the >> mitt romney thanking his supporters. let me show you the results which were last updated about six minutes ago. rick santorum at 24.6%, mitt romney, 24.5%. there are still eight counties that have not reported. we're talking about a 41 of vote difference. one other thing, when hundred 21,000 votes -- 121,000 votes. it has surpassed 2008 totals. in 2000, '85. 1996, 90,000. a good turnout tonight. we are going to wrap up our coverage even though we do not know the exact winner. we will wait for the final tally in the overnight hours. thank you for being with us. we will tell you about what is coming up. "washington journal" is tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. , you know we will talk politics. those are our guests. be moving on to new hampshire primary, building on the the results of the iowa caucuses and tomorrow we have coverage including a 4:00 p.m. jon huntsman town hall and a 7:30 rick santorum town hall. all that is tomorrow on c-span as we continue our coverage. right now we're going to show you the caucus we covered it tonight and for those of you who are at least nine years. this is one -- late-nighters. thank you for being with us. this is one mitt romney won. ok. i am the temporary chair of the precinct. i am pleased to see this group of people here that are my neighbors. thank you for coming. i would like to call the caucus to order at this point. the first order of business, i am serving as a temporary chair. i would like to entertain any motions for permanent shares. anybody else want the job? all in favor of michael carver say aye. >> aye. >> thank you. we have our acting secretary here. we need to have a motion to see who would like to be permanent. i move pbs are permanent secretary. all in favor, ok, very good. wonderful. we now have some business. it is wonderful to start out on a note we are all together. i would like to begin this evening by having us say the pledge of allegiance. if we could stand. >> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> thank you very much. i would like to begin this evening, one of the traditions we have at our city council meetings is that we read the statements before every meeting. i think it is apropos for our discussion this evening. i would like to read the statement before each of our meetings. we are a leader in character count, and endeavoring to promote and model principles of trustworthiness, respect, fairness, caring and citizenship. we expect that all participants will act in a respectful manner consistent with these principles. i thought it was fit with what we were trying to accomplish. what i would like to do is give you a couple of words tonight about the agenda. i think you should have a copy of our draft agenda so you have an idea what we're going to be about. one of the things we will be doing, we will be focus on the balloting for our presidential ballot. then we will have other business regarding our precinct leadership. to the end. some may decide after the vote you can leave. that is fine. we welcome all of you to be here as long as you would like to participate. we're going to move the process forward so that we do not drag through the evening. if you have any platform issues you would like to have bus address later on, feel free to come here and grab one of these pieces of paper and turn it into the secretary. whatever the issue, you can make a simple statement like cutting spending or whatever. i do not care. if you have an idea, you are welcome to dewitt. ok. the next thing we will be doing, i do not know if we have -- we are going into the preference poll. one of the things i wanted to decide before we take the ballot, it is a simple request. we have six delegates that will be elected to the county convention. i would like to suggest the following, the cutoff point for allocating delegates would be 15%. no candidate that cost less than 15% would get any delegates. if you end up with 8%, any candidate that would have over 15%, when we calculate the ballot, would get one delegate to the convention. we will be working on the final allocation plan after we get the results. we'll have a discussion with the various people to decide what seems fair and reasonable based on the results. at this point i would like to put on the table, as a form of, are you willing to offer that as a motion? basically, when we do the polling, come back to our results that as far as the delegate selection, we want to have some relation, anybody would have to get a 15% of the ballot to be qualified. that is the motion you have made. any discussion? all in favor? any opposed? ok. that was a starting point. i thought it was better to deal with that now than later on and some becomes then with 14. at this point that is the will of the group. at this point, do we have anybody that is going to speak for michelle? nobody? ok. my understanding is that rick santorum's wife was going to be coming. she is not here yet. we will proceed down list. we have speakers for grit perry, ron paul, newt gingrich and mitt romney. we will worker in as soon as she gets here. i would like to walk onto the podium joe weber. he is a friend from texas. come on up here. you can come up here. tell us why we should support for perry for president. >> where i am from we say howdy. we are grateful to be here. i want to tell you, it is the first time i have been to iowa. to be treated as nice here as texas is amazing. the ministers, thank you for having us. rick perry and i grew up together we played football together in high school. we went to texas a&m together. he went into the air force. he went into politics. i went into the marine corps. [laughter] [applause] we were all over the world. i know if you are in college, you worry about them. we never worried about hours because rick perry kept a close eye on our children. more important, i had to make several calls from the combat zone to rick perry and say, i am sending a kid home and he has made the ultimate sacrifice. i think you need to be with his mom and dad. there were other cases where i said he is not in as good as shape as when he came to us. i think you need to be with his mom and dad. he dropped whenever he was doing and when to be with that family. that is personal and may not be relevant to you but it says something about the virtue of this man. leadership, i feel comfortable as a marine to talk about leadership. i know there are many leaders in this audience. and people who are been leaders. leadership that comes down, and gets people. our country, if we have ever needed a leader to get