{"id":12503,"date":"2011-12-28T15:22:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T20:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=12503"},"modified":"2011-12-28T15:23:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T20:23:23","slug":"romney-win-in-iowa-would-be-a-surprise-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/12503\/romney-win-in-iowa-would-be-a-surprise-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney Win in Iowa Would Be a Surprise Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At CFIF, we\u2019ve spent some time arguing that <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/12501\/more-good-news-for-santorum\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rick Santorum could produce a surprise win<\/a> in next week\u2019s Iowa caucuses.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/theweek.com\/article\/index\/222890\/can-anyone-stop-ron-paul-from-winning-iowa\" target=\"_blank\">Ron Paul continues to top the leader board<\/a> in the Hawkeye State, rising to a level of support that most consider surprising.\u00a0 But with news that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedaily.com\/page\/2011\/12\/28\/web-bachmann-pac-goes-romney\/\" target=\"_blank\">a Super PAC is switching its support from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney<\/a>, and spending almost $500,000 on an ad-buy for him, it looks increasingly likely that the former Massachusetts governor could be the biggest surprise winner in Iowa.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because his campaign took a decidedly hands-off approach to Iowa for much of 2011, preferring to focus its efforts \u2013 and locate its headquarters \u2013 in New Hampshire.\u00a0 Now, Romney is peaking at just the right moment.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s probably true that there are really three GOP contests in Iowa right now.\u00a0 Ron Paul\u2019s libertarian caucus, the establishment caucus between Newt Gingrich and Romney, and the conservative caucus between Santorum, Bachmann, and Rick Perry.\u00a0 Unless Paul wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, he\u2019s likely done after next week\u2019s voting.\u00a0 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/Politics\/The-Vote\/2011\/1220\/What-if-Ron-Paul-wins-Iowa-and-New-Hampshire-too\" target=\"_blank\">But what if he did win both?<\/a>)\u00a0 A Romney win in Iowa probably knocks out Gingrich, with whomever survives to win the conservative caucus having an uphill climb against a strengthened Romney.<\/p>\n<p>Because of his record and light campaigning in the state, Romney wasn\u2019t supposed to win Iowa.\u00a0 If he does, his march to the nomination may be a short one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At CFIF, we\u2019ve spent some time arguing that Rick Santorum could produce a surprise win in next week\u2019s Iowa caucuses.\u00a0 Ron Paul continues to top the leader board in the Hawkeye State, rising to a level of support that most consider surprising.\u00a0 But with news that a Super PAC is switching its support from Michele [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,2284,2725,2066,160,869,838,1084,218],"class_list":["post-12503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-caucus","tag-iowa","tag-michele-bachmann","tag-mitt-romney","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-rick-perry","tag-rick-santorum","tag-ron-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12503"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12511,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503\/revisions\/12511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}