Pardon the depressing portion of today’s Morning Jolt… there’s always John Kerry and laughably inaccurate Obama arguments on the sequester to lighten the load.

Republican Governors, Disappointing Us One After Another

So, my dear righty friends, does this give off a whiff of crony capitalism?

Members of an Iowa board charged with doling out millions to lure business to the state often work for companies that benefit from the incentive programs they oversee, an Iowa Watchdog  review shows.

Additionally, Iowa Economic Development Authority board members donated thousands of dollars to political campaigns, including Gov. Terry Branstad, prior to their nominations to the board. The Republican governor led the charge to create the authority when he took office in 2011 and appointed its entire board, which has to gain final approval from a majority in the Iowa Senate.

The board selected dozens of companies in the past year to receive a combined $189 million in taxpayer money and tax breaks, with the goal of luring more business to Iowa and growing its economy. An Iowa Watchdog review of state campaign donor lists, legislation and records from the authority showed a majority of the money went to fund projects at existing businesses, rather than to land out-of-state or new companies.

“Whenever there is even an appearance of a conflict of interest we abstain,” said Theodore Crosbie, an authority board member and vice president of global plant breeding at Monsanto. “We take the subject seriously. All members have been diligent about this matter.”

But the review found potential conflicts of interest among board members. Specifically, it showed six companies – John Deere, Aviva USA, Monsanto, Cargill, Brownells Inc. and Interstate Companies – received at least $39.6 million in tax incentives and state grants and loans, despite leaders from the respective companies serving on the authority’s board. In exchange, the companies promised to create 983 jobs. State documents did not show a figure for the incentives received by Brownells.

Pretty dispiriting time to be a Republican. Here in Virginia, Bob McDonnell just agreed to a transportation bill that includes way too many different types of tax increases. I think some folks on the Right are understating the fact that the state genuinely needed a steady supply of revenue to pay for transportation projects and repair, but McDonnell began with a plan that would eliminate the gas tax and increase the sales tax. Now the sales tax goes up, the tax on gas is reduced and shifted to wholesale (easier to hide from consumers), AND the  car tax goes up from 3 percent  to 4.3 percent AND there’s a new 0.25 percent sales tax on homes in Northern Virginia AND there’s a new hotel tax. Did you guys forget anything? I mean, for a deal like that, we could have elected Democrats.

We’ve seen Kasich in Ohio and Scott in Florida punt on the Medicare expansion. And now this you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours mess in Iowa. I’m sure everyone involved in Iowa Economic Development Authority will insist the $189 million they’ve spent so far created jobs… but that’s not the point, as it’s hard to spend $189 million and not create any jobs. The point is that any business that has an employee on the Authority board has an enormous advantage in getting economic assistance from the state, an advantage that a small start-up is unlikely to have.

Over the weekend, this article in the New York Times stirred up a hornet’s nest among some of the conservatives I’m in touch with:

The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.

The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races.

“There is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” said Steven J. Law, the president of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” creating the new project. “We don’t view ourselves as being in the incumbent protection business, but we want to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.”

Erick Erickson is among those fuming: “The people who brought us No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP, the GM bailout, Harriet Miers, etc., etc., etc. are really hacked off that people have been rejecting them… I dare say any candidate who gets this group’s support should be targeted for destruction by the conservative movement.”

Keep in mind, American Crossroads is coming off a deeply disappointing cycle: The two related groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group, spent a combined $170 million in 2012. The Center for Responsive Politics summarizes:

Including Obama and Romney, American Crossroads spent money for or against 20 federal candidates in 14 races, while Crossroads GPS focused on 27 in 24 contests.By our calculations, American Crossroads came out on the winning side in three of its 14 races, with one still too close to call — that’s about 21 percent. GPS did only slightly better, getting its desired outcome in just seven of the 24 elections it spent on; one contest also remains undecided. GPS’ success rate comes to 29 percent. 

So, having failed to achieve what they wanted to do in 2012, American Crossroads has to go back to its donor base with a revised mission, one that donors will want to support. And their mission is, in short, “no more Todd Akins.”

Of course, the formation of this group – and the Times’ decision to feature it on page A1 of the Sunday edition — re-opens the old wound of whether one branch of the party is to blame for the 2012 results. As I’ve written before, this is not merely a moot or pointless debate but one that warps the perception of what happened last cycle, as candidates from every branch of the party failed.

Tea Party enthusiasts have to come to grips with Richard Mourdock losing a winnable Senate race in Indiana, Allen West losing in Florida, and Mia Love losing a winnable House race in Utah. But it not just Tea Party stalwarts who lost. Linda McMahon’s attempt to persuade Connecticut voters she was really an “independent” candidate didn’t work, and Scott Brown, perhaps the least conservative Republican in the Senate, lost to Elizabeth Warren, a flawed candidate in Massachusetts. The least conservative Republican in the House, Illinois’ Bob Dold, also lost.

Anyway, rehashing the establishment-vs-the-grassroots fight is premature until we see the lineups for the various 2014 Senate races.