people to do things, we need it right now. leaders of character. in 36 years, in places that were good and bad and situations that were good and bad. i know i am a burned out marina and you people are -- you said things were better when you were our age but i will tell you, our country is at a tipping point our society and culture. i think it is because we forgot where we came from. we forgot how we got to be prosperous. we forgot those who paid the prices -- the price to get us where we are. i think rick perry will get us back to understanding and appreciating that and providing leadership, the character our nation needs so desperately. thank you very much. god bless all of you. [applause] >> thank you, thank you, thank you very much. i appreciate that. i should mention, we drew numbers. this sequence is based on that. we tried to be fair in terms of this sequence. the next person we have is mark baker. he is going to speak on behalf of ron paul. >> good evening. coming here, i did not know i was going to speak for ron paul. i thought i would. i got interested in ron paul from my daughter and her fiancee, 19 years old and 21 years old. they look at the future and they say, something has to change. we cannot keep doing what we have been doing for the last 20 years. i believe that ron paul can make the most change of any of the candidates. we have a fantastic athlete of republican candidates this year. all of them are fantastic. if you look at ron paul's record, he has been as consistent as anybody. he supports the constitution as good as anybody. some of my friends have said, what about his foreign policy? it is different than the rest of us. can we continue in our economic challenges to be the policeman of the world? can we continue to spend millions and millions and millions of foreign aid to countries that do not appreciate it? i believe as the previous speaker said, we are on the cusp. if we do not do something radical, we will not be able to help anybody. what do we want? do we want our federal government telling us what to do or do we want liberty? yes, ron paul is the most libertarian of all the candidates. some of my conservative friends have said, he is not strong enough on the social issues. do we really want our federal government deciding what we can do? those of us that are christians think at some point the government may be telling us what we can and cannot do. do we really want that? ron paul, his line is, let's bring liberty back. he is a libertarian. can we really not trust ourselves to live in liberty? i think we can. i think ron paul is the best chance to do that. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. we have somebody who just arrived. is that correct? i believe the next speaker that is going to be coming up is mrs. rick santorum. am i correct? ok, come on up. the wife of rick santorum is going to be addressing our group. thank you for joining us. [applause] thank you very much. i tripped over that myself earlier. >> thank you so much. it is so nice to be here tonight. it is an honor to be here with so many wonderful people. we thank iowa. we came here last summer for four and a half weeks. we had a wonderful time. we get to know so many of you and iowa and the way things are. we fell in love with the place. we have been back many times, my husband more than me. i am at home with our seven children, home schooling our children. he has had 381 town hall meetings here. he has really enjoy them, the time with all of you, listening to your concerns, what is on your mind, answering any questions you have at. i would take a moment to introduce four of my seven children, elizabeth, peter, patrick. [applause] they are here tonight. our two of the boys are with our husband. a girl is at home. i wanted to tell you a little about rick. we have been married for 21 years. rick is a father, he is a great daddy. he has a real love and passion for his family. he understands the importance of family as the foundation for a strong society. you have to have strong families to have a strong country. that is the heart -- it is foundational for our nation. the economy cannot be strong if families are not strong. rick is a great provider. we have always lived on a budget. we grew up very simply. i am one of 12 children. he grew up in public housing. we live on a budget. he says he will put his practices to life. he did when he was in the senate. as soon as he would be president, he would balance the budget. he would get the debt under control. rick's economic plan would bring manufacturing jobs back to our nation. he grew up in butler, pennsylvania, a steel town. when he grew up there, there were a lot of manufacturing jobs. he saw a lot of those jobs leith. -- leave. they went overseas. rick has a passion to remove federal regulations and lift the burdens on companies so we can restore jobs and our country. rick is a great teacher. we home school our kids. he believes that parents are the first teachers. he has been a great partner with me educating our children. he wants to get government out of education. rick is a great defender of life. he has led the charge in the pro-like movement, defending children in the womb, children with disabilities, and people at all ends of the spectrum. he understands national security. he offered the iran freedom and to put at. he understands that issue well -- freedom and support act. he understands that issue well. rick is a very faithful man. there is nothing more beautiful than a husband and a father who is on his knees praying with his family. that is the glue that makes our family strong. faith is everything for all of us. if you want someone who has a vision and the track record to do what is necessary to restore our country to our founding principles, who has the experience and courage to be commander in chief, and someone who understands the role that faith and family play in not only of a culture, but our economy, my husband is your guy. thank you for listening to me. god bless you. [applause] >> i am sorry. i did not tell everybody. [inaudible] thank you very much for coming. thank you very much. she did not have the benefit about 3 minute limit. she did not have the benefit. we appreciate her. the next speaker we have is we have dean who is speaking on behalf of newt gingrich. [applause] dean has never said much of anything about many things, has he? >> that is a tough step. i missed it myself. >> i had a hip replacement and two knee replacements. i am glad i did not have to have another one. a retired farmer living in urbandale. some of you know