Matthews: Romney made a business proposition

>> chris matthews , we said leading into this, perhaps unfairly, raising expectations that this had to be a great speech. we thought that a consensus on the panel here is that rick santorum gave a pretty good speech. was this a good one?

>> no, like soul, it is a business proposition. he'll get rid of the death tax . you win a couple of primaries, he'll get rid of the tax, reduce rates across the board. this was an appeal to fund-raising. he said this is a good investment when i get elected for the very rich. who cares about the death tax ? what kind of an issue is that? very rich people .

>> the very strong bumper sticker for republicans. everything that is wrong with the tax code they will tax you when you're dead instead of the democratic party theory of --

>> they want to leave the wealth to someone. i thought it didn't have any lyrical quality or passion or beauty or vision. it was basically you make a better deal if i'm president and i thought it was a deal making proposition, the kind of thing that a person working for bain capital would do for a new client. i think it lacked all the santorum qualities. unfortunately or fortunately for the president, these two candidates each have a piece of what a good candidate can be. one is annalytical, one is a data miner and one is a passionate guy. i think they come together and end up being disintegrated.

>> there was not a peep in the speech about rick santorum it was all about barack obama .

>> it was all about president obama . look, rick -- mitt romney tonight said he had to win. he did win. that counts. it is an important win for mitt romney tonight. had he lost michigan, there would have been panic, there would have been a meltdown in the republican party . the race goes on, but he goes on today in a better position and he was 48 hours , markedly. i think when you look at the speech, there was a lack of vision. he talked about recruiting people to the cause. listening to the speech, i don't understand what the cause is. he is not outlined an affirmative vision for the future. he's not defined conservatism and conservative approach to answering problems that are real in people's lives all over the country. and i think until he does that, he's going to continue to be criticized as running a visionless campaign.