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Helps him broaden his reach to new hampshire and beyond. gary tuchman, cnn, atlanta. >> back with our political panel now. mary matalin, rich galen, cornell belcher. mary, we heard rick santorum talking about conventional wisdom, new hampshire being so different from iowa. is it, in fact? >> the way he expressed it, no, it's retail politicking. but he -- i think we might be overreading what happened in iowa. you recall on monday we talked about -- i learned on the ground, and we discussed his cresting. and indeed, that is what happened. his last number was 22. he came in at 25%. which was less...

Mistaken 16 years. he's got the gravitas, he represented a swing state, one of the biggest swing states in pennsylvania. that's why right now the romney people are dismissing him, seeing him as a joke because he doesn't have the money. i will tell you the last thing they want is a senator that's been around washington for 16 years to do pretty well in new hampshire and then to do better in south carolina, and then shock in florida, and then start winning in alabama and mississippi, louisiana, texas, all of these other southern states, oklahoma. it could -- they could be in for a pretty long fi...

So he did exceed and definitely handled the expectations game. but we don't know if that's a real victory or the others collapsed. the reason perry, this leads to why perry reassessed, is what you've just done. santorum alone has not been through the political meat grinder. that's just a little bit of it. i understand him saying because i'm a catholic. he's not saying it well, but i understand the principles. and the republican field is going to be hard pressed to come at him that way. but he has not been through this kind of scrutiny, which is going to put him in the same boat. we will learn ...

Jon: yeah. mitt romney has the endorsement of the former governor in new hampshire, john senunu, he's also got the current senator, kelly ayotte. how much will that help him when it comes to the new hampshire voters? >> well nobody knows new hampshire politics the way john senunu does and probably no one has a better network than his extended family in new hampshire, so i think that is a big plus for him, maybe bigger actually than john mccain's endorsement. what he's mainly got is tons of money, good organization. he's been campaigning there for five years, and that's why he's in the 40s, and...

Reason why no big themes are being developed is because there isn't time. jon: yeah. mitt romney has the endorsement of the former governor in new hampshire, john senunu, he's also got the current senator, kelly ayotte. how much will that help him when it comes to the new hampshire voters? >> well nobody knows new hampshire politics the way john senunu does and probably no one has a better network than his extended family in new hampshire, so i think that is a big plus for him, maybe bigger actually than john mccain's endorsement. what he's mainly got is tons of money, good organization. he's ...