me, i know some of you. i got to know two candidates really well. i worked with them, herman cain, whom i supported first, and when he brought up, i supported newt gingrich. gosh -- dropped out, i supported newt gingrich. i said it is either herman or newt gingrich. i know you both personally. i think he would both do a good job. i went with herman cain until he dropped out. it was easy to switch to newt. there is a letter here that was prepared by the gingrich people. i am not going to read it. i am going to speak from the heart. newt says i am asking for your vote for a simple reason, america has big problems, and big problems require big solutions. that is the gingrich letter. i read a little bit of it. he talks about his tax plan. having worked with newt gingrich when i was president, he was speaker, the guy is really good. he is really sharp. i just got an e-mail the last couple of days from a former congressman who played gopher on "love boat." he said he worked with gingrich in the house. the architect of reagan's tax and budget plan, he was the author -- he is a brilliant economist. he said there are two levels of taxation at which you get no income. if they catch you at 100%, nobody works. if you tax at 0, there is no income to the government. would that be so bad? there is a curve at which, the government gets maximum income. that level is not very high. he has endorsed newt gingrich. newt says that is why i have been endorsed by the architect of reagan's economic plan. he said my job plan would create more jobs than any other candidate. i do not know who the candidate is going to be. it is going to be one of the people voted on tonight i am going to support that person we need change in the white house. -- tonight. i am going to support that person. we need change in the white house. [applause] i got to know all of the presidents personally. i never met president obama. he has come in since i retired. i thought the worst president -- i like him as a person, but as a president, jimmy carter. there is no comparison. there is no comparison. in chicago politics, four years ago at this caucus i told a chicago store that got a few laughs. you know chicago politics, chicago politics is pretty nasty. president obama grew up there. he was a community organizer, whatever that is. these two guys were hired to go to a cemetery and write down the names on the tombstones. so they could vote. they were walking down two lent -- lines of tombstones, writing down the names, and one guy says, come on, we have to get out of here. the other guy says, i cannot read the name on the tombstone. he says, is it, move along. the guy says, he has as much of a right to vote as anybody else here does. [applause] >> thank you. i am the last speaker. i am here telling you why i am supporting mitt romney. i would like to begin by thanking all of you to come this evening. it makes me proud to be a part of urbandale. as a lifelong republican, active member of my church, father, grandfather, one who believes in america, i ask you to consider voting for mitt romney for one reason -- he is a proven leader who can win next november. he is an experienced business leader who understands what needs to be done to get our economy moving again. he has a plan and will execute it. his leadership skills were demonstrated as governor of massachusetts bring in people and governments together to solve problems. -- massachusetts. bringing people together to solve problems. he gave up two years of his life to turn around the olympics in salt lake city and make them an international sports event in which all of us took great pride. finally, his record as a family and faith leader as demonstrated by his 42 year marriage and the example he set as a father for his five sons and grandfather for his 16 grandchildren. we need change. we desperately need change at the top. mitt romney can make that happen next november. you can help by casting a vote for mitt romney. thank you. [applause] how did i do on the time? that is a first. normally i go over. i get in trouble because i talk so long. that is why i wrote out what i was glad to say. thank you for your attention. the next that we are at, you all -- the next step that we are at, you all need to remain seated, we have people passing out ballots. as everyone registered to vote? you should have your tag. if anyone has not registered, but go back and register. we have different people who are going to be responsible for passing out ballots in different sections. the ballot will come to you. then they will be collected. after the ballots are collected, we have a group of people, i have two cpa's -- doug is going to be chair of the ballot committee. they are going to be responsible -- i lost my pen. make sure i get a pen. huh? what is going to happen, we have some business we are going to take care of after we vote. you do not need to rush off. what we are going to do, we have a committee -- dean, are you okay? does that work all right? those six people are going to exit this room. they are going to be going into a conference room and take in the completed ballots and counting the ballots. after the count is completed, uh, doug will be bringing the results back here. we will announce the results of our poll before we call them into state headquarters. we felt it made sense that the people ought to know how the ballot comes out before we turn them into state headquarters. that is the process. we have a number of things. as soon as the ballots are collected -- if you have the ballot ready, you can fold them. these are secret ballots. we may have to go to a different color. they all work the same. i want to tell everybody that i had a few apprehensions about some of these people that might sneak in. i am so pleased that that has not been something we have been dealing with. it is great to see all of you who care as much as you do about our country exercise one of the most important rights we have in this country, the right to vote. we have that right because we have had people who have died and fought for that right, the right to vote. it makes me proud to be here this evening. [applause] is that the ballot? here. um -- where is my -- [crowd murmurs] >> does everybody who should have a ballot have a ballot? >> the other thing i want you all to keep in mind is that -- you see these baskets we are passing around? we are going to be passing those around very shortly. what we are going to be doing is asking you to consider that all of this money is going to go for the republican party to help support our efforts th