The only race that is really discussed in the Times article is Iowa’s open seat Senate race, with those behind the self-proclaimed “Conservative Victory Project” expressing skepticism about Rep. Steve King.

Now, King strikes me as a tough sell statewide. (Katrina Trinko looks at his interest in the Senate seat here.) Then again, he did just beat Christie Vilsack, the wife of the former Iowa governor and current Secretary of Agriculture, in a year when Obama was winning the state pretty handily. So the entire debate is premature until we know:

• if King really wants to run for Senate
• who else is out there on the GOP side
• who the Democrats are likely to nominate and
• how the hypothetical head-to-head match-up polling looks. 

Maybe the 2014 races will be marked by gaffe-prone, predictable-liability self-proclaimed Tea Party candidates wrecking winnable races. Considering how the Democrats and the mainstream media turned Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock into national figures, it’s a phenomenon worth keeping an eye on and being ready to combat.

But for now, we have a Super-PAC project forming to fight a problem that hasn’t manifested itself, and people fuming about the formation of a group that hasn’t done anything yet.

Here’s how the Romney campaign sees the early vote in Iowa:

Amid a much-hyped public relations campaign for in-person satellite voting, which included voting locations next to Obama rallies and visits from Hollywood stars like Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, the numbers tell a very different story. As of today, the Democrats are running 14,904 votes short of their 2008 performance, while Republicans are running 8,038 votes ahead of 2008.

So instead of an 18-point margin, Democrats maintain only a 5-point margin. With absentee ballots, Democrats lead in both requests and returns, as they have every cycle. And while Democrats have increased their AB and early-vote performance by 119 percent overall, Republicans have increased ours by 131 percent. So their raw-vote lead isn’t nearly as important as the dramatic slippage in margin. In combined absentee and in-person voting, their lead is barely 12 percent. That’s well within the margin Republicans need to be able to win on Tuesday, given our historic advantage among Election Day voters.

In fact, the current Democratic margin is below the margin they held ahead of George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, the first Republican to carry Iowa since Reagan.

And the key statistic our voting models point to is that the GOP has, as of today, 87,481 more high-propensity voters available to vote on Election Day because many more of our most committed voters have made the choice to vote on November 6. Tens of thousands more mid-propensity voters are also available, which will grow our Election Day margins even further.

According to the George Mason Elections Center, 557,432 early votes have been cast in Iowa so far. Using the percentage breakdown provided by that site, we calculate that about 241,600 registered Democrats, 179,800 registered Republicans, 136,300 no party or other have voted.

This gives the Democrats a pure registered-party-member advantage of about 62,000. How have the no party/other crowd split? The University of Iowa poll has Obama leading among independents, 41.9 percent to 40.2 percent — yes, those seem low to me, too. The Marist poll in Iowa found “Obama has a 21 point lead among Independent voters who plan to cast an early ballot, while Romney is up 9 points among independents who plan to vote on Election Day.” Let’s give Obama a 60–40 split in the no party or other (although some undoubtedly are voting third party) and give him a 27,000-vote advantage in the independents.

That gives Obama an 89,000-vote advantage in the early vote; as noted above, the Romney campaign thinks they have about 87,000 more “high-propensity voters” than the Democrats do. That looks like a really close race . . . until you get to the independents who haven’t voted early, where Romney leads by 9 in Marist (let’s say 54–45).

We don’t know how many Iowa independents will vote on Election Day, but we know 1.5 million people voted in Iowa in 2008, and 33 percent were independent, according to the exit polls, so we’re looking at roughly 500,000 independent/no party/third party voters in the state. We also know that 26.1 percent of the 675,402 early voters in 2008 were no party or other party — 176,280. In other words, in 2008, about 323,000 independents voted on Election Day instead of voting early.

If Romney has a lead of 9 points among independents, he wins. The only question is by how many votes. If independent turnout on Election Day is 50 percent of 2008, Romney wins by 14,000 votes. If it’s 70 percent of 2008, he wins by 20,000 votes. If it’s 90 percent, he wins by 26,000 votes.

BOOM.

President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney are deadlocked in three key presidential battleground states, according to a new round of NBC-Marist polls.

In Iowa, the two rivals are tied at 44 percent among registered voters, including those who are undecided but leaning toward a candidate. Ten percent of voters in the Hawkeye State are completely undecided.

In Colorado, Obama gets support from 46 percent of registered voters, while Romney gets 45 percent.

And in Nevada, the president is at 48 percent and Romney is at 46 percent.

As discussed yesterday, if a Republican is tied among registered voters, he’s probably narrowly ahead (or perhaps not-so-narrowly ahead) among likely voters.

All three swing states looked better for President Obama recently. In the RealClearPolitics average, Obama leads in Iowa by 4 (but he led by 10 in the one head-to-head poll conducted this spring), led in Colorado by 5.6 percentage points, and led in Nevada by 7.4 percentage points (note only two head-to-head polls conducted this year).

