Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Mitt Romney will spend his New Year’s Eve in northwest Iowa -- the state’s most concentrated area for Republicans -- in the latest sign of his accelerated bid to win the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses.
The former Massachusetts governor yesterday also made dismissive comments about Ron Paul, who polls show is his closest rival in the state where voting starts in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
“Ron Paul’s not going to be our nominee,” Romney said yesterday of the Texas congressman in an interview aboard his campaign bus in Iowa with the RealClearPolitics website.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was also critical of Paul, suggesting that a win for him in Iowa could weaken the future importance of the state’s caucuses in the nominating process.
“It would be very good for the future of the Iowa caucuses for somebody other than Ron Paul to win,” Gingrich said. “Somebody who wins because a lot of college students show up in favor of drug legalization doesn’t exactly strengthen the idea that this is a good environment to fight in.”
Paul, in line with his libertarian philosophy, has said that he would support the legalization of drugs as a way to better regulate their sale and reduce profits reaped by violent cartels and gangs.
Romney’s Push
Romney, as part of his newly aggressive push in Iowa, plans to campaign extensively in the state right up to the caucuses. After traveling today to New Hampshire -- site of the nation’s first primary on Jan. 10 -- he plans to return to Iowa tomorrow and remain in the state through the voting.
His campaign said he would remain in Des Moines, the state capital, the morning after the caucuses for television interviews. In past campaigns, candidates worried about their showing in the caucuses typically have left Iowa by then to try to limit the importance placed on the results.
Campaigning last night in Ames, Iowa, Romney rode his campaign bus into a warehouse where an enthusiastic crowd of about 750 people were waiting.
Stepping off the bus as the song “Eye of the Tiger” blared, Romney ignored his Republican rivals and attacked President Barack Obama.
“This is not an election just to change presidents,” he said. “It’s an election to save the soul of America.”
2008 Defeat
Romney’s loss to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Iowa caucuses helped to derail his previous presidential bid, and he and his strategists had spent much of this campaign trying to lower expectations for him in the state. That changed as recent polls showed him with a good chance of scoring a caucus victory.
As Romney’s Iowa crowds have grown, Michele Bachmann’s campaign is struggling amid the departure of a top supporter. Yesterday the Minnesota congresswoman pressed her allegations that the backer was bribed by the Paul campaign to endorse him, even though one of her own aides denied that charge.
The dispute centered on the Dec. 28 decision by Kent Sorenson, an state senator who was Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman, to abandon her effort in favor of Paul.
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