Video: Santorum sweeps Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota

>>> hi, everyone. i'm tamron hall . "news nation" is following what's next after romney 's rejection and santorum 's stunning sweep. voters in missouri , minnesota and colorado pickpicked santorum . romney 's team said the losses wouldn't hurt the campaign and even called the missouri primary a beauty contest . wa also was noted was romney 's attempt to sell a more personal side of his life.

>> my father never graduated from college. he apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter. he actually could take a handful of nails, stick them in his mouth and then spit them out pointy end forward.

>> joining me now nbc deputy political director mark murray . i hate to try to read body language or things like that. you can't help but look behind mitt romney at that crowd. some of the people are smiling like is this a joke. other people kind of seem confused, as well. where was he going with this story.

>> well, tamron, a lot of this is to create a narrative about mitt romney . over the last several months, he's had one very consistent message, he's a businessman that can turn around the economy. outside of that, people don't know a lot else about romney . he was telling a story about his father to fill in some of the holes. what he was talking about with his father and not him, his father was a carpenter and had a rags to riches type of movement. that wasn't the case for mitt romney . you are at least seeing an attempt by them to actually say who is mitt romney more than someone who has a resume has a former business leader and who has experience at the olympics.

>> so is he taking a page everyone rick santorum here? part of rick santorum 's praise has come with his speeches at the end of a few of these nights where he's talked about his family being immigrants, talked about his father and grandfather painting this picture of a guy from pennsylvania who's really scrappy and ready to look after the people he says are being forgotten in this country.

>> that's a great question. oftentimes when rick santorum is giving a speech, he talks about his family's coal mining past. it's incredibly personal. it's very authentic. the problem romney 's had even when he's telling his own personal stories, authentic stories that, it doesn't seem as natural as the way santorum is doing. santorum is able to get into people's guts right now and romney hasn't been able to connect at that level, at least right now.

>> thank you, an mark. our news nation political panel, michael smerconish , radio talk show host, also with us today, a.b. stoddard, a columnist for the hill. thank you both for your time. michael, i'll give you the mike first. what do you make of rick santorum 's success last night?

>> i know it caught a lot of people by surprise. i think it's he's little explainable. it's the nature of the process. these are caucuses. very few people show up. those who show up are idea logically driven. secondly, tamron, could you not have scripted better headlines for the santorum electorate than the last couple of days. komen and planned parenthood , hhs and contraception and now the prop 8 ruling are the sort of thing that drive his core constituency. i don't think it bodes well pore him in a general election , but that's what explains his primary victory.

>> what explains fact that, a.b. in, minnesota , mitt romney won easily in 2008 . he got just 17% of the vote last night. i believe we even have a map of minnesota and it shows the counties he won. 2008 . this is the map in 2008 . this is now. how do we get an explanation there?

>> well, the minnesota gop electorate has changed a little bit, it's more michele bachmann these days than it is governor tim pawlenty . you can't just look at minnesota . mitt romney won all these contests last time. i won colorado by a large margin. missouri is a critical bellwether state. in that state, santorum managed to beat him by 30 points. he had a very good operation, romney did in colorado . he had it left over from four years ago and he was up and running with that. he hoped it was an operation to take him to november. another key battleground state . this is very hard for him to explain away even though they were nonbinding primaries and caucuses. it is not just a sign that santorum is resonating with social conservatives . it is a sign that the people who turn out to these things are rejecting a coronation of mitt romney and it's going to take a lot of money and fighting bab for him to keep santorum from piling up more delegates.

>> let's play a little bit of what mitt rom nilt had to say regarding is rick santorum being a washington insider. he picked back up on this last night. let's play it.

>> thanks for being here tonight.

>> i'm not sure what that is, michael. nevertheless, what we were supposed to play was romney talking about santorum being an insider. obviously, he was a senator. today, is that enough or is that an old tune we've heard before?

>> i don't think it's enough. there's a lot of baggage that one could use against senator santorum . there's always baggage, something you could say about every candidate. but the issues that you could use most easily against senator santorum , frankly would play well with a conservative base. there's ammunition out there. you think about some of the statements he's made relative to same sex couchals or some of the statements he made more recently percei perceived as being insensitive to minorities. if romney were to unfurl those charges like he did nug, frankly, it cog help santorum with the base. this is all about the base.

>> chris matthews was just on filling in for andrea mitchell . he said it appears that romney 's strategy is to keep up the attacks, that same line of attack that he used against newt gingrich that he already started on sar tore rum and avoid debates. how can that work for him at this point? he said in the past these debates will make him a more formidable challenger if he makes it to the general election . now he's trying to avoid this if that's true.

>> this is the irony. what mitt romney really needs now is newt gingrich . he needs newt to split that, because if it were romney against santorum one-on-one, sar tore rum col do extremely well empty states that remain.

>> a.b. this line with mitt romney last night being repeated and put all on the blogs where he talked about his father being a carpenter and painting in theirtive of this i guess maybe a scrappy kid who worked his way up to being a multimillionaire. why now is he using this strategy? and is it just going to go nowhere?

>> well, i think it's going to be very tough for him heading into states like michigan and ohio on super tuesday. rick santorum is going to appeal to blue collar workers to this contest. he really stepped in it last week saying he's not concerned about the very poor. he's still recovering from that. that's a difficult pivot. back to the point of contrast, rick santorum is making a very good contrast against gingrich and romney saying on threeicious, on t.a.r.p., on cap and trade and mandate for health care , both gingrich and romney are compromised republicans who can't be the nominee. if he continues to making it clearly and forcefully, that could be the winning appeal.

>> we've watched rick santorum look newt gingrich and anlay out that exact says. that is because his people are hearing you're getting traction. you don't have the cash or the organization burks we know he was in texas today talking with pastors. he's trying to bring it all together.

>> they're -- -ing that constituency is looking for a fighter. they really want somebody not just to debate president obama . they want somebody to go after him. and they're getting thatting from rick santorum more so than they feel they're getting it from mitt romney .

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/newsnation/46314194/

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