Of course, this doesn’t mean Romney will win or even necessarily be close in November. But the Romney campaign must feel a bit reassured to see some light-blue swing states finally turning purple.

Politico finds it important that a man who appeared in Mitt Romney’s video was convicted of “assault on a peace officer” in 2005. Their research indicates the man served his sentence.

He appears to be a carpenter, working on staircase repair at a hotel; he refers to an anecdote of writing his daughter’s name underneath a stair that appeared in the Des Moines Register.

So… why is this important?

The Register wrote about the ad, and did not mention the man as some local troublemaker or ne’er-do-well.

I suppose an argument could be made that the man’s run-ins with the law contribute to his long-term unemployment and under-employment. But the man’s need for a job, and ability to support himself and pay his child support, is real. Iowa’s unemployment is a relatively low 5.2 percent, but that still adds up to 86,978 Iowans looking for work. It’s unlikely that the other 86,977 currently unemployed are all struggling to find work because of criminal records.

Over at Ace of Spades, Drew M. writes:

The bigger issues is [Politico reporter Maggie] Haberman appears to have taken it upon herself to do background checks on people appearing in Romney videos. There are no links or sources in her piece so it’s either original reporting or she’s just running opposition research dumps for the Obama campaign.

I wonder if Haberman has done background searches on everyone who appears in an Obama ad. If not, why not?

The rules are clear, if the media isn’t going to do this stuff conservatives will have to. No more playing a gentleman’s game when the other side is playing for keeps. Everyone who appears in a Team Obama ad better be prepared.

I guess we know why Obama prefers to cite “composites” like “Julia.” They never found the little girl whose family couldn’t afford a winter coat that John Edwards kept citing again and again.

This morning the Romney campaign releases a new four-minute video showcasing struggling Iowans, declaring, “Millions of Americans are struggling under the Obama economy. Here are a few of their stories. … Hope and change has not been kind to millions of Americans, but they still believe in this great country, and deserve a leader who believes in them: Mitt Romney.”

Between Obama’s steel ad and all of the struggling-economy-themed commercials to come, at least pianists who specialize in slow, melancholy background music can look forward to a prosperous 2012.

Reagan biographer* Craig Shirley points out that in 2008, Mitt Romney won 25.19 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.

A big question will be whether he surpasses that this year. In the past four polls in Iowa, Romney finished with 23 percent, 19 percent, 24 percent, and 23 percent.

By many standards, the 2008 field of Republican competitors in Iowa was stronger than this one. Ron Paul remains, but last cycle’s class included a three-term governor with fantastic retail politicking skills (Mike Huckabee), a two-term senator famous from Hollywood and prime-time television (Fred Thompson), and two candidates who chose to not compete fully in Iowa, a four-term senator who had finished second in the 2000 presidential campaign (John McCain) and a two-term New York City mayor with a national reputation for leadership after 9/11 who was Time’s Man of the Year in 2001 (Rudy Giuliani).

This year’s crop includes a former Speaker of the House who has been out of office since 1998 (Newt Gingrich), a member of the House first elected in 2006 (Michele Bachmann), a four-term governor (Rick Perry), and a senator who lost his seat in 2006 by a landslide (Rick Santorum).

A core element of Romney’s argument is that he is the most electable Republican in the field. But if he can’t surpass his previous threshold in Iowa — or perhaps another threshold, his 30,021 votes from last cycle — one will wonder why the most-electable Romney can’t beat his previous finish against weaker competition.

(In Romney’s favor, he’s currently at 40.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of recent New Hampshire polls. Last cycle he finished with 31.5 percent of the vote and 75,675 votes.)

Still, another wise GOP mind points out that with Romney and Paul seeming to be assured of finishing first and second, the real contest is for the bronze medal. Ron Paul will always have his level of support but seems unlikely to break out; in a year of rapid bursts and collapses of frontrunners, Paul’s share of the vote remains between 5 percent and 15 percent in every national poll. If there will be a strong push from an anti-Romney conservative candidate, it is most likely to be the one who finishes first among Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, and Gingrich.

UPDATE: Some readers think it is worth noting that Shirley’s next book is an authorized biography of Newt Gingrich, entitled Citizen Newt: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Speaker Gingrich.

The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart finds a reason to like the Iowa caucuses: They voted for Obama!

Complaints that a state that looks nothing like the rest of the nation has such a disproportionate impact on how this nation picks its leaders. Of course, I’m talking about Iowa. And the lengths the Republican candidates are going to appeal to the more socially conservative caucus-goers there is nothing short of frightening. But before folks get a little too giddy about beating down the Hawkeye State, I want to remind them of something. This was the same wildly unrepresentative state that added instant legitimacy to the presidential ambitions of then-Sen. Barack Obama…

History was to be made — and it was the people of Iowa who set the wheels in motion. So leave them alone.

