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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.
Cain can’t be destroyed by anyone else, only Cain can destroy Cain, and it would have to be something devastating like pictures of him with a boy or something. Seriously, nothing short of that could derail Cain at this point.
Having no record has it’s advantages, all Cain needs to do is always default to the most conservative answer when asked any question and he cake walks it to the nomination.
God bless Herman Cain! He’s his own self and he’s doing great!
No professional, know-it-all handlers!
Tea Party conservative see that and we like him! A lot.
I notice that now Herman Cain has the corrupt Beltway pundits against him. What took ‘em so long? LOL
Screw them and the old nag-rags they ride on and write for.
Herman Cain has a lot of “the folks” behind him and we’re going to vote, you betcha.
Well crap. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked to have my post #7 removed...
They are happy just as they are..while the rest of the states are pleading poverty and business won't settle where they are. They like their separation--everything is bigger and richer in Texas. Texans are proud to live in Texas. They are proud to fly the American flag, drive Big SUV's and fast cars; and have no problem having framed photos with George Bush displayed on the wall. Even to the extent of proudly announcing The Bush Family lives nearby.
States if run right can pretend the rest of the country does not exist... limited isolationism on the state level.
They are happy just as they are..while the rest of the states are pleading poverty and business won't settle where they are. They like their separation--everything is bigger and richer in Texas. Texans are proud to live in Texas. They are proud to fly the American flag, drive Big SUV's and fast cars; and have no problem having framed photos with George Bush displayed on the wall. Even to the extent of proudly announcing The Bush Family lives nearby.
States if run right can pretend the rest of the country does not exist... limited isolationism on the state level.
No he didn’t. He didn’t say one single word about Cain. What do you think was an attack on Cain?
Ate raw, rusty nails today, did ya? Gotta spit them suckers out somewhere, I guess.
The Prime Directive is for all the Republican Candidates to destroy one another so that we can move to Capitalistic Conservative Anarchy. Our goal in November in 2012 is to vote “NONE OF THE ABOVE”. They are all corrupt!!!!!!!!!!
“Perry is in Kamikaze mode, but his target is Romney.”
If that were true, Perry would be campaigning in New Hampshire instead of Iowa.
But what we hear is that he is putting together a strike force in a state where Romney is not even competing.
Make no mistake, Perry is out to destroy Herman Cain.
Yeah, Gardisil, smooching the illegals, TTC...
I'll vote for that!
That doesn't mean Perry wont take a pot shot at Cain every now and then when given the opportunity, but I can't see him ever going after Cain with the same venom he has been going after Romney. With Romney, it's personal.
“So he jumped on board with his own plan, backed by a long-time respected flat tax advocate (Forbes). It’s his only shot.”
Too late. No one likes wanker political promises made on the fly.
Azimuth Poll - Texas Primary (Cain 33%, Perry 18%, Romney 7%)
lol, dude, you are cold.
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Cain’s rise in the polls — and his comments to CNN that put his position against abortion in doubt — made him a target on the stage. Texas Gov. Rick Perry took a swipe at him, although he did not refer directly to the interview, in which Cain said that families should be able to abort a pregnancy in instances of incest and rape.
“It is a liberal canard to say, ‘I am personally pro-life, but government should stay out of that decision,’ ” Perry said. “That is not pro-life. That is pro-having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too.”
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Now even though Cain said NO SUCH THING, both perry and santorum attacked him as if he had.
Almost every article written called it perry's "parting shot" at Herman Cain.
OUCH
stupid.
go after obama, you moron!
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