>> in nbc's david gregory the moderator of "meet the press" and chuck todd who is nbc's political director and chief white house correspondent in manchester, new hampshire this morning. good morning to both of you.
>> good morning, ann.
>>> four years ago rick santorum endorses mitt romney over john mccain and we all know what they say about payback. but does a mccain endorsement really help mitt romney in the race for the conservative vote? david, you want to take that?
>> well, look. he is an establishment favorite in new hampshire . he's won it twice. this is mitt romney who's already got a lead trying to spike the football a little bit early here and build momentum. he is a front-runner but comes out of iowa still pretty fragile. santorum is doing well. perry is still in the race. gingrich is at least trying to build that resurgency in new hampshire so he is guite to actually demonstrate that he can win and win big in new hampshire .
>> and dealing with of course the accusation that is still lingering, haunting him that he is a flip flopper. that was something mccain called him when he was running against him. an interesting take on this by the "new york times" this morning. he writes until the republican primary sucked him into its vortex, he was a pragmatist and a policy wonk rather similar to bill clinton and president obama . what do you think of the idea the more interesting battle may be romney versus romney?
>> well, that is obviously what the conservatives in this race are trying to create. the obama campaign is hoping that a newt gingrich or a rick santorum uses this line of attack against mitt romney because they believe it's his biggest vulnerability. the republicans trying to make the case he is not really conservative and the obama campaign trying to make the case he doesn't have a core, he is not a center politician. so it is ultimately we're going to find out if mitt romney does come under sustained attack, and remember while he has been the front-runner for a year there has not been a sustained attack on him. for the last six months all of these other candidates have been attacking each other. they've all been fighting inside this conservative primary. this is the first week where you're really seeing the entire field that's left focusing all their fire on mitt romney and it'll be interesting to see what does he look like? what kind of shape is he in and i think we'll know after south carolina because in the next i'd say two weeks it'll be pretty sustained. what does he look like after that? we'll know if he's got what it takes to go all the way.
>> one of the candidates who perhaps has not faced as much attack as the others is rick santorum because he kind of escaped under the radar there from it. but now after a strong second place showing in iowa , he's about to face the meat grinder of tough scrutiny for the first time so is he going to have to change his conservative message that he's looking into north -- looking into new hampshire , which is a much less conservative state, david?
>> well, he is going to be under a very intense scrutiny by the other candidates. we'll see what mitt romney does and how much of a threat he feels santorum really is but i think it's significant that texas governor perry has decided to stay in the race. he'll go and debate in new hampshire but he really wants to set up shop in south carolina and he's going to target santorum . he already did that in iowa over pork barrel spending , you could go back about apparent contradictions between small government conservativism and some of his activism, some of his attempts to moderate his position by talking about santorum here when he was running for re-election in pennsylvania in 2006 . all of this is going to be on the table and santorum has not gotten a hard look, not by the media and certainly not by the other candidates.
>> that is certainly about to begin. what a story this has been so far already. thanks so much for bringing us your perspective.
Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/45883070/
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