Candidates I prefer (Romney, Perry) may finish first or perform well in this year’s Iowa GOP caucuses. Candidates I do not prefer (Ron Paul) may finish first or perform well in this year’s Iowa GOP caucuses. Whether I get a preferred outcome or not, it doesn’t change much regarding my fundamental objection: In four days, about 80,000 to 140,000 Republicans in the 30th-most-populous state will get together on a winter’s night and all but eliminate certain candidates. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and/or Rick Santorum will be seriously hurt by not finishing third or higher (perhaps one could sustain their effort with a strong enough fourth-place finish). Iowa has .97 percent of the United States population; if anyone drops out after Iowa, 99.03 percent of us will never have the opportunity to cast a vote in support of that candidacy.

(Perhaps we need a slogan. “We Are the 99 Percent!” Wait, what? You say that one is already taken?)

I would suggest Capehart’s “Iowa is good, because it selected Obama” defense tells us a lot about the mentality of many of our friends on the left. They find an outcome they prefer (Obama winning) and work backward to determine what is “good”; we work forward from the right (and Right) principles and accept the outcome of a good process.

In fact, my objection about Iowa is more about the extremely low participation rate of a caucus and less about the state being “wildly unrepresentative” as Capehart laments; the state is 91 percent white while the nation as a whole is 72 percent white. It is very close to the national average in percentage of population under 18 and percentage of persons identifying as biracial, and the state’s median household income of $48,065 is close to the national average of $50,221.

The state has slightly more persons over 65, a slightly higher percentage of high-school graduates and slightly lower percentage of college graduates, a slightly higher percentage of homeowners, and a slightly lower percentage living below the poverty level.

Iowa “looks nothing like the rest of the nation”? Actually, demographically, it’s not that bad. Of course, the demographics of the state aren’t the same as the demographics of the caucus-goers.

Number of delegates at stake in Iowa: 28

Number of delegates that winning 50 percent of the vote gets you: 14

Number of delegates that frontrunner will get if he finishes with 25 percent of the vote: 7.

Number of delegates that the second-place finisher will get if he finishes with 21.5 percent of the vote: 6.

Number of delegates at stake in New Hampshire: 12.

Number of delegates that winning 50 percent of the vote gets you: 6.

Number of delegates that winning 34 percent of the vote gets you: 4.

Number of delegates that go to the winner in Florida, under current rules: 50.

Number of delegates that go to the second-place finisher in Florida, under current rules: 0.

Number of delegates at stake on Super Tuesday, March 6: 438.

Number of delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination: 1,144.

Total number of delegates: 2,286.

In the next-to-last Morning Jolt before the Christmas holiday, a look at whether Jimmy Carter sent condolences to North Korea, the cost of . . . and this assessment of what’s going on in Iowa, and doubts about why we should care so much about all that:

The Latest From — Yawn! — Iowa

I’ve noticed that in the final days before a caucus or primary, support tends to coalesce around the top two contenders. It’s a bit like Alec Baldwin’s speech from Glengarry Glen Ross: First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired. We can argue about whether it should be this way (in fact, I’ll argue a bit about this below), but if you’re in third or fourth place in that final week, look out. A certain segment of the voters will decide that it’s more important to help or hurt the frontrunner.

So could next week turn into a showdown between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul? A poll out Wednesday suggested that might be so.

Rasmussen: “The new Rasmussen Reports survey of Iowa caucus participants shows Romney on top with 25% of the vote followed by Paul at 20% and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 17%. Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, both at 10%, are the only other candidates in double-digits. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann earns six percent (6%), former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman four percent (4%), while one percent (1%) prefer some other candidate and eight percent (8%) are not sure.”

Our old friend Byron York highlights one point, “Results for both Romney and Paul are the highest they have yet reached in Rasmussen polling. But Scott Rasmussen notes a significant difference between supporters of Romney and supporters of Paul. ‘Romney leads, with Gingrich in second, among those who consider themselves Republicans,’ Rasmussen writes. ‘Paul has a wide lead among non-Republicans who are likely to participate in the caucus.’”

But the State Column notes that Paul has been on a hot streak in recent polls: “This is Mr. Paul’s first loss in the Hawkeye State this week. Mr. Paul won Insider Advantage and Public Policy Polling polls of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers Monday. Mr. Paul also won a ISU/Gazette/KCRG poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers Wednesday. Mr. Paul held a lead of 10 percentage points over Mr. Romney in the ISU/Gazette/KCRG poll and a lead of 6 percentage points over the Bain Capital co-founder in the Insider Advantage poll.”

Jonathan Tobin at Commentary concludes, “it’s clear that Gingrich’s decline is no longer in doubt. Since his campaign was always something of a house of cards, the final two weeks before the caucus may see his support decline even further. That will mean not only an ignominious end for what seemed only a month ago to be a campaign headed to victory in Iowa but the harbinger of a swift end to his hopes elsewhere . . . Paul’s gains will be greeted with dismay by mainstream Republicans who are unhappy about this extremist’s prominence in the party, but if he is taking away votes from conservatives who want anyone but Romney, that will merely strengthen the former Massachusetts governor in the long run because any outcome in Iowa other than a Gingrich win makes his nomination more likely.

