MASON CITY, Iowa — For months, the fight for the Republican presidential nomination has been cast as a tough choice: a true conservative vs. someone who can beat President Obama in the fall.
In the final days before the Iowa caucuses, many voters who once hoped for both were realizing that they may not be able to have it all.
Throughout his campaign, Mitt Romney has made the case that he can beat President Obama. The Republican presidential candidate is showing a new found confidence in Iowa, less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses. (Dec. 28)
A interactive look at the schedule through Super Tuesday and an analysis of where candidates are focusing their efforts.
“The sad reality is, I’m a fairly conservative person, but you have to send them out east,” said Tim McCleary, 52, who owns a mobile home park. McCleary said he came around to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the past few days after watching last week’s debate.
While this has been the defining question of the contest all along, there was evidence of growing intensity on both sides of the argument Wednesday as the candidates crisscrossed the state on a frenzied day of campaigning.
Against the backdrop of persistent questions about his conservative credentials, Romney drew enthusiastic crowds as he rumbled across eastern Iowa in a bus making the case that he is the most electable Republican in the field.
A Time-CNN poll released Wednesday put Romney at the front of the pack despite his decision to spend relatively little time in Iowa, where a conservative GOP electorate has resisted his candidacy. Romney had 25 percent support, compared with Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) at 22 percent and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) at 15 percent. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), who was the front-runner just a month ago, trailed with 13 percent in the Time-CNN poll.
Most of the other candidates attacked Romney and sought to present themselves as the most genuine conservative in the field.
Pat Sheets, 69, a retired school principal, joined McCleary and scores of other area Republicans in lining up before dawn at a coffee shop in Muscatine, Iowa, to see Romney. “He’s one of my top two — him and Newt,” Sheets said. “We aren’t sure if Newt can win. . . . I think Romney is the person most likely to beat Obama — and, in my opinion, that’s the top objective. Newt has a lot of baggage. I like what Newt says, but I don’t want to waste my vote on somebody who can’t actually win.”
The support lost by Gingrich, whose front-runner status made him the subject of a barrage of negative TV ads, flowed to other candidates, notably Santorum. In one bit of good news for Gingrich on Wednesday, his campaign announced that it had raised $9 million in the past quarter. That is enough money to allow him to respond to some of the negative attacks and continue his campaign into later contests.
After months of being near the bottom of the standings, Santorum has surged, becoming the latest symbol of the Republican electorate’s continuing search for a satisfactory candidate. His new statewide radio ad, “Unite,” promotes his record on abortion and dubs him the “one consistent conservative” in the race.
In an interview Wednesday on CNN, Santorum said: “Polls change; convictions don’t. A lot of people are moving toward my position, trying to move toward the conservative primary.”
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