Super-duper Tuesday is everything in the nomination process. Never before have 24 states held primaries at the same time. You need M O N E Y and very high recognition to compete.
IA, NH, SC and MI before Feb5th really mean little, if anything...for BOTH the dims and the GOP.
There's just not enough time between IA and super-duper Tuesday to leverage a surprise win...even IF you're wallerin' in cash. Your polling just won't change that much, baring something disasterous, between IA and Feb 5th.
People and pundits who still believe it's possible to make a run from obscurity to nomination by leveraging a win in IA or NH...or both...are the one's whistling past the graveyard.
IMO, this means it will be either Rudy or Fred against Hillary in 2008. They're the only 3 in the race...and Fred's in trouble.
Rudy is making the “right” noises, as much as I dislike our cross dressing candidate, he has donors in TX coughing large money, and no one else except for Romney has even a shot.
If Fred is going to move on up, the time is now, he needs to make a Big Push.
Hilde’s a lock, all a Obama win in IO will do is write a better narrative for her campaign..”She didn’t waltz into the nomination, she had to struggle after losing Iowa...”
Gag, we may be better served targeting key House and Senate races folks Rooty has nothing for us and will drive people (Honest Conservatives) to stay home and that will sink our Congressional chances.
I think back to GW Bush’s campaign in ‘88.
He had a “fire break” strategy. If he lost Iowa and NH, he had plans to do extremely well in the South on Super Tuesday. In terms of delegates, that would have off-set the Iowa and NH losses.
He did lose Iowa as I think the campaign was expecting to - but did win Iowa as Bob Dole’s campaign fizzled out.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had GW Bush lost in New Hampshire.