“As for Santorum, it appears his months of beating the bushes in Iowa and going to every county in the state to appeal to social conservatives is finally paying off. His support has doubled in the last month and, though it still leaves him with only 10 percent, it is clear that five percent probably came from Gingrich.”

Tom Dougherty writes at Right Sphere, “Where has the Romney move to the top come from? He has been more on message of late and that is resonating with likely caucus goers, but the biggest reason is money. Ad buys totaling $3.1 million has taken its toll on Newt and the rest of the field. Make no mistake, what we’re seeing right now in Iowa is classic politicking where money is king, followed by organization and message. Mitt Romney will continue to have more money, both in his campaign war-chest and through PAC’s that support him, than the rest of the field. His organization is vastly stronger than any other candidate and his message, like it or not, is convincing voters that he is the only GOP candidate that can make Barack Obama a one-term President.”

Having said all that, I dread the news during the rest of this holiday week and the run-up to January 3, with endless breathless Internet and TV updates each time some Floyd Turbo in one of the 99 counties reverses himself and takes back an endorsement and throws his weight behind the newest flavor of the month. Putting aside the quirkiness of Iowa, caucuses are an awful method for picking candidates for a variety of reasons — suddenly the secret ballot doesn’t matter anymore? — but high among them is low participation. The turnout at the 2008 Iowa GOP caucus: 119,000. Turnout at the 2000 caucus: 87,000. Turnout in 1996: About 96,000. Turnout in 1988: About 109,000.

Turnout has never surpassed 23 percent of all eligible Republicans, and even that low threshold was last met back in 1988. The GOP frontrunner is determined by a group roughly the size of the crowd at a University of Michigan football game. If the Iowa caucus turnout is like 2008 (could be higher), it will equal 16 percent of the average population of one congressional district.

At least in primaries, many more Republicans (and in open primaries, independents) get to weigh in on it. In 2008, 234,000 Republicans and independents voted in New Hampshire, and 445,000 Republicans and independents voted in South Carolina.

If your patience is waning, and you think you can’t stand one more discussion of who will win Iowa, be cautious — the state itself can be fatal, according to this headline and opening paragraph from Ken Rudin on NPR:

Not Everyone Will Survive Iowa

 Dec 12, 2011 — A change in the primary delegate rules may extend the battle for the Republican nomination into the spring. But, if history is a guide, some candidates may not survive the Iowa caucuses.

Hypothermia would be my bet.

Oh, wait, he didn’t mean literally.

But while there is reason to hope that the Republican contest next year may extend into the spring months, there is a near certainty that some of the candidates may be gone from the race soon after the Iowa caucus results are in on Jan. 3, just over three weeks from now.

Someone asked if I was available for an event on the afternoon of January 4, and I said that based on past history, I’ll probably be covering somebody’s campaign coming to an end.

Rudin writes, “If I were a betting man — and certainly not on the scale with Mitt Romney— I would think that the candidacies of both Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are the most precarious in Iowa. The two have probably put more hours into the state than any other Republican candidate. But neither is especially well-funded, neither is in double digits in the polls, and neither has gotten the kind of media air and ink time their rivals have. They also don’t have much going in New Hampshire (Jan. 10 primary), which makes Iowa that more crucial.”

Could the Ames Straw Poll winner end up not winning the Iowa caucus? That hasn’t happened since... 2008… and 1996… and 1988.

A reader wrote to me back in 2007, “As someone who worked on the [Phil] Gramm presidential campaign, I can say winning the Iowa staw poll doesn’t mean squat.  I know it happens every cycle — pundits and people who love politics inflate false events because there’s nothing else to do and then the people vote.  But, only one of those events matters.  (As I am sure you remember, Gramm tied Dole in the straw poll and then was rewarded with a fifth place finish in the actual voting.)”

I join my NR colleagues on the cruise tomorrow, but for the week, a thought or two, war-gaming out the upcoming GOP primaries . . .

It is mid-November. Iowa Republicans vote in their caucus on January 3, roughly six weeks away.

And we’re still not sure if Mitt Romney is going to make a serious push at Iowa. (Increasingly, it appears he will; the Des Moines Register writes about evangelicals giving him a second look here.)

It’s almost unthinkable that a candidate who has a decent shot at winning the first contest wouldn’t choose to make a serious effort to win, but we live in strange times. Romney has visited only four times so far, but in the RealClearPolitics average, he trails Herman Cain by six tenths of a percentage point; Romney’s been a solid second in most polls and leads in the most recent CNN/Time survey.

At first glance, Romney has to compete. How would you describe a candidate who chose to not try to win the first contest when he’s barely behind because it wasn’t part of his campaign’s original scripted strategy? Hesitant? Too cautious? Cowardly? A half-hearted effort in Iowa, and a decision to keep the Romney campaign’s focus on New Hampshire, would be the most small-c conservative approach to campaigning in recent memory.

And yet . . . winning Iowa might set up its own problem for Romney. The recent history of presidential primaries suggests that the purpose of New Hampshire is to negate Iowa. In fact, the best way to ensure you lose New Hampshire appears to be to win Iowa:

2008: Iowa winner: Mike Huckabee. New Hampshire winner: John McCain.

