Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America (26 page)

Ron Paul was his own universe as a candidate, but he was becoming a force in Iowa. His brand of libertarianism attracted an intense following, small in numbers but passionate in their support. Paul was the oldest and quirkiest of the candidates. He was out of step with his party on national security issues. His support for legalization of marijuana also put him at odds with most Republicans, though it helped attract young voters. But on the question of government’s role, he offered Tea Party activists the purest and most radical platform. He wanted to shrink the government dramatically and balance the budget immediately. He also wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. In debates, he seemed to enjoy attacking his rivals. He showed no mercy toward Gingrich, who he believed was a hypocrite and a phony conservative. He didn’t much like fellow Texan Rick Perry either. The only candidate generally spared from his attacks was Romney. In fact, they acted as allies against the other candidates. In Iowa, Paul was building an organization that was the envy of many of the other low-budget candidates. His supporters had been at work for years. “
This isn’t a year-and-a-half campaign
,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party, told the
New York Times
’ Richard A. Oppel Jr. “This is a five-year campaign.” The better Ron Paul did in Iowa, the more Romney liked it. Paul had no chance to win the nomination,
but in Iowa he had the potential to suppress support for some of the others who were trying to become Romney’s principal challenger.

The other candidate on the rise was Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator. He was as conservative as anyone in the field. He had done his politics in Iowa the old-fashioned way, and for most of the year he had been camped out in the state, drawing little attention. He would go anywhere to meet with one or two or a dozen voters. Reporters rarely followed him around. Romney’s campaign advisers thought so little of his chances that they did not even bother to prepare an opposition research book on him. His candidacy seemed improbable from the start. A partisan fighter, he had served Pennsylvania in the House and later the Senate, as one of the most outspoken social conservatives in the chamber. He was the father of seven children, one a special needs child. He and his wife, Karen, lost an eighth child shortly after birth, a wrenching experience that turned him into a more aggressive advocate on some of the social issues he had merely paid lip service to before. When he ran for reelection in 2006, a bad year for Republicans, he lost by eighteen points. He was built like a football player, and his trademark became the sweater-vests that he wore on the campaign trail. Buttons sold at his events said, “Chicks Dig the Vest.” By December, he was burrowed deep into Iowa. He had visited all ninety-nine counties in the state, often riding in a Dodge Ram pickup owned by friend and aide Chuck Laudner that became known as the Chuck Truck. He knew Iowa activists by name. When Perry and Bachmann squared off in August in Waterloo the day after the straw poll, Santorum was there too. No one remembered that, but Nick Ryan, a conservative operative in Iowa who was with him that night did. “As he went from table to table, he knew so many people who were in that room. He recognized them, by name,” Ryan said. “He shook their hands. He was . . . overlooked by the media but continuing to build relationships.”

•   •   •

On December 13, my colleague Phil Rucker and I sat down with Romney for one of a series of interviews he was doing that week with print and Internet publications. He had been criticized for not talking to the press, and this was the week the campaign had chosen for him to check the box. He used the interview to continue his attack on Gingrich, whom he called “an extremely unreliable leader in the conservative world.” He also acknowledged that he still needed to persuade some Republicans that he was a true conservative. “There are some elements that create the impression that I may not be a conservative. One is being from Massachusetts. The other is a health care plan that people feel was in some ways a model for what Barack Obama did. And those two
things create an image which is not identical to what I’d like to project. . . . People I think question those conservative values, and I have to bring them back to my record and, frankly, my writings. One of the reasons I wrote a book was to make sure people understood what I really believe.” Later in the interview he again stressed his conservative position. “I know today there are some of my positions that are not seen as being conservative, and that’s the right of people to look at. But if you look at one of the most defining issues of conservatism today, it is whether we’re going to reform Medicare and cut back the scale of the federal spending, and the Speaker called that ‘right-wing social engineering.’ And I applauded the Ryan plan.” He also said he was confident he could unite the party as its nominee. “My positions on issues are very much in alignment with the big tent of the Republican Party,” he said. “I’m for limiting the scale of government, cutting government spending, dramatically reducing the intrusiveness of government in our lives. My message on the Constitution is entirely consistent with that of the base of my party. And so I don’t think there’s any difficulty in those in my party coalescing behind me if I’m the nominee.”

