El dilema de Romney

No es lo mismo dejar que Bachmann gane el Caucus de Iowa que dejar que lo gane Perry...

The Daily Beast:

(...) In 2008, during his first run for president, Romney invested more than $10 million in the Hawkeye State. His goal, of course, was to win the caucuses. For a while, it looked as if he might succeed: thanks to his big spending and incessant barnstorming, the former Massachusetts governor established a lead in the polls in May 2007, expanded his edge to more than 15 percent in August, and was still frontrunning at the start of December, one month before the big day. Then something named Mike Huckabee happened, and the rest is history.

This time around, Romney has been less, shall we say, enthusiastic. Before Wednesday, he visited Iowa exactly once this year, in late May. Unlike Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, he has yet to air an advertisement on local television. His paid staff—three people—is much skimpier than it was in 2008, when dozens of Romneyites flooded the state. He’s made it clear that he’s not competing in Saturday’s Ames straw poll, the early turnout test that he won in 2007—even though his name will appear on the ballot.

And yet here’s Mitt, campaigning in Iowa all of a sudden: Wednesday in Pella and a house party in Des Moines; Thursday at the State Fair and the Republican debate in Ames. He even revealed at the Vermeer event that he’d “like to do darn well in those caucuses” and promised that “you’ll see me plenty.”

What gives?

Judging by his latest visit, Romney now appears to be pursuing a Goldilocks strategy in the Hawkeye State: not too hot, not too cold. In other words, just right.

(...) But while Romney may have planned to skip Iowa entirely at first, he no longer has much of a choice. This weekend, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will signal his intent to vie for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech at the Red State conference in Charleston, S.C. He’ll instantly become Romney’s chief rival. It’s one thing to cede Iowa’s values voters to Bachmann; it’s another to cede the state’s fiscal conservatives to Perry, who plans to run on his record of job creation. If that happens, Perry will head into the rest of the early primary states with a dangerous burst of momentum, and Romney will be left looking like old news. (...)