2000: Iowa winner: George W. Bush. New Hampshire winner: John McCain.

1996: Iowa winner: Bob Dole. New Hampshire winner: Pat Buchanan.

1988: Iowa winner: Bob Dole. New Hampshire winner: George H.W. Bush.

1980: Iowa winner: George H. W. Bush. New Hampshire winner: Ronald Reagan.

This is a bipartisan phenomenon; look at the Democrats:

2008: Iowa winner: Barack Obama. New Hampshire winner: Hillary Clinton.

2004: Iowa winner: John Kerry. New Hampshire winner: John Kerry.

1992: Iowa winner: Tom Harkin. New Hampshire winner: Paul Tsongas.

1984: Iowa winner: Walter Mondale. New Hampshire winner: Gary Hart.

(Yes, John Kerry somehow did what no other non-incumbent, non-vice-president candidate has done since 1980.)

If Romney wins Iowa, will New Hampshire voters be determined to reject Iowa’s choice?

Obviously, as they say in those investment-fund commercials, past performance does not predict future results. And Romney’s lead in New Hampshire has been huge and consistent. But consciously or subconsciously, New Hampshire voters hate to confirm the choice of Iowa. If the Granite State rubber-stamps the choice of the Iowa caucus-goers, won’t that make Iowa even more important four years later? If Iowa is the real contest, why would candidates and campaigns shower New Hampshire voters with visits and attention and ads and spending?

Herman Cain is still doing well in New Hampshire, and this is one of Ron Paul’s stronger states. But one of the candidates who have done reasonably well here is . . . Jon Huntsman — until now, mostly an afterthought and punch-line of this campaign.

Huntsman is so thoroughly determined to demonstrate his devotion to the New Hampshire voters that he alone can say, “I boycotted candidate debates for you.” Remember, there will be no significant Democratic presidential primary, and unaffiliated voters can and do vote in party primaries. (The deadline to switch your party registration for the presidential primary was October 14.) Granite State residents can register to vote until January 3.

So suppose Romney wins Iowa, New Hampshire is determined to avoid a coronation, and so the independents and Democrats cross over and fuel Huntsman to a New Hampshire primary victory. (It feels like that kind of an unpredictable, wild-unexpected-swing cycle, no?) Then the action would move to South Carolina, where conservatives would probably be apoplectic at the thought that the top two contenders for the GOP nomination were Romney, derided as an unprincipled flip-flopper, and then Huntsman, widely perceived to be the one guy clearly to the left of Romney. They would then consolidate around one of the remaining Not-Mitt, Not-Jon options . . .

Right now, the leading Not-Mitt option is Herman Cain. But by January 21, Herman Cain may look a little weaker, depending on how he finishes in Iowa and whether the harassment claims stick to him. So currently running third in South Carolina is . . . Newt Gingrich. If Iowa’s results knock out Bachmann or Santorum, and if Perry is widely perceived to be kaput . . . wouldn’t Gingrich be in the best position to win over their supporters? And if Cain’s backers waver, wouldn’t Gingrich, the fellow Georgian, be a likely second choice for them?

Under this scenario, Republicans would go to the polls on January 31 in Florida, with a winner-take-all primary, with three winners in three primaries: Romney in Iowa, Huntsman in New Hampshire, and Gingrich in South Carolina.

Over in the Corner, Jonah continues to wonder if Pawlenty could have caught on by simply hanging around and waiting for his general, boring acceptability to catch on amidst a weak GOP field.

Far be it from me to scoff at the proposed George Costanza “By Mennen” strategy, but there’s very little evidence that Iowans or any other significant primary demographic would have warmed up to Pawlenty with more time and exposure. Jonah asks, “Had a majority of the GOP, or even the Iowa GOP, really paid that much attention as of mid-August 2011*?”

For starters, it is not as if coverage of his two terms as governor of Minnesota couldn’t cross a hermetically sealed state border. Pawlenty visited Iowa as early as 2009 and made 50 stops in the state by July of this year. In June, he became the first candidate to run television ads in Iowa, running a 30-second ad in six media markets.

Then in the final push to the Ames Straw Poll, Pawlenty made 29 stops in 26 cities across Iowa. He appeared in three debates, and the final one, held in Iowa, had 5.2 million viewers nationwide. In April 2011, Pawlenty garnered 1 percent in a survey of Iowa Republicans and 2 percent in July 2011. It couldn’t be that Iowa Republicans had merely tuned out the race, because an equally fresh face, Michele Bachmann, had surged to 21 percent by July. By July, only 4 percent of likely Iowa caucusgoers said they had never heard of Pawlenty; 47 percent said they had a favorable opinion of him, 19 percent said unfavorable and 30 percent said they had no opinion. But in the same survey, only 8 percent backed him and only 13 percent said he was their second choice.