•   •   •

Matt Rhoades liked to tell people, “Winners close.” He was the quiet force inside Romney’s headquarters. He had risen through the ranks of Republican strategists, joining the Republican National Committee staff straight out of college. In 2004, he was director of opposition research for George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, and four years later he served as Romney’s director of communications. He was known for having a pipeline to the
Drudge Report
. He was tough and tough-minded, a man of few words who stayed out of the limelight. When he accepted the job as director of Romney’s PAC, he told me he would not put up with the internal chaos that had marked Romney’s first campaign. He prized discipline, planning, and execution. As the campaign year neared, he was mindful of 2008, when Romney didn’t close, in either Iowa or New Hampshire. He knew Romney was in a stronger position this time, but he was focused on taking full advantage of the governor’s position. “We’ve got to close,” he said as he prepared for the last weeks of campaigning before Iowa and New Hampshire. Which is why when Romney set off on a bus tour of New Hampshire on December 21, the name of the tour was “Earn It.”

The Republican campaign was running at full speed now in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Romney was making sure his New Hampshire firewall was secure before turning back to Iowa. The night before, he had given what aides had billed as a closing argument speech, though it was mostly a rehash of past themes and rhetoric. Romney still had trouble delivering inspiring speeches on
the stump. But the staging, at the picturesque town hall in Bedford, and the advance notice produced a full house of supporters and reporters. Romney’s team was in a good mood that night as they kicked off the tour, but one senior adviser remained cautious about Iowa. “I think you could throw a blanket over four or five people, and we could be fifth, we could be first,” he said. “I think we’re probably going to be in the top two or three but I just don’t know. I mean, the stuff that’s fallen off Newt is not necessarily going to us.” But the more he talked, the more optimistic he sounded. “I mean, it feels weird to me,” he said. “I almost think we’re on the brink of making this over really fast.” He noted that there were eleven days between New Hampshire and South Carolina and that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who had endorsed Romney, was bullish about his chances there. “Were we to get these first two, we would have time to get to South Carolina and create something.” Romney was not so sure. In our interview with him the prior week, he had offered this view of how long the nomination battle would last: “Traditionally, people who’ve done well early are able to knock out their opponents because their opponents run out of money. I’m not sure that’s the path that will be followed this time, in part because of the availability of Internet, cable, and debate access for campaigns with limited funds. So people may stay in longer than they have in the past, [people] that haven’t been able to raise money. So I can’t predict what will happen.” Romney also thought the race would last longer than many were predicting because of a change in the rules, which now called for delegates to be awarded proportionally in early contests rather than the winner-take-all rules of the past.

The next morning, in Keene, New Hampshire, Romney belittled Gingrich for complaining about the attack ads raining down on him in Iowa. Interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd, he sent a message to Gingrich that he should be prepared for even tougher attacks. “I know that the Speaker would like to say that we shouldn’t have any negativity,” Romney said. “But, look, if you can’t handle the heat in this little kitchen, the heat that’s going to come from Obama’s hell’s kitchen is going to be a heck of a lot hotter.” Later in the afternoon, Gingrich appeared at a press conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he was asked about Romney’s comments. He smiled. “Look, I’ll tell you what. If he wants to test the heat, I’ll meet him anywhere in Iowa next week one-on-one, ninety minutes, no moderator, just a timekeeper. If he wants to try out the kitchen, I’ll be glad to debate him anywhere. We’ll bring his ads and he can defend them.” He accused Romney of hiding behind his super PAC. “I don’t think he wants to do anything but hide over here and pretend it’s not his fault that he is flooding the people of Iowa with falsehoods. That’s his money and his staff and it’s his responsibility. I can take the heat.”

