Posted on 10/23/2011 2:35:52 PM PDT by drewh
The Iowa caucuses are now just 72 days away. Once Iowans vote on Jan. 3, the 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination ceases to be about debates and gaffes and spin, and begins to be about actual results.
This week’s uproar over Herman Cain’s CNN interview with Piers Morgan will likely be a distant and irrelevant memory by Jan. 3. Despite Cain’s rhetorical difficulty in consistently articulating a pro-life position, his bona fides on the issue have long been established, as demonstrated in 2006 when he led a $1 million effort to encourage black voters to vote pro-life.
What should be more troubling for Cain’s supporters are persistent concerns about the strength of his campaign’s “ground game” in Iowa. Organizing for the Iowa caucuses is a time-consuming, labor-intensive effort and 10 weeks is a very short time in terms of building effective operations in each of Iowa’s 99 counties. That’s why many people were startled a week ago when ABC News showed Cain’s Iowa headquarters nearly empty:
Duane Lester of All American Blogger interviewed Cain’s Iowa communications director Lisa Lockwood this weekend at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Forum and asked her about that video:
Lockwood’s explanation — that many of Cain’s volunteers in Iowa are working from home, rather than from the campaign office in Urbandale — may help reassure Cain’s supporters, as do the latest poll numbers from Iowa. But the poll numbers also point toward a looming danger for the Cain campaign:
When you look at the RCP average, you see that every Iowa poll for the past two weeks (beginning with the Oct. 7-10 PPP poll) has shown Cain in first place and Perry in single digits. It is therefore scarcely surprising … that the prime directive of the Perry campaign is now “Destroy Herman Cain.”
Allahpundit yesterday explained what Perry’s situation means going forward:
[W]hile Perry can skip New Hampshire, I think he’s stuck having to compete in Iowa. Sooner or later he’ll have to suck it up and start attacking Cain in earnest.
And this is very much in line with what I wrote Friday:
That the Perry campaign has become a purely negative organization — a machine whose prime directive is the destruction of other non-Romney candidates, leaving Perry as the sole hope for the Anybody But Romney movement — is an inevitable consequence of how the campaign began with the goal of becoming the overnight front-runner. When you begin with that kind of plan, with your campaign organized around the idea of raking in front-runner money, you inevitably encounter a problem when, for example, a poll shows your candidate in sixth place in Iowa. … [T]he Perry campaign’s relentlessly negative message now – the turn to the Dark Side, as it were — is a predictable reaction to the failure of their original plan to become the overnight front-runner and Only Legitimate Alternative to Romney. Those who bought into the original plan, which fell completely apart within six weeks of Perry’s Aug. 13 announcement … are now trapped into an all-or-nothing effort to destroy Herman Cain.
That lengthy contemplation of the strategic logic of the Perry campaign was prompted by an item from Alexander Burns in Politico, showing how Cain has previously given ambiguous answers, based on a Human Events article in 2003, when Cain was beginning his campaign for Senate in Georgia. Having spent enough time on the campaign beat to know how these things happen, I observed: “$17 million buys a lot of opposition research, as well as a team of people paid to disseminate it. Excuse me for suspecting that Politico columnists don’t spend their spare hours reading eight-year-old back issues of Human Events, IYKWIMAITYD.”
Of course, there’s no telling who dug up that 2003 article. Mitt Romney’s also got an ace team of opp-research guys on their staff and, when I mentioned the Politico column in a phone conversation Thursday with Cain campaign communications director J.D. Gordon, he pointed out that Team Obama isn’t exactly shabby when it comes to planting oppo-research hits in the press. So it would be unfair to jump to the conclusion that Team Perry was responsible for that item, however …
The poll numbers in Iowa and the strategic logic of the Perry campaign point inexorably to the necessity of Team Perry “going negative” on Herman Cain — and doing so PDQ, while Perry can still get the maximum advantage of his fund-raising advantage.
Perry finished the third quarter with more than $15 million cash on hand, whereas Cain had about $1.5 million cash on hand. But the Cain campaign is now getting a huge influx of contributions and it has been suggested they may be raking in $200,000 a day online now, which would translate to more than $5 million by the end of October. That would be “Romney-esque money,” as one GOP consultant put it, and if they could keep up that pace, Team Cain might be approaching financial parity with Perry and Romney by Thanksgiving. So if the Perry campaign wants to strike hard on Cain with TV and radio attack ads, it behooves them to do it before the Cain campaign can accumulate the money and organizational resources to fight fire with fire.
