Contender Somebody News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

But, martha in the end i salute iowa for picking the person they want, regardless of electability in november, which is difficult to project any way. that's not why we have these contests, we have the contests to pick the best possible next president. it's not really a guessing game about who is going to get the nomination or elected in november. martha: do you want to say who you think will come in one, two and three tonight? >> i think it's a very close contest between rick santorum and mitt romney. obviously ron paul has that invisible army. we'll see. those are the three top people there. ...

Got 25.2% of the vote in iowa in 2008. 25.2%. he has not been able to hit that number in any of the polls we've seen. the highest he has been is 23%. if he comes out tonight weaker than he was last time around, would that be of concern? >> no, i don't think so, martha. we look at it as it is a 50-state primary process. it is a race to about 1200 delegates. this is the beginning of the primary season. i don't look at it like that at all. i happen to be believe that primaries are great for our party. they have, they're very common. and this is not unusual, to have, you know, having a big field l...

The conservative vote essentially would they go against mitt romney but i think what they're going to find out if voters were looking for an alternative to mitt romney they were probably going to look for the person to make the best case against mitt romney and none of them really did that. so what was interesting while gingrich came, became the target of literally half of all the ads here, mitt romney kind of got away unscathed. martha: got away unscathed. we will talk to rick perry about that. i will put that question in a little while. this is fascinating in terms of campaign strategy. byro...

Have come into iowa to campaign and to help tell the story that they know about rick perry. >> you know, it's interesting in recent days seems like you're mostly going after rick santorum. you put out an ad that sort of compares him to, you know, pork barrel politics and all of that i think most of the folks have seen out there. why do you feel like he's the person you need -- you've got a lot of money. the most money in this iowa caucus by some estimates. why are you going after him specifically? >> well, i'm having a little fun with rick. he is running as a fiscal conservative and you look a...

We basically have one every week over the next few weeks of january. bill: the iowan republican chairman predicts a high turn out with many fence sitters. the advantage goes to those with the advantage ground organization. 1800 precincts is where they will caucus. >> i don't think there is really a good person, a contender somebody who can beat obama. >> sometimes they get a bit heated, we have to quiet them down so other people can enjoy their breakfast. >> in my mind it's hard to find somebody who stands out in that crowd. a lot of them seem to be very similar. bill: those are the kind of pe...