Mitt Romney has won Iowa with the narrowest of margins. But as Felicity Spector reports, there is no rest for a would-be president, as candidates head for the next step on the campaign trail.
With the very narrowest margin of victory for Mitt Romney, most of the field are heading to the next stop on the campaign trail: New Hampshire. Their spin doctors are already spinning the message of their performance, although the outcome could barely have delivered a muddier outcome.
For Mitt Romney, Iowa was all about managing expectations – a state his team always said he never really expected to win. He’s been going all-out to prove himself the only candidate who can seriously beat Obama this November – and for all his lack of likeability, what matters is winning the White House come the fall.
The Romney playbook was focused on doing well enough in Iowa to give an air of legitimacy to his widely expected win in New Hampshire next week. That’s why there was a sudden flurry of Romney activity on the ground – with more visits to Iowa in the last week than most of the last year. But it didn’t deliver that commanding lead that he craved. There was no cracking that 25% ceiling, after all. But still,there’s always the next one: “On to New Hampshire,let’s get that job done!” he told supporters, late last night.
That, after all, should be far more natural territory for the billionaire former business tycoon. The primary isn’t dominated by right-wing conservatives or evangelicals, like Iowa, and his “fix the economy” message has been going down well. It’s helped him keep a solid lead in the Granite state throughout the campaign. As New Hampshire’s GOP chairman Wayne Macdonald put it, “Unless Romney makes major mishap or something comes out that really turns people off, I think he’s really safe.”
Romney now needs to create a sense of building momentum and inevitability. Nailing New Hampshire by a decent margin, then winning Florida at the end of the month could, his team hope, get the nomination sewn up by leaving his rivals precious few opportunities to knock him off course.
The party’s changed the rules of the game since 2008, forcing states to spread out their contests for a far longer period in order to test whether candidates have serious staying power. It all favours Mitt Romney, with his formidable bankroll and the ground operation he’s been building up ever since his defeat four years ago.
But the Republicans are famously disdainful of overconfidence, and some of Romney’s rivals have been working hard in New Hampshire too. Not least Jon Huntsman, the only contender to bypass Iowa altogether. He’s been busy attacking Romney as a flip-flopper who lacks core principles – although he hasn’t exactly been making much traction so far, with the latest polls putting him around fourth place.
Rick Santorum, who pulled off that sudden last-minute surge in Iowa, will be hoping to translate his almost-win into a similar success in New Hampshire – and if not there, then the next contest in South Carolina, with its far more conservative base. In the election where everyone seems to have been searching for the Not Mitt, this could be his chance to show himself as the conservative alternative the others should rally behind.
After a bad night for Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry, though, it’s hard to see how either of these two can legitimately carry on much further. In the history of the GOP’s current nominating process, no-one’s ever won South Carolina without taking either of the first two contests. Perry’s already heading back home to Texas to regroup.
The irrepressible Newt Gingrich, of course, is still optimistic, claiming he is the only true standard-bearer for the right. His adviser Kevin Kellems insists: “This is a national campaign, not a local dance”, but in reality the former House Speaker’s chances really do hinge on a reasonable showing in New Hampshire, where he’s again been the target of a slew of negative ads.
But as Bill Clinton was fond of saying, Democrats might fall in love but Republicans fall in line. In this election’s lacklustre field, the Romney machine has managed to power on, regardless of the constant search for another front-runner, any front-runner. Despite the lack of a decisive lead in Iowa, he actually polled far more strongly than many expected.
He’s still not someone that activists can warm to, however. According to presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, his coronation would be more of a “passionless marriage with a candidate whose chief asset is judged to be his electability”.
As the remaining candidates head wearily onward to another seven days of non-stop campaigning, tearing strips out of each other while President Obama sits back, counting his war chest, electability might not seem such a bad thing, after all.