Is it Mitt in Iowa?
Romney has long downplayed the importance of the first-in-the-nation caucuses, but an increasingly likely win would help him cruise to the nomination
What a difference a few days — and more than a few dollars of attack ads from the Romney super-PAC — have made in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Mitt himself piously and hypocritically denounces all super-PACs, even as his shreds Newt. The attacks have been amplified in the media echo chamber, reinforced by a relentless barrage from the GOP establishment, and validated by Gingrich's chronic and flap-mouthed tendency to verbal excesses that he can't or won't explain away. Witness his attempt to deal with his Freddie Mac windfall by boasting about how much he makes in an hour for speeches to special interest groups — more than most American families earn in a year. And now in Iowa, he has suffered the defection of religious right leaders briefly inclined to him; their followers simply declined to forgive his past personal transgressions, even if the Lord has.
So it turns out that Newt isn't teflon after all, but more like velcro. Ron Paul has grabbed a lead in the Hawkeye State, with Romney even edging ahead in one poll. Ironically, more of the Gingrich voters there name Romney as their second choice — all of which opens up the possibility that he could seize a longshot victory from the jaws of long-likely defeat, cement his comfortable lead in New Hampshire, ride the resulting momentum to a respectable finish in Mormon-averse South Carolina, then take Florida and almost certainly an early nomination.
Ron Paul, the congressman and crank with the prejudice-and-poison newsletters, and a treasure trove of conspiracy theories, isolationist appeals, and calls to legalize drugs, is Romney's own second choice in Iowa. For Republicans, he's the unthinkable nominee and for Democrats, the ideal one. If he emerges as the alternative, the deal is sealed for Romney.
After all the years, all the cash, all the campaigning, and the serial collapse of his challengers, will Romney win Iowa — and end up taking the whole game?
Despite a temptation to believe Gingrich could do it — in a contest between the conservative and the con man — the flaws in the former Speaker and the other former frontrunners have left the flip-flopper headed for an inevitable if reluctant coronation at next summer's convention in Tampa. As I wrote earlier, who the hell else they got? After an endless search for the un-Romney, Romney seems to be on a steady mid-20 percent path to success, precisely because he is the un-Gingrich, the un-Paul, the un-Cain, the un-Bachmann. As for Jon Huntsman, he needs a Romney humiliation in Iowa to move from modest liftoff into the New Hampshire stratosphere.
Any such humiliation appears to be a forlorn hope, but the far-fetched has happened in Iowa before. In 2004, Howard Dean was far ahead and John Kerry far behind just weeks before Kerry dominated the caucuses. In 2008, Mike Huckabee prevailed when McCain strategist Steve Schmidt shrewdly dispatched his candidate to New Hampshire at the last hour to siphon votes from Romney. McCain's fourth-place finish in Iowa was actually a win that propped up Huckabee through a three-way race in Florida which the soon-to-be nominee carried with a minority of the vote.
After all the years, all the cash, all the campaigning, and the serial collapse of his challengers, will Romney win Iowa — and end up taking the whole game? The lead-up to caucus night is rife with sound and fury, much of it signifying nothing more than political noise. So let me offer my guide to the caucuses I've known for over 30 years.
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