the economy is slowly starting to improve. that is huge. despite yesterday's sell-off, the stock market has been headed up. experts say stock prices are rising on growing expectation is the president will win reelection. a lot of republicans already see the writing on the wall, apparently. big republican donors and strategists are turning their attention to congressional races. they apparently think they have a better chance of winning house and senate races than unseating the incumbent democratic president. it's looking more and more like they might be right. of course we have a ways to go. anyway here is the question -- is a second term becoming inevitable. go to cnn.com/caffertyfile, post a comment on my blog. go to our point on "the situation room's" facebook page. wolf? >> jack, thank you. the ohio primary not only gave mitt romney a narrow win over rick santorum. it also marked the sudden end of one well-known, and it set the stage for an unlikely contest in november. dana bash is joining us with details. tell our viewers what else happened in ohio yesterday. >> well, this was the first congressional race of this election cycle, wolf, where two incumbents were forced to face off. because of the 2010 census, congressional lines are being redrawn, and in some cases districts are completely being eliminated. and this, of course, was high profile, because dennis kucinich him selfis a proud, loud liberal. he ran for president twice. he's been seen around these hallways with people like sean penn. he is very, very outspoken about his views, but at the end of this year, that will come to an end. one of congress's leading liberal voices defeated by a fellow democrat. >> many of you in this room have known me for years, and you know that i've lost campaigns before. so. there's always a tomorrow. you know? you know, don't cry any tears for me. >> reporter: thanks to redistricting lines redrawn by ohio republicans, democratic congressman dennis kucinich was pitted against marcy kaptor, the dean of the ohio delegation. >> i was the individual in the delegation that had the portrait painted of he and his wife that hangs in his office when they were married. >> the friendship devolved into a nasty campaign fight fast. still biller on election night. >> i would like to be able to congratulate congresswoman kaptor, but she ran a campaign in the cleveland media market that was utterly lacking in integrity with false statements, half-truths, misrepresentations. >> reporter: when it became clear he could lose his seat, he went to washington state to explore running there. for that kaptor attacked him in the harshest of terms, comparing him to once favored son basketball player lebron james who bolted from miami. >> i'm going to join -- >> looks like next in line to abandon us is dennis kucinich. >> he played on what he is known nationally, staunch opposition to war. >> our responsibilities for the costs of the war, our responsibility for the civilian casualties. >> but kaptor ran campaigns you don't see much in the tea party world, as an old-fashioned politici politician. >> we got a lift bridge, and it became the bridge to everywhere. >> reporter: these days saying you serve on a committee saying you're in washington doing hard work tends to be a negative, because people are so mad at washington. why did it turn into a positive? >> i think because we can show something for it. >> reporter: she faces another national figure of sorts. joe the plumber. >> i won't run a character assassination-type campaign. >> did you ever think you would be running against somebody named joe the plumber? >> no, he's not a plumber and his name is not joe. >> reporter: she's right. he became famous during the 2008 campaign when he was just a voter who talked to barack obama about his taxes. john mccain seized on that as a symbol for what he thought would happen to americans' taxes. this is certainly a fascinate ago campaign to look at, but wolf, just the first of many we are likely to see over the next cupping months because of redistricting all over the country. >> dana bash, thanks very much. lots more political stuff coming up, also other news we're following, including a massive solar flare. details of how it could impact earth and all of us tomorrow. new developments in the biggest mystery. what scientists have learned about the so-called god's particle. plus the moon's possible role in the sinks of the "titanic." a surprising new discovery. ♪ ( whirring and crackling sounds ) man: assembly lines that fix themselves. the most innovative companies are doing things they never could before, by building on the cisco intelligent network. but proven technologies allow natural gas producers to supply affordable, cleaner energy, while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air - by monitoring air quality and reducing emissions... ...protect water - through conservation and self-contained recycling systems... ... and protect land - by reducing our footprint and respecting wildlife. america's natural gas... domestic, abundant, clean energy to power our lives... that's smarter power today. lisa sylvester is monitoring other top stories in "the situation room" right now, including some incredible new video of the sun. lisa, what do you have? >> yeah, this is pretty impressive, world. watch as a massive solar flare erupts and ripples on the sun. easily the biggest one of the year and second biggest since 2007. the huge flare ejected solar plasma and particles expected to reach the earth tomorrow, and for about 24 hours could interveal with satellites, gps systems and power grids. nicolas sarkozy is endorsen president obama, albeit subtly. he says he won take on middle east peace before he's reelected, but added he hopes he will be. in 2008 he implied he wanted then senator obama to win as well. scientists are closer to explaining the so-called god particle, the biggest mystery in physics a particle that would explain where matter comes from and how the university works. u.s. physicists report data that might prove the particle exists. the search continues. and could the moon have helped sink the "titanic"? researchers in texas think it's possible, before the wreck, the moon was closest to the earth in 14 years which may have caused a tide so high that more icebergs than usual were floating in the north atlantic. the captain ignored warnings. the 1912 sinks claimed 1,500 lives. >> that's amazing information. thanks very much for that, lisa. signs that iraq may be trying to eliminate possible evidence of its nuclear activities in a key nuclear site. new information coming in right now. is mitt romney actually more popular than he seems to be? we're taking a closer look at the actual vote totals. plus one radio talk show host looks at another. bill bennett gives us his take on the scandal. that's coming up in our "strategy session." 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