And if Team Perry does mount an attack-ad campaign against Cain, they will almost certainly do so in Iowa. The combination of poll numbers and the campaign calendar explains this:
Iowa caucuses ………………… Tuesday, Jan. 3 New Hampshire primary …. Tuesday, Jan. 10 South Carolina primary …… Saturday, Jan. 21 Florida primary ……………… Tuesday, Jan. 31 Nevada caucuses ……………. Saturday, Feb. 4
Notice that there are 10 days separating New Hampshire (Romney’s must-win state) and South Carolina (Perry’s must-win state). If we assume that Mitt wins his must-win, Perry would be under extreme pressure in South Carolina, and the pressure would be even worse if Perry fares poorly in Iowa. And if recent poll numbers are any indication, Perry could fare very poorly indeed in the Hawkeye State:
Public Policy Polling (Oct. 7-10) ………….. Perry 9% (4th place) Insider Advantage (Oct. 16) ……………….. Perry 6% (6th place) University of Iowa (Oct. 12-19) …………… Perry 6% (5th place) Rasmussen (Oct. 19) …………………………. Perry 7% (6th place)
Can the Perry campaign afford for their candidate to finish fourth, fifth or sixth in Iowa? No way, José. They don’t necessarily have to win it, but if Perry finishes as far back as fourth in Iowa on Jan. 3, it’s unlikely he will do much better in New Hampshire on Jan. 10. By the time the South Carolina primary rolls around on Jan. 21, the media will have been doing “death watch” reports on Perry campaign for more than two weeks. If Perry then underperforms in “must-win” South Carolina, there will be another ten days of “death watch” coverage before the crucial Florida primary on Jan. 31. Romney is reputedly strong in Nevada, so by the time votes are counted there on Feb. 4, Perry could be batting .200 in the first five nominating events, and perhaps even 0-for-5 if he were somehow to lose his “must-win” state.
The strategic situation clearly indicates the necessity for Team Perry to leverage their current cash-on-hand advantage by mounting an attack ad campaign against Cain in Iowa, in hope of restoring Perry’s status as the most viable choice for the Anybody But Romney voters, who are a majority in the GOP primary electorate.
He can come right back to Texas and get elected yet again. That’s the poll people should believe, not one generated by the MSM.
“But the Cain campaign is now getting a huge influx of contributions and it has been suggested they may be raking in $200,000 a day online now, which would translate to more than $5 million by the end of October. That would be “Romney-esque money,” as one GOP consultant put it, and if they could keep up that pace, Team Cain might be approaching financial parity with Perry and Romney by Thanksgiving”
Cain is bring in the cash now, which was his last big hurdle.
OK, Perry supports the Second Amendment.
Other than that, (which is significant) he’s just another handsome, stupid frat boy who made all of his money AFTER he started in politics, and does pretty much what his globalist-RINO masters tell him to do.
He needs to shut his pie hole and hope Cain picks him for VEEP.
“When I see Perry look at Romney I see seething hatred in his eyes”
Well, but what the facts show is that Perry and Romney are old buddies. Romney helped fund Perry’s campaigns in Texas:
http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/mitt-rick-secret-donor-deal-032600837.html
We’ll see how this develops, but I’d bet money that Perry will launch a blitzerkrieg against Cain when the time comes. His phony campaign against Romney is all about misdirection and he is doing no real damage.
“Perry has shown almost no interest in attacking anyone but Romney, and I don’t expect that to change.”
Funny. His perrybots on FR have all but ignored Romney. They spend all their time attacking Cain or any other conservative.
I disagree, although Perry might not being landing damaging blows based on substance alone because of his complete ineptitude as a debater, he is destroying Romney is a different way, every time he gets Romney to argue with him (even when Romney wins the argument) Romney still loses because the argument itself makes Romney look bad and makes people dislike him more.
well without the html tinkering no pic shows. With it you get the extra call on freerepublic. *sigh*. Seems to be a bug.
Perry is not a conservative.
has he caught up in name recognition? He has always been somewhat behind.
Rick Perry is no Reagan conservative! He is the rotten apple in the bushel! That little squirt will NEVER get to be the nominee, and I agree all he is doing is giving it to Romney and the Mormon Church!
Oh do tell us more about where he made his money, and who are these globalist_RINO masters you speak of? What has he done that they told him to do? Names and dates please. You can’t toss something like this out there and not give details.
I agree Little Rickie will NEVER get the nomination. He is no Reagan Conservative! But he’ll try to bring down the only capable Conservative running, Herman Cain, in order to install Romney and the Mormon Church as head of our Country.!What a Benedict Arnold Little Rickie Perry is! Perry’s close ties to the Bush family, ie. the Establishment, are finally out of the closet!
Could be Cain is ahead of Romney in almost all straw polls. So he figured at this time attacking Romney/Perry is not really necessary...Cain being the front runner, they will all be after him...Have to wait for the caucus/primaries to see what happens next..but the babbling argument Romney and Perry had made them both look silly and should have embarassed them...Petty squables don’t look presidential..
Yes, Hewitt must be laughing his head off because he is for Mitt Romney, just in case someone didn’t know that.
Washington insiders and the MSM thought early on they could sideline Cain....it must really grind their beans to see him ahead..
Yep, those digusting pundits always think that big money cronyism dictates everything. It controls them and they’re as bad as the politicians they support. The very same pundits and GOP-E hate Sarah Palin. Flush them all.
GO CAIN!
I might add, that only Speaker Newt has praised Sarah Palin and he respectfully called her Governor Palin!
GO MR. SPEAKER!
Hewitt is for Romney?
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.