Rivals seek to rally the right against Romney after Iowa

By Jonathan Martin and John F. Harris

DES MOINES

Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses Tuesday night over runner-up Rick Santorum by a margin so small he could count it on his fingers, the culmination of a months-long heartland slog in which he was never subject to a sustained assault by his more conservative rivals.

That is about to change, with a vengeance.

As the campaign heads for New Hampshire, where Romney’s position is strong, and to South Carolina, where it isn’t especially, Santorum and fourth-place finisher Newt Gingrich made clear they will take sharp aim at the former Massachusetts governor and try to rally the right for a last-ditch effort to stop a politician they regard as a man of flaccid convictions who feigns devotion to conservative principles to suit his needs of the moment.

“What wins in America are bold ideas, sharp contrasts and a plan that includes everyone,” Santorum said, taking the stage at his election night party.

Gingrich was more explicit, announcing in a speech that struck a peevish note about the televised attacks he has endured from Romney backers, that coming days would bring a “great debate in the Republican Party.” His campaign is taking out a full-page ad in New Hampshire’s Union Leader casting the race as one between a “bold Ronald Reagan conservative” and a “timid Massachusetts moderate.”

Romney’s virtual tie in the state that did much to dash his White House hopes four years ago validated and modestly advanced what was already true going into the contest — he is in clear command of the race, and still the only Republican who can see a path to the nomination without squinting hard.

But it was a triumph that didn’t feel very triumphant. This was in part because Romney and his team clearly had allowed their own expectations to slip the leash, with predictions for a solid victory rather than the 8-vote margin he secured over a rival who just weeks ago was widely regarded as a nonfactor.

Even more, though, the Iowa results shined a light on a party that — while unified in its disdain for President Barack Obama — is increasingly divided on lines of ideology and style.

The ideological fissures were especially evident in the support for Ron Paul, whose anti-war and uncompromisingly libertarian stands won him 21 percent of the vote for a third-place finish.

They were equally clear in the entrance polls to the caucuses, which showed that the same problems with evangelicals and lower-income voters that dogged Romney in 2008 persist today.

Gingrich praised Santorum in his remarks before leaving Iowa, and his aides indicated he’d train his fire only on Romney and Paul.

But going forward, the central question hanging over the GOP contest appears to be whether sustained barrages by the former House speaker and Santorum against Romney tend to work in concert, causing the front-runner to stumble, or simply end up dividing the conservative opposition.

Romney’s team had clearly hoped that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would stay in the race in order to further divide the right. But a fifth-place finish did nothing to reignite his soggy campaign, and he said he was returning to Texas to reassess his candidacy, which most observers interpreted as a prelude to withdrawal. Michele Bachmann, who came in sixth in her native state, also has scant rationale for continuing.

As for Romney, the state of his campaign depends, as has long been the case, on how you hold it to the light. From one vantage point, he showed clear strength: the only Republican who has managed over long months to stay on message and steadily consolidate establishment support.

From another angle, Iowa highlighted his vulnerabilities. In 2012, he won almost exactly the same number of votes (and a slightly lower percentage) of votes here than he did in 2008 — a result that year which began his downward slide as a candidate.

This time, Romney’s post-Iowa prospects are brighter, but those old vulnerabilities are emboldening the opposition.

Santorum’s top strategist, John Brabender, laid out the case the Pennsylvanian will make in the days ahead.

“We see this developing into a campaign with Romney, Paul and Santorum, so people can go with the moderate, the libertarian or the conservative,” said Brabender. “That’s the argument going forward.”

Santorum is also readying a case that Romney isn’t the only candidate who can beat Obama, a core part of the former Massachusetts governor’s appeal.

“You don’t have to compromise on conservative convictions to beat Barack Obama,” said Brabender, noting areas where Romney couldn’t differentiate himself from the president.

“The bailout, Romneycare — there’s no contrast there,” he said, adding: “Romney has no foreign policy experience.”

Further, Santorum intends to make the case that he’s not only a truer conservative than Romney but also a populist Republican who can appeal to a wider swath of voters than his wealthy rival.

“I also believe we as Republicans have to look at those who are not doing well in society,” the former senator said in his election night speech, recounting the plight of workers in Iowa who had seen factories closed down.