Nationally, Pawlenty hit all the traditional stops for a candidate: all the Sunday shows, The Daily Show, op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, speaking at CPAC. He appeared on the cover of NR. He released 191 web videos and they generated considerable buzz.

Perhaps most significantly, it’s hard to argue that Pawlenty somehow never got a chance to appeal to the Republican donor base. For perspective, in July 2011, he had raised less than Bill Richardson had in his presidential bid in July 2007. It was no state secret that Pawlenty would need every penny he could get to beat Romney, and donors kept their wallets largely closed to him.

What’s more, the 16,862 Iowans who appeared in Ames for the straw poll certainly paid attention by mid-August. Pawlenty won the votes of 2,293 of them, or 13.6 percent.

“Had a majority of the GOP, or even the Iowa GOP, really paid that much attention as of mid-August 2011?” Yes.

* Jonah wrote “2010″ but I know he meant 2011.

Steffen Schmidt — not to be confused with former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt — is a professor of political science at Iowa State University, and he writes in the Des Moines Register today:

I recently had drinks with respected senior Democrats in New Hampshire. They were Barack Obama supporters in 2008 and now have serious buyer’s remorse.

They were alarmed at the lack of leadership, which they feel Obama showed while he still had a substantial majority in the House and Senate. “Steffen, that health care monstrosity used up all his goodwill and has scared the crap out of voters. They just don’t understand what’s in there and he has done nothing to explain it.”

They were unanimous in blaming him for the avalanche of Republicans and the tea party movement ascendance that has paralyzed Washington. “Obama never stepped up to the plate and gave the Democrats a vision of how to retain power,” one said. “In 2010 he just walked away. He’s worse than Bill Clinton. It’s all about the Big O.”

He concludes:

From where I sit, watch, listen, check my abundant email and phone messages, I know many, many Democrats in Iowa who are deeply troubled by Obama’s policies and lack of firm leadership pushback against the Republicans. Whether they will dare to launch a caucus write-in insurgency for Hillary Clinton or some other Democrat is still uncertain. But even just talk of that should get the attention of the White House.

No serious challenge to Obama will come from the Democratic side; the only candidates who will challenge Obama within his own party will be those with nothing to lose. The money won’t be there, and the risk to a potential challenger’s future viability within the party will be substantial. The Obama crowd would be quick to aim for retribution, Chicago-politics style.

As for their buyer’s remorse . . . well, some of us spent much of 2007 and 2008 trying to warn everyone.

The Morning Jolt has a quick update on the four GOP wins and two losses in Wisconsin, the talk of Obama going negative on Romney early, and this bit about how Iowa’s reacting to rumors of a Perry announcement:

Iowa Republicans to Rick Perry: Why Don’t You Love Us?

No offense to Iowa readers, but those of us in the other 49 states don’t find your traditional role of wildly disproportional power in selecting the next president as charming as you do.

The state’s primary electorate is largely isolationist. Economically, it’s wildly disproportionately agriculture compared to most other states. Aspiring presidents tend to pander on ethanol subsidies, although you’re starting to see Republicans defy this. It is deeply religious and socially conservative, but ironically, it’s different kind than you get in South Carolina. It relishes populism. What’s more, under the caucus system, turnout is exceptionally low compared to a primary. If you can’t find a sitter, you can’t vote. If you work nights, you can’t vote. There is no secret ballot, which is why we saw Iowa Democrats calling their neighbors racist for supporting Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama on caucus night 2008. It is a mess, and from where I sit, the sooner we drive a stake into the heart of the Iowa caucuses, the better.

Which is why I don’t really care that Rick Perry is somehow stealing the thunder of the Ames Straw Poll.

Craig Robinson,  founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheIowaRepublican.com, fumes, “Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision to announce his candidacy in South Carolina at the same time the Iowa Straw Poll is taking place in Ames is not only a slap in the face to Republican voters in Iowa, but it also is disrespectful to the Iowa GOP and the other candidates seeking the nomination. The move makes it obvious that Governor Perry either doesn’t understand the Iowa caucuses or doesn’t respect the role that Iowa plays in the nominating process.”

At  Contentions, Alana Goodman writes, “Is there a potential drawback in Perry bigfooting the Iowa poll? Yes – the Des Moines Register warned it could irritate certain circles in the state GOP. But it sounds more likely an Ames-day announcement would have negative long-term consequences for Iowa than for Perry’s own campaign. If his announcement makes the straw poll look insignificant or meaningless, it could change the way future GOP candidates view the state. Which may explain why some Iowa Republicans are on edge.”

Come on, Iowans. He hasn’t really slapped you in the face. You’ve read the “Rick Perry Facts.” The last guy to get slapped in the face by Rick Perry was District Attorney Harvey Dent.

Well, here’s a development sure to irk backers of every Republican not named Chris Christie. A group of Iowa Republican donors is traveling to Trenton to, in effect, beg him to run for president:

Some of Iowa’s top Republican campaign contributors, unhappy with their choices in the developing presidential field, are venturing to New Jersey in hopes they can persuade first-term Gov. Chris Christie to run. The entreaty is the latest sign of dissatisfaction within the GOP over the crop of candidates competing for the chance to run against President Barack Obama in 2012.

Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa energy company executive, and a half-dozen other prominent Iowa GOP donors sought the meeting with Christie, the governor’s chief political adviser, Mike DuHaime, told The Associated Press. The get-together is set for the governor’s mansion in Princeton, N.J., on May 31.

“There isn’t anyone like Chris Christie on the national scene for Republicans,” Rastetter told the AP. “And so we believe that he, or someone like him, running for president is very important at this critical time in our country.”

Last cycle Rastetter gave the maximum $2,300 to Mitt Romney, then Rudy Giuliani.

Rastetter was the top fund-raiser for Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad last fall, and he was wowed by Christie when Christie appeared with Branstad last fall.

If you’ve been wondering how absentee ballots and early voting are going . . .

Jon Keeling looks at some Ohio counties:

Republicans requesting absentees jumped from 36k to nearly 49k compared to the same time in 2008. What have Democrats done in the same time? They’ve gone from 152k requests at this time in 2008 down to 118k this year. Republicans have spiked. Democrats have plummeted. Yes, Cuyahoga will still most definitely go to Ted Strickland, but the absentee numbers clearly indicate enthusiasm levels are nowhere near the levels seen in 2008, and that’s bad news for the crown jewel of the liberal base in Ohio. . . . On to Franklin County: Franklin has seen 155,651 absentee requests for this general election. Despite a 65/35 partisan advantage for Democrats, absentee requests are statistically tied. Of all absentee requests, 38,561 are Democrats and 37,690 are Republicans.

Elsewhere in the state, in Hamilton County, Ohio:

The early voting totals favor the Republicans: 15,650 Republicans have voted so far, compared to 13,270 Democrats and 9,335 independents.

Iowa:

The latest figures issued by the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office showed statewide 115,017 Democrats had requested absentee ballots and 60,156 had been received by county auditors, while 92,128 Republicans had made similar requests and 41,321 ballots had been received. Overall, the 249,513 requests for absentee ballots this fall had surpassed 2002 and 2006 early-voting totals.

This is apparently a smaller margin than Democrats have come to expect.

Yet in South Dakota, it’s way down:

At this time in 2006 — which similarly had races for House and governor but not for senator or president — 5,400 Pennington County voters had requested absentee ballots. This year, the number is around 3,300. The same pattern shows in Meade and Custer counties.. In Meade County, just over 600 people had requested absentee ballots by the middle of this week. At this time in 2006 and 2008, the number was around 1,500, Schieffer said. Custer County early voting numbers are around 550 now, compared with around 890 in 2008. Secretary of State Chris Nelson said auditors around the state have told him a similar story.

And in South Carolina, requests for absentee ballots are down:

Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said Wednesday the numbers are in line with the state’s last gubernatorial election. With three weeks until Election Day, 54,322 voters statewide had requested absentee ballots. People can vote absentee either by mail or in person at county election offices. In the 2006 general election, nearly 76,000 voters cast absentee ballots. But absentee requests are far below the record numbers from 2008. In the last presidential election, more than 342,000 people voted absentee. That was nearly 18 percent of total ballots cast.

And in Arkansas, an embarrassing error:

A ballot printing error for the November general elections left one race completely off the forms, a mistake that will affect those who have already submitted their early ballots in Union County. The 801 votes garnered by Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. during early voting and the 202 absentee ballots sent out did not include the non-partisan runoff between Court of Appeals Judge Karen Baker and Judge Tim Fox for an open Arkansas Supreme Court position.

UPDATE: One more key one:

Early-voting numbers out of Nevada’s two biggest counties could spell trouble for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his tough contest against Republican Sharron Angle. In Reno’s Washoe County and Las Vegas’s Clark County, Republican turnout was disproportionately high over the first three voting days, according to local election officials. The two counties together make up 86 percent of the state’s voter population. The sparsely populated counties outside Clark and Washoe, which have yet to report complete early-voting results, are strongly Republican. Some 47 percent of early voters in the bellwether Washoe County so far have been Republicans, while 40 percent have been Democrats, according to the Washoe County Registrar. Nearly 11,000 people had voted in Washoe over the first three days of early voting, which began Saturday.

ANOTHER UPDATE: At R+14, it’s hardly a competitive Texas district, but the turnout number in this anecdote from Eric in Round Rock, Texas, is interesting: “Asked one of the folks at the polling place about the early voting turnout. She said, ‘In an off-election year, we can get as little as 11 people voting a day.  We’ve averaged about 350 per day so far.’ I’d say people here are motivated to vote.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: This one’s a big one:

Pennsylvania voters have requested nearly 127,000 absentee ballots so far. Of that total, Republican voters made up 50 percent and Democrats made up 42 percent, according to figures collected Tuesday afternoon.  The state records show Republicans are returning their absentee ballots in greater numbers as well. The state has received about 40 percent of requested ballots, and Republican registrations outpace Democrats by 19 points, 56 percent to 37 percent, according to the state data.