Ron Paul surprises party establishment by winning Idaho GOP straw poll in Garden City

Despite a speech from U.S. Sen. Jim Risch backing Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul won Friday’s pay-to-play vote. Paul’s surrogate was Washington state Rep. Matt Shea of Spokane Valley. 

How strong a win? The former Libertarian got 43 percent (173 votes) to the former Massachusetts governor’s 34 percent (135). Trailing them were Newt Gingrich with 12 percent (47 votes), Rick Santorum at 10 percent (40) and Jon Huntsman with 1 percent (4). A total of 399 people from across Idaho participated. Rick Perry's campaign asked not to be included on the straw poll ballot. 

What’s it mean? It cost $30 to participate, and party officials cautioned against making too much of the result. The poll was a party fundraiser held at the Riverside Hotel in Garden City. 

Whoops of joy: Paulies were jubilant. “It feels so good,” said Chris MacCloud of Meridian. “Just a lot of hard work, time and energy.” 

New plan for GOP: Idaho Republicans are using a caucus for the first time this year. They also moved up the delegate-selection date from a May primary to the March 6 caucus on Super Tuesday — which features GOP contests in 10 states — in hopes of having a role in picking the nominee. 

Party officials hope for 15,000 to caucus in Ada and Canyon counties alone.

Attack Ad

Ron Paul's campaign is out with this new ad in South Carolina, which hits Rick Santorum on his "record of betrayal." 

"One serial hypocrite exposed," the ad says, showing clips of Newt Gingrich. "Now another has emerged: Rick Santorum, a corporate lobbyist and Washington politician. A record of betrayal."

This is the first time Paul has hit Santorum on TV so far, and looks a great deal like the anti-Gingrich ads the Paul camp ran in Iowa. Those ads helped bring Gingrich's numbers down before the caucuses, and brutal ads from a campaign that has money to spend could have a similar effect on Santorum. 

The Paul campaign is spending $250,000 on the ad buy, a source tells us, and the ad will run in South Carolina starting Monday. 

Read more about: Ron Paul, South Carolina, Rick Santorum

Mitt Romney's weekend from hell

The 2012 front-runner played the pincushion role before, in the lead-up to the 2008 GOP primaries. But this time around, Romney has largely avoided being perforated by rivals. That’s likely to change on Saturday and Sunday due to a mix of personal animus and strategic imperatives. 

“In 2008, he found himself in the middle of a circular firing squad … and it really put him on an uncomfortable defensive posture throughout the whole debate,” recalled Rich Killion, a New Hampshire-based strategist who is neutral in the Jan. 10 primary. “Truly, this [weekend], he could be seeing two or three candidates come at him.” 

“Gov. Romney has been this nominal front-runner from the get-go yet he’s not been anybody’s big target in the debates,” said Chip Saltsman, Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager in the 2008 presidential race. “We’re gonna see that change this weekend, and now these guys are making the decision.” 

One veteran GOP strategist put it even more bluntly: “He will be a political pinata, no question about it. The question is, how does he handle it?” 

The chances of a Romney pile-on are fairly high, especially with a field that’s been whittled to six candidates, down from eight just a few weeks ago. 

There are two debates within 16 hours of one another — an ABC News-sponsored event on Saturday night, followed by an NBC News-sponsored forum the next morning. The two face-offs are consuming gobs of time for all the campaigns, and essentially freezing campaigning over much of the weekend in what is an already-condensed run-up to the Jan. 10 primary. 

Newt Gingrich is the safest bet to go after Romney — the only question is whether it’s a strafing run or a full shock-and-awe bombing. The former House speaker, who has repeatedly denounced Romney for the barrage of negative ads that helped sink his fortunes in Iowa, has made clear he is going to draw sharp contrasts, emphasis on “sharp.” 

But Gingrich isn’t the only one taking the stage with issues with Romney. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his fortunes on New Hampshire without any notable rise in the polls, also has no love lost for Romney. Rick Perry, as he demonstrated at the Dec. 10 debate in Iowa, has a unique ability in the field to get under Romney’s skin. 