Romney officials, while less than thrilled that Perry appears headed for the exits, don’t believe Santorum poses a major threat because he’s faced minimal scrutiny to date and has little organization and money as the race accelerates to three different states this month.

Yet for what was supposed to be a victory party here Tuesday, there was a tense air to the Romney gathering in a downtown hotel.

After fighting hard to win here, blitzing Iowa in the last week and keeping the candidate in the state for election night, Romney aides were initially frustrated with their showing and appeared tight. It wasn’t until after 1:00 a.m. Central time that overjoyed staffers came storming back into the hotel ballroom here to celebrate the win. Screaming, holding aloft beers and chanting the names of Romney’s top Iowa aides, the staffers were exultant and more than a little relieved.

But as the win margin dropped from 14 to 8, a bit of nervous humor set in as the group made its way into the media filing room to watch the results formally announced on the large TV screen.

“A win is a win,” one aide kept repeating to nobody in particular.

But a single-digit victory over the cash-strapped Santorum was not the result Romney himself expected and he had to scrap his planned victory speech as the vote counting went on. Romney aides hastily removed his teleprompter from the stage and the candidate, surrounded by his wife and four of his sons, gave a rushed version of his stump speech.

Asked about Santorum’s “bold ideas and sharp contrasts line,” Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom only said: “We’ll see him in New Hampshire.”

The confidence in Romneyworld may have been jarred slightly here, but they sought to reassure themselves by looking down the calendar.

“Santorum will have a difficult time when these primaries start to happen every week and then there are days with multistate primaries,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a Romney surrogate here, told POLITICO. “Unless you have the resources, infrastructure and organization in place, it’s tough.”

Flake also voiced the other factor giving Romney supporters comfort after a nerve-racking evening.

“Those others who are still in the race will divide a lot of the vote, and I think Romney will only grow from here,” said the congressman.

That’s what Santorum fears.

In a fundraising email to supporters before the final Iowa votes were even tallied, the Pennsylvanian warned that if the party’s base didn’t come together in support of a single candidate, they’d repeat 2008.

“We can either unite now behind one candidate and have a conservative standard bearer in 2012, or have the GOP establishment choose another moderate Republican who will have a difficult time defeating Barack Obama in November,” wrote Santorum.

With Santorum and Gingrich indicating that they’ll both compete this week in New Hampshire, the conservative vote could be divided.

“Santorum and Newt split the social conservatives,” New Hampshire GOP strategist Pat Griffin predicted. “This will be ugly, but I still think it is Mitt’s to lose.”

Perry’s likely withdrawal is good news for Santorum because it means the Texas governor likely won’t be camped out in South Carolina for the next three weeks, wooing conservatives.

But Gingrich isn’t going anywhere.

His aides began making the case for why conservatives should coalesce around the former speaker.

“This is a national race, not a local dance,” said Gingrich senior adviser Kevin Kellems. “Newt Gingrich is a national candidate who has remained at or near the top of virtually all national polls — as well as in South Carolina and Florida.”

Of course, those surveys are now outdated and will look very different following Gingrich’s fourth-place finish here and the scrutiny that helped prompt his collapse over the past month.

But Kellems said they had no plans to go after Santorum, who appears to have the best claim now as the Romney alternative.

For conservatives, the best-case scenario would be a repeat of 1996 — when the attacks of one conservative on the establishment favorite helped another insurgent.

“If Newt goes negative on Romney in New Hampshire on the stump, that would help Santorum the same way [Steve] Forbes’ constant attacks on Dole in ’96 helped [Pat] Buchanan,” said Greg Mueller, a conservative PR executive who worked for Buchanan.

But Dole ultimately won that race, of course, and Romney remains the GOP’s man to beat this year.

Still, his weaknesses were on vivid display in Iowa.

For the second consecutive campaign, he was lured into the caucuses and underperformed. His finish this year was certainly better than the thumping he took at the hands of Mike Huckabee four years ago. But that he could only take a quarter of the GOP’s votes here and barely outnosed a candidate who drove around the state in a pickup truck underlined how fractured the Republican coalition is at the moment.

As the entrance polls here revealed, evangelicals and lower-income voters still have a difficult time accepting their party’s wealthy Mormon front-runner. That’s not to say they won’t support him against a president they despise. But even if he rebounds in New Hampshire, where he leads every poll by double digits, he’s going to face an intense fight in South Carolina — another state he competed in four years ago only to be disappointed.