•   •   •

Once Christmas was over, the candidates refocused all their energies on Iowa. The Hawkeye State became a multiscreen political theater as the candidates navigated a turbulent landscape, the most unpredictable anyone could remember. Santorum began the final week of campaigning in a bright orange vest and carrying a shotgun for a short hunting expedition. Rick Perry campaigned with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the notorious anti-immigration official from Arizona. Arpaio got Perry off to a bad start at a breakfast outside Des Moines when he referred to Iowans as Buckeyes, the nickname of Big Ten rival Ohio State. Santorum and Gingrich attacked Ron Paul, whose growing support threatened both their candidacies. And the sparring between Gingrich and Romney continued. In Dubuque, the former Speaker said of his opponent’s attacks, “Frankly, they plain lie.” Still stung by Romney’s charge that he was an unreliable conservative, Gingrich said, “I don’t want to be insidious about Governor Romney, who I think is a very competent manager and a very smart man. But to have someone who is a Massachusetts moderate, who said he did not want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years, who voted as a Democrat for Paul Tsongas in ’92, who campaigned to the left of Teddy Kennedy, who as recently as running for governor said [he was] sort of a moderate pragmatic—to have him run a commercial that questions my conservatism? I mean, I’ve been a conservative all my life.” Gingrich said he would not fight fire with fire. He would try to stay positive in his advertising. “We have a lot of time,” he said. “I trust in the ability of the people of Iowa to look at something that is baloney and see it as baloney.”

By then, Gingrich was already out of time, thanks to weeks of pounding by Romney and Restore Our Future. The landscape changed once again, barely a week before the caucuses. At midweek, a CNN producer called Santorum’s campaign urgently trying to book him for an appearance that afternoon. John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist, remembers the producer saying, “We’re coming out with a new poll, we’re not going to make it public till four o’clock, all we can tell you is, you really should do Wolf Blitzer.” The new poll showed Santorum tripling his support and leaping into third place behind Romney and Paul. “All of a sudden,” Brabender said, “what happened is people who wanted to be with us but for the longest time thought we were in last place and so they just really weren’t there—all of a sudden they were there.”

Perry and Michele Bachmann were fighting desperately to avoid being driven from the race. Bachmann had put herself on a punishing schedule as she tried to match Santorum’s feat of campaigning in every county in the state. She was in last place in the CNN numbers, the final indignity for the winner
of the Iowa Straw Poll. But there was one more painful moment, an embarrassing defection by her state chairman, Kent Sorenson. Late in the afternoon on December 28, Bachmann arrived at a restaurant south of Des Moines for a quick meet-and-greet before running off to do a live shot for television. Among those waiting was Sorenson. One of Bachmann’s advisers asked him if he wanted to say a few words, but he begged off, claiming he had just had some dental work done. A few hours later he showed up at a raucous rally for Ron Paul at the Iowa State Fairgrounds and announced that he was switching sides. “I believe we’re at a turning point,” he told the audience. Bachmann said Sorenson had been lured away with the promise of a financial payment, which Sorenson denied. Her campaign was expiring amid bitter charges and countercharges.

New Year’s Eve brought more shocks when the
Des Moines Register
released its final poll of the Republican race. The
Register
had a notable track record of predicting the outcome of races in Iowa, and when the numbers began to flash on BlackBerries and iPhones at restaurants around Des Moines, where reporters were celebrating the arrival of the election year, it was clear that the caucuses were heading for one of the closest finishes ever. Over the four days of polling, Romney led with 24 percent, followed by Paul with 22 percent and Santorum with 15 percent.
Then came this paragraph
: “But if the final two days of polling stand alone, the order reshuffles: Santorum elbows out Paul for second.” In a year of surprises, why not this latest: a surging Rick Santorum with just days left before the caucuses. Santorum’s timing was perfect. It was too late for any of his opponents to launch the kind of air attack that Romney had thrown at Gingrich.