That was a mistake, but not sure how big an impact it made (or did not make). I think Iowans take themselves a bit too damned seriously in this process and they probably over analyze every news cycle.
And in the end, all of this hoo hah about Iowa normally means diddly.
Not bad news for Newt in any serious way. The RCP average probably is a better measure.
Most important:
Rasmussen has not revealed, or it has not been made public, how he is weighting his sampling of Iowa caucus goers.
If this were a national poll against a democratic opponent, we would be told how many democrats and how many republicans went into the result. We would know the books were cooked if a poll had 800 democrats and 200 republicans.
We are not told how many conservative, moderate, and liberal republicans go into Rasmussen’s numbers.
Since Iowa has been controlled by a very large group of conservative Christians for a number of cycles now, they should be the lion’s share of the sample.
We are not told and/or Rasmussen has not thought of it.
That was my take as well. But Fox (Faux) News has made it a virtual campaign. Krauthammer, Brit Hume, Fred Barnes and, can you believe it, Dennis Miller have joined the nightly rant against Newt and this supposedly big mistake. No mention that Romney, by asking Newt to give back the money he earned in a perfectly legitimate capitalist exchange is doing exactly the same thing as Newt who they charge with nothing less than a near capital crime.
This is a made up story. Faux is the leader. Krauthammer, Hume, Barnes and Miller are, IMHO, no longer the trustworthy sources that we once knew. Too bad.
But for me it means less Fox News and more Netflix. Even my wife, Fox's biggest fan, is getting tired of it.
Fox equals Mitt. Enough.