Romney can lose Iowa and still win

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Updated: February 3, 2012 8:07AM

The run-up to Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses has been like trading baseball cards. In recent months, Republican presidential primary voters have swapped a Michele Bachmann for a Herman Cain for a Newt Gingrich for a Ron Paul for a Mitt Romney.

In the end, will the GOP be left with a pile of frayed cardboard?

On the eve of the first-in-the nation contest, the candidates are madly scrambling through the fields, diners and gymnasiums of the Hawkeye State in their final appeals.

Nearly every Republican presidential aspirant has taken a star turn at the top of the heap, only to see their numbers tumble to the next player. Last week, the poll standings seemed to shift by the hour.

The caucuses are a unique, grassroots style of voting that can be peculiarly unpredictable and inscrutable. Iowa, economically stronger than most of the nation, offers a fervently conservative cadre of evangelical voters who are focused more on social issues like abortion and gay marriage than a candidate’s tax plan.

The possible scenarios are dizzying. For example, if U.S. Rep. Ron Paul turns out his hard core libertarian base in this splintered contest, he will be the hottest ticket in politics. For about a week.

My New Year’s bet: Even if former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney places second, he’s a victor. He’s already won the resource battle. Romney is like the Southern generals in the Civil War, holding off the opposition until it runs out of ammunition. Until the Newt Gingrich surge, Romney held his fire in Iowa and focused on must-win New Hampshire. In recent days his campaign and friendly political action committees have poured millions into negative campaign ads that imploded Gingrich’s rising star.

If Romney prevails in Iowa, it’s all over but the crying.

The presumed Republican nominee is a Mormon, a stand-up member of the One Percent, a stiff customer who says that corporations are people, too.

Romney’s national poll numbers still hover in the mid-20 percent range, where he’s been for months. Seventy-five percent of the GOP primary electorate prefers someone else.

That scenario is ripe for the GOP’s worst nightmare: an independent challenge from the right by a Donald Trump, Ron Paul or Sarah Palin.

The Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee have been targeting Romney since last summer. They are armed with hundreds of millions of dollars and hours of entertaining video from 13 Republican debates.

Last Thursday, at a campaign stop in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Romney delivered the kind of red-meat mantra the Obama-haters crave.

“We have a choice in this coming election of what kind of America we’re going to have,” he said, according to a report by the Associated Press. “It’s not just about replacing a president. It’s about saving the soul of America.”

On Tuesday, Iowa is done, but the fun has just begun.