WEST DES MOINES — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says he didn’t lose Iowa, he just got the silver medal.
That was how the organizer of 2002 Winter Olympics explained his distant second-place second finish to rival Republican Mike Huckabee on Thursday night.
“You win the silver in one event, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to come back and win the gold in the final event and that we’re going to do,” Romney told a room full of cheering supporters.
The Romney campaign says that while it may have lost in Iowa, it still is best positioned to appeal to Republicans of all stripes in different parts of the country.
Reinforcing that message was Olympic gold medal speed skater Dan Jansen, who said Iowa’s caucuses are only the first of many state contests that will determine the nominee.
“I was a sprinter. Mitt Romney is a marathoner,” Jansen said.
There are a few other differences as well. Jansen won his gold medal in 1994, after failing to medal in the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympic games.
Romney, who has built his campaign around a strategy of big wins in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, probably can’t survive a similar string of defeats.
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I think Mitt Romney ran a positive campaign. I think he tried to point out the difference between he and his rivals. I think he will do more of the same and still try to keep this campaign positive track. He has not made personal attacks against his opponents. I think he has been labeled as the one who was negative but Huckabee was negative and I believe he did little to stop the push polling, called Romney names and he attacked Romneys religion. He been on a low road all along.
- Posted by tracey ParryMain stream Republicans will not vote for Huckabee. He used his “religious” background to bate Evangelicals into voting for him. Romney is by far the better qualified candidate and certainly more electable. Pushing Macain and Huckabee as the Republican nominee spells either defeat or opens the door for a third party candidate.
- Posted by B SteeleMitt is on track. As an eye witness of the Iowa caucuses, there were several irregularities that Huck will struggle to replicate elsewhere, at least before he loses momentum in the wake of other victories in Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Michigan, among others.
Adjusting for these…irregularities…Huckabee came in a strong fourth or fifth in Iowa (still ahead of Giuliani, but behind Thompson, McCain and especially Romney), among those irregularities having 60% of the voter turnout represent the 25% of the Iowa population who are evangelical on caucus day.
There wasn’t much Mitt could have done about that, but none of the next ten states have so strong an Evangelical base, and Romney has been preparing to compete in all of them!
- Posted by JedI have to agree that Huckabee ran a more negative campaign than Mitt, and McCain is doing the same in New Hampshire.
- Posted by JedHuckabee got 40 million in free advertising from the media who ran a lovefest of articles about him for the last month. There is a suprising collective “groupthink” out there in the media pushing for this guy because he will be absolutely eviscerated in the generals. All the skeletons the media is glancing over–especially his Nixonesque computer harddrive destruction of all governor’s office computers–will run first page like they were CIA interrogation tapes will be played all day long during the general. The hypocrisy of Huckabee to claim victim status and nice guy status while actually showing his ad was so disingenuous as to cause reporters to chuckle. However, no one actually called him on it. I think the granite state voters will. I predict he is going down in NH.
- Posted by DLounsbury