Here’s some history I had forgotten:
A win at Ames isn’t necessarily a win — just ask Mitt Romney, who won Ames by 14 points in 2008 but, because his well-funded effort was expected to triumph, got less of a bounce out of the event than the second-place finisher, Mike Huckabee. Because Huckabee seemed to come out of nowhere, the straw poll served as jet fuel for his shoestring campaign, giving him the momentum to surge to a win in the Iowa caucuses.
They’re doing this stupid Ames Straw Poll again today, and somebody is going to win, someone is going to come in second place, and someone is going to come in dead-last. I don’t know that there is a clear favorite to match Romney from 2008, but we can probably expect someone to exceed expectations and get a little bump and someone to fall flat on their face and drop out.
I remember watching Huckabee campaign in New Hampshire with Chuck Norris, fresh off his stunning victory in Iowa. It was bizarre to see someone with so little momentum that he thought it was a good idea to drag a kung-fu star and his wife around with him. Huckabee remained a player for the nomination for a little while. In fact, he was the last man standing in opposition to John McCain. But, other than victories in Kansas and West Virginia, he couldn’t win outside the South. Romney won in Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan but couldn’t win much outside of the Mormon strongholds of the Mountain West.
Facing two regionally-limited opponents, McCain was able to limp to the nomination. The question for next year’s campaign is whether Romney is going to have wider appeal. Can he break through in the South and win in places like Florida, Texas, and South Carolina? Can he take California? And, if not, will he be facing two strong opponents or just one?
If Bachmann wins Iowa and Romney wins New Hampshire, the big question will be who wins South Carolina. If Rick Perry wins South Carolina, we could see a situation similar to 2008, where Perry wins in the South, Romney wins in New England and the Mountain West, and Bachmann wins in the Upper Midwest. If they continue to trade contests on a regional basis, all three could discover that they are far short of winning a majority of the
delegates. In that case, all eyes will turn to California, which is currently scheduled as the second to last contest, and it’s winner-take-all. The thing to keep an eye out for will be whether any of the candidates is close enough to a majority that winning all of California’s delegates will put them over the top.
If not, things could get very interesting. I can see all kinds of fun things developing. Suppose Romney has the most delegates but not enough for a majority even if he wins California? He might fear that he’d lose in a brokered convention and begin offering the vice-presidency to either Bachmann or Perry to get them to drop out and free their delegates to vote for him. I can see a Romney-Perry ticket that shuts out Bachmann’s supporters and creates a bit of a rift on the right. It will be interesting to see how many delegates Ron Paul can accrue in the early proportional primaries. He could also become a king-maker.
As for the rest of the field, if Santorum or Pawlenty or Cain or Gingrich or Huntsman or McCotter are going to make any noise, they’re going to have to turn some heads in today’s Ames Straw Poll, because their campaigns are dead-in-the-water at the moment.