Then there’s Rick Santorum, who isn’t known to harbor any ill will toward Romney but has consistently gone after the front-runner at the debates for months — the problem was that he got very little time from the moderators to make that case. That’s certain to change this weekend, given his squeaker of a loss to Romney in the Iowa caucuses.

 The debates were the forums Gingrich used to rehab his moribund campaign in the fall, and the timing of the weekend debates works well for him — it gives him a platform, at a very opportune time, to climb back into the race. Outgunned in finances, Gingrich is visibly furious with Romney over the bruising campaign that was waged against him in Iowa, and is looking forward to a chance to even the score. But it will mean abandoning the cheerful warrior posture he’s adopted at most of the past debates, in which he’s excoriated President Barack Obama and the media to in-house crowd applause. 

Santorum has also been an able debater — and, like Gingrich, likes to mix it up. It’s not hard to envision him getting aggressive with Romney in the debates. 

Huntsman has generally steered clear of real attacks on Romney in the debates, although they had a memorable exchange about Afghanistan that was seen as benefiting the former Utah governor during a foreign policy-focused debate. And he’s now running out of options to stop Romney, against whom he’s positioned himself as the clearest alternative. 

“Newt’s already told the world what he’s going to do Saturday night. Huntsman spent an entire campaign [making] muted, subtle contrasts to Mitt on the trail. This is his last shot,” Killion said. 

Saltsman said that some of the anti-Romney sentiment isn’t personal, just the practical impact of his standing. 

“Nobody likes the guy in front of them,” Saltsman said. “You can be nice to him, but nobody likes the guy out front. [Huckabee’s campaign] certainly four years ago [was] always very friendly and always had a good relationship with John McCain, but I can tell you, after he beat us in South Carolina, I didn’t feel so friendly.” 

Attacks this late in the game may not matter much. The debates played a significant role in the lead-up to the caucuses since they drove the narrative, but now that Romney has won a contest and heads into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary as the front-runner by a wide margin, there’s a limited amount his opponents can do to drag him down. 

“Except for the very rare silver bullet, attacks on opponents need to start before voters and the media have begun to harden their sense of who the candidate is,” said one veteran GOP strategist. “This late in the election cycle, it will be very difficult to introduce attacks and make them stick, particularly on Romney, whose vulnerabilities are so well known.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71138.html#ixzz1inM5JLCn

Debate night undercard: Good Newt vs. Bad Newt

Newt Gingrich faces, to use one of his favorite terms, a transformative question in the next 48 hours: Can he claw his way back into this race without letting Bad Newt completely out of the box? 

Listening to him on the campaign trail, he seems authentically torn. In some appearances, he sounds like a man who knows he did more in this year’s debates to repair his image than anyone else onstage. He did it by sounding smart, flashing humor and training all of his harshness on President Barack Obama and the media. This is the reason he had his moment in the front-runner sun.

In others, he sounds like a man who just can’t help himself. With that sun now set, Bad Newt — the one with the acid tongue and nasty streak — is emerging. It started in Iowa, where he couldn’t leave it where most politicians do, and simply accused Mitt Romney of dishonesty or petty politics in denying his involvement in attack ads his friends were running against Gingrich. Gingrich had to put some Gingrich on the point, and called Romney “a liar.”

Then Friday morning, Gingrich, in discussing how Romney might fare in debates against Obama, couldn’t stop at just saying the former House speaker would be better, or Romney would be at a strong disadvantage. 

“As people look at his record and they imagine him debating Obama, Obama’s going to laugh at him,” Gingrich said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Obama’s going to say, ‘I developed Obamacare based on Romneycare. I even brought your staff into the White House in order to develop it.’ ” 

It’s great stuff for the media — reporters lap it up. But it runs the real risk of leaving Gingrich looking like the old Gingrich when the dust settles on the campaign. 

Hyperbole is his oxygen, and the man takes a lot of very deep breaths. The hyperbole is a hoot for Republicans when it’s directed at Obama or, just as good, at the media in debates in defense of fellow Republicans. In retrospect, his defense of Romney and others against the moderators was among the most important factors in his unexpected rise.

But it can be cringe-inducing when it’s aimed at those fellow Republicans instead.

