22 días para que todo empiece

First Read resume el estado actual de la carrera:

*** Shades of Hillary Clinton in late ’07? As one of us spent four days observing the GOP race in Iowa, it was hard not to see parallels between Mitt Romney’s campaign and Hillary Clinton’s four year ago. There’s a vulnerability in the air for Romney -- just as reporters began to sense for the Clinton campaign in Dec. 2007. There was Romney’s debate gaffe (the $10,000 bet), which went at the heart of one of his central negative narratives (that he’s out of touch with middle-class Americans) -- just like Hillary Clinton’s debate gaffe in Oct. 2007 (over drivers licenses for illegal immigrants) went at the heart of one of her central negative narratives. There’s a sense that Romney’s chief campaign message (he’s a businessman that can turn the economy around) isn’t as attractive with GOP primary voters as Gingrich’s -- just like Hillary’s chief message (experience and the Clinton brand) wasn’t as attractive as Barack Obama’s (hope and change). And, of course, there’s Romney’s health-care law vs. Clinton’s Iraq war vote. The good news for Romney is this: Gingrich, at least right now, doesn’t seem as well prepared to go the distance as Obama’s did four years ago.

*** Romney’s silver lining: And while another round of NBC-Marist polling data shows Gingrich with double-digit leads in South Carolina and Florida, there is a large silver lining for Romney: More than half of Gingrich’s supporters in both states picked the former Massachusetts governor as their second-choice pick. And only a fraction of likely GOP primary voters in South Carolina and Florida view Romney as an unacceptable candidate. This means that Romney has the potential to gain more support if his campaign is able to raise doubts about Gingrich. Bottom line: There are no more “not Mitt Romneys” for voters to turn to. If Gingrich blows this, Romney will be the nominee. And early this morning, the Romney campaign fired off an oppo email tying Gingrich with Nancy Pelosi with the tag: “Unreliable leader.” From the email: “[W]hile conservatives were fighting job-killing cap-and-trade schemes, Speaker Gingrich shared a loveseat with Nancy Pelosi and lent his name to Al Gore's environmental agenda.”

*** Romney’s caution vs. Gingrich’s bombast: The most important exchange at Saturday’s debate crystallizing the state of the GOP primary race wasn’t Romney’s $10,000 bet. And it wasn’t Gingrich’s Ted Kennedy line, either. Rather, it was the Gingrich-Romney exchange over Gingrich’s past remark that the Palestinians are invented people. “[If] I'm president of the United States, I will exercise sobriety, care, stability,” Romney said. “I'm not a bomb thrower, rhetorically or literally.” Gingrich fired back: “I think sometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States with the courage to tell the truth... I will tell the truth, even if it's at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.” So this is where the GOP race stands right now: Romney’s caution/sobriety vs. Gingrich’s bombast and hot rhetoric. And right now, one of those sides has a VERY big lead…