Page 34 - Mark Haleprin News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Opinion pages. we're going to take this from joe mcquad. conventional main street republican wisdom holds that mitt romney has the best chance to defeat president obama. on the contrary, romney may be the worst candidate for one thing his claimed record of a fiscally conservative governor is as much of a sham as his flip-flops. and that's always bad when that happens. lights go out in the tavern and we can't read the must reads. but here we go. i can read it up on the monitor. let's see -- >> let's go ahead and go right now, though over to mark -- >> calls him a nice, rich man. >> mark, how po...

Numbers, and it would happen again, if mitt romney wins here and goes down and wins south carolina, i'll say it, game over. south carolina would've done again what they do every four years, they pick the winner. >> and we hear from people in the national press that while his faith is going to be a problem in south carolina, if you look at those numbers where he's up 18 points doesn't look like it's a problem at the moment anyway for a lot of these voters. i guess the problem is, the press has been talking about this coales this. it seems to me, though, mark, it's too late. >> it is too late. o...

Points behind romney followed by jon huntsman, rick santorum, and newt gingrich who are all in a statistical tie for third place. >> and, you know, there are other polls that came out yesterday that showed, mark, showed mitt romney going down in the daily tracking poll, and i think it was american research poll that showed an even bigger surge from jon huntsman. so you are seeing two things happen. a little more subtle on mitt romney's part. you're seeing romney lose a point or two a day. and as we said in iowa, it is all about trend lines. and you're seeing jon huntsman going up. they are mee...

>> it's almost egregious. >> as you can see donny deutsch is still with us along with richard haas, also mark haleprin in manchester, new hampshire. and joining us from washington, columnist from the "washington post," ezra klein joining the conversation. good to see you. >> good morning. >> good to have all i don't have you guys here. voters in new hampshire are not voters in iowa, but rick santorum is going to -- he's going to say what he believes. he's not poll tested, he's not market driven. and i just wonder whether that actually -- let's just say rowing against the tide whether there's s...

Huntsman campaign is praying to get a podium spot next to romney so huntsman can go after romney. i think for all of these reasons, mitt romney's going to have a difficult time at these debates. and the question is, will he get testy as he's known to do. >> mark haleprin, in the end, it all comes down to math and these moderates are going to vote for mitt romney. and if you want to get from 8% to 11% or 11% to 15%, you are fighting for the same conservative votes in the same pot. that's -- people haven't been avoiding mitt romney because they're scared of him or because they like him, they've ...