With two debates 10 hours apart this weekend, Good Newt versus Bad Newt will be one of the most compelling subplots. It’s clear he hasn’t totally decided which approach to take yet, and even if he does aim to tone it down, it’s not clear he has the discipline to do so.

After signaling for days that he planned to abandon his self-imposed “relentlessly positive” stance, Gingrich suddenly steered toward sunshine Friday, saying he planned to mostly ignore his rivals. His plan is to “be positive, be happy, talk directly to the American people and mostly ignore my competitors,” he told reporters. “What I’ve done for every single debate.

Readmore:  

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71184.html#ixzz1inEwh47A

How are voters in Iowa, N.H. feeling about the GOP candidates

It's two weeks until the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, and NBC's Tom Brokaw joins Morning Joe to discuss how the state's voters feel about the GOP candidates.

Fox News Live Iowa GOP Debate Coverage- Streaming Now

Air Time: Thursday, December 15 at 9pm ET on Fox News

Live Stream: FoxNews.com

Participants: Bachmann, Gingrich, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, Romney, Santorum    

Weigh in! Are the candidates answering the questions? During the debate, Tweet with the candidate name and either #answer or #dodge. And watch how the audience responds live.

What will likely be the final GOP debate before the January 3rd Iowa caucuses will take place later this evening from the Sioux City Convention Center in Sioux City, Iowa. The debate is sponsored by Fox News and will feature seven of the current GOP candidates.

VIA Fox News

Watch Fox News Channel tonight at 9pm ET for the Republican Presidential Debate from Sioux City, Iowa. For additional information go to Foxnews.com/debate 

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – It’s been 32 weeks since the first Republican presidential debate. Since then, a changing cast of contenders has faced off a dozen times across the country with millions watching at home.Of the original combatants from that May 5 meeting in Greenville, S.C., only two, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, remain. There have been four lead changes in national polls, two candidates drop out, four candidates join the field and billions of pixels poured out by reporters and pundits trying to make sense of it all.

Tonight, that all culminates here on the western edge of Iowa with the 13th showdown -- the last chance for candidates to make their cases before voters start the process of picking a presidential nominee. Even in a cycle that has been shaped by televised debates like no other, the stakes for the candidates this evening are enormous.

Here’s what’s on the line for the six men and one woman vying for the chance to confront      Barack Obama:

          Gingrich’s Perilous Perch

Like the frontrunners before him, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has the most at stake in this debate. But Gingrich’s challenge is different from some of his predecessors’ because so much of his success can be attributed to debates themselves. 

Gingrich surged to the forefront for debate performances in which he reserved his most pointed attacks for President Obama and the debate moderators themselves. The previous frontrunner, Herman Cain, also owed his stature to good debate showings, but Gingrich’s style – wry, impish lines lobbed in from the wings of the stage – isn’t suitable for a frontrunner. 

Gingrich survived his first debate as the frontrunner, an ABC affair Saturday in Des Moines, by sticking to his pledge to only be negative when directly attacked. But he has now been under withering fire from his rivals for two weeks and it’s starting to take its toll. His poll numbers are starting to slip. While some settling after the meteoric rise would be expected, Gingrich has only been the frontrunner for about three weeks, and his support is far from solid. 

While Republicans may not be so keen on Mitt Romney, the formerly media-averse former Massachusetts governor has taken to the airwaves with gusto to deliver repeated attacks on his rival. Meantime, Ron Paul and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have joined in with commercials and media appearances. The message from all three is that Gingrich is an inconsistent conservative and a creature of the Washington establishment. 

If Gingrich stays on his course of only parrying his rivals attacks he will spend an awful lot of time on the defensive tonight. Gingrich wants to talk about solutions and big ideas, but his opponents want to talk about only one thing: the former speaker’s extremely complicated record as a Republican icon. 

His no-first-punches doctrine puts Gingrich in a bind when the topic of conversation in Republican America is all about his record. 

The End of Mittness Protection

Mitt Romney looked wise for staying out of the spotlight for most of the cycle so far. But his semi-stealth campaign is now looking less savvy.

