Over the last week we’ve seen that the “inevitable candidate” strategy from former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney will surely need recalibration — mainly due to Rick Perry’s arrival in the race. Where Perry has succeded in crafting both hype around his candidacy and real support amongst a wide section of the GOP base, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has struggled to expand her appeal beyond the far right of the party, influential though it is.
But is Romney finished just because of a round of bad polls? Of course not. In fact, it’s been reported that he’ll now contest Iowa, something he had previously not committed to given his polling leads in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. That lead in South Carolina is now gone, according to two new polls, and it vanished within a few weeks of Perry entering the race. So now Romney may be in the fight for Iowa, and as such could make moves towards a new strategy. Sure, Romney was on soft ground as the frontrunner, but that ground doesn’t immediately harden when Perry puts his feet down.
The reignited fight for Iowa could in fact be won for the former Mass. governor. The latest round of polling in the state showed that Perry was displacing Bachmann with the most conservative voters, and because that’s such a large portion of the sample, it vaulted him into the lead in a Public Policy Polling (D) survey and one from We Ask America. But the PPP survey showed all three candidates within a statistical dead heat, even though Perry had a small lead. The We Ask America poll showed Perry in front with 29 percent, followed by Bachman at 17 and Romney 15. With the dynamics of a three way race there, any one of the candidates could pull it out, especially because it’s a caucus state.
Of course, the difference between support in a primary state versus a caucus state can be large. Iowa’s presidential caucuses are more about campaign apparatus (which Romney certainly has the resources to build) and commitment from supporters (which, one could argue, Romney really needs to firm up in order to compete). The early primaries offer Romney both solace and consternation: he is leading in New Hampshire and can likely win handily there, but the latest South Carolina numbers show that state quickly souring on him given the choice of Perry in the mix. His choice to compete in Iowa would of course be tactical — the numbers suggest he has a better chance of building a strong campaign organization and going after Iowa than he does trying pry SC from Rick Perry’s hands.
The good news for Romney is that he’s maintained his support in New Hampshire, and will rely on a win there to take him into Nevada and South Carolina and on. But with the huge shift on the ground in SC, it seems unlikely that New Hampshire could carry Team Romney through through Super Tuesday. In fact, it’s now unclear if any of the first states in the GOP primary will be truly predictive, as they were much more in 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) beat the odds in New Hampshire and took that momentum to South Carolina, effectively wrapping up the nomination in the early going. Now it’s possible to see a late surge by Bachmann in Iowa, a Romney victory in New Hampshire, a wild card in Nevada (Romney lead there in a poll a month ago, with Perry in the field, but that’s surely to change) and Perry handily taking South Carolina.
The nightmare scenario for Romney at the moment is that Perry takes and builds on leads in Iowa and South Carolina, possibly winning Nevada too. That happens, and it’s likely that no amount of help from winning the New Hampshire primary can be carried forward, and his candidacy would be over. But should he take Perry head on, as he looks sure to at the moment, and with the help of Bachmann attacking Perry in a fight for the most conservative voters….well then, you’ve got a race for the GOP nomination. But of course, now Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, one-time manager of a major hedge fund and multi-multi-millionaire, is now playing against Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann in the midwest and south, very far from inevitable territory.