Romney relied on his big war chest and strong support among the quarter of moderate Republicans looking for an alternative to Barack Obama that would seem like a steady, sober choice to undecided independents in the general election. 

While he was raising money in New York, L.A. and London and holding chicken chili luncheons in New Hampshire, Romney’s rivals trampled each other as they tried to squeeze into the media spotlight. Romney looked more presidential and developed an ever-greater aura of inevitability. 

But the problem is that Romney missed his chance to try to re-introduce himself to conservatives on their terms. Always skeptical of his red-state credentials, Republicans have hardened in their negative attitudes about Romney. 

Now, Romney is on a media blitz trying to ruin Newt Gingrich’s chances. Romney swatted at Rick Perry before, but Perry mostly sunk himself with bad debate performances. The anti-Gingrich campaign is nastier and more sustained than anything before. 

Romney has little choice since Gingrich, the best known and most moderate of the conservative contenders in the “not Romney” intra-primary, poses an existential threat to Romney’s strategy of picking up wins on friendly turf and delegates everywhere else with a lot of second-place finishes. 

But having been the submariner candidate before (“run silent, run deep”) now means Romney is using his media spotlight moment to do something voters hate: ceaselessly attack a fellow Republican. 

Romney bets he can fall back on his reliable core of support to rebound in New Hampshire and regain his footing. But waiting for him in the Granite State is former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a fellow Mormon and a fellow moderate, who has staked his entire strategy on New Hampshire. With Gingrich pulling in some support there and Huntsman gaining ground, Romney faces additional peril with his scorched-earth campaign. 

Huntsman always gets under Romney’s skin, and tonight watch for the former ambassador to China to have his longest needles out for his New Hampshire rival.

Driving up his own negatives with the rough stuff may be necessary to knock down Gingrich, but Romney may not have the cushion he once thought he did. The one time frontrunner avoided the early perils of a high-visibility campaign in a boom-and-bust cycle, but he has left himself with a tough task in the closing debate.

Can he derail Gingrich without running off the track himself? 

Plausibility Test for Paul

Republicans love Ron Paul on domestic issues, but can’t abide his foreign policy. His task tonight is to either allay those concerns or at least not exacerbate the problem. 

Paul is staging a rally in Iowa based on the best grassroots organization and conservative frustrations with Romney and Gingrich. A good showing tonight means looking like a plausible choice to Iowans who don’t want to look foolish with their caucus pick. 

Paul doesn’t have to look like the nominee, but just like someone fed up Iowa Republicans wouldn’t be embarrassed by later on.

In this year’s first debate, Paul was greatly advantaged by the killing of Osama bin Laden by a team of U.S. commandos less than a week before. It buttressed his argument that it was time for America to leave Afghanistan and focus on getting the federal government under control. 

The latest news is less helpful. Many Republicans have grave misgivings about the fact that today marks the official end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. While some may be sorry about the way the war was handled or that it was even begun, most Republicans believe that the Middle East is going the wrong way for the United States very rapidly. 

Iran is on the rise, American allies are under siege and Russia and China are goading their friends in Tehran to make it even worse. With so much angst, Paul’s policy of immediate disengagement and rapprochement with Iran will not sound so good to skeptical Republican voters. 

Paul’s task is to not say more than necessary on the subject and keep the conversation where he can benefit most: a test of the candidates’ conservative consistency. 

If Paul looks too risky on foreign policy, Iowans have other options among the conservative alternatives. Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann have thrown themselves at the feet of Iowa conservatives begging for the chance to be their champion. Most dangerous for Paul, though, is his fellow Texan, Perry.

Perry’s boom and bust occurred when conservatives were still dreaming of perfection. Now, having endured Herman Cain’s embarrassing collapse and been forced to rationalize their way through Gingrich’s apostasies from a 40-year career in politics, Perry’s main weakness, poor debating, looks less glaring. 

Perry is using his cash reserves to push hard on his status as an evangelical Christian and his stature as the governor of a very large, very Republican state. If Paul fails the plausibility test, the folks out here in cattle country may opt to saddle up again with Perry.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/15/high-stakes-high-drama-for-final-debate-before-voting-begins/#ixzz1geESPkZB           

 

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