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In Le Mars, Iowa, this weekend, Mitt Romney supporters applauded during a speech. 
DES MOINES — After months of inspecting potential presidents like melons, Iowa Republicans spent the weekend settling on their final specimens — and showing how acquainted they were with their bruises as well as their sweet spots.
A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.“There’s no perfect candidate,” Jeff Mullen, a politically active pastor, said after speaking at services on Sunday morning at Point of Grace, an evangelical church in the heavily Republican suburbs outside Des Moines. “The question is what flaws can you put up with.”
It is almost time for the “Flaws You Can Put Up With” caucus. Final conversations with voters here yield appreciation followed by inevitable qualifiers:
Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is solid but not as dazzling as the once trendy noncandidates, like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey or even Herman Cain, the pizza entrepreneur who quit the race last month. Likewise, Newt Gingrich’s supporters laud the former House speaker as brilliant but freighted with baggage.
Rick Santorum fans point to the former Pennsylvania senator’s closing momentum but concede he has little money; Rick Perry voters say he is a charmer in person but the Texas governor probably killed his chances with woeful debate showings; and Representative Ron Paul is revered by his followers even as they acknowledge that he has little chance of being nominated.
As such, veterans of Iowa politics say the size and tenor of this year’s Republican crowds across the state have not come close to those in the final days of campaigning by the 2008 candidates — particularly the eventual caucus winners, Barack Obama for the Democrats and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, for the Republicans.
“There was more energy four years ago for Huckabee — and even with the last Romney campaign,” said Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa.
Still, this has not stopped the 2012 version of Mr. Romney from trying to pump up the size and noise of his audiences beyond the decent-size reality of them. Campaigns often try to inflate their crowd estimates and over-marvel at their spectacles to convey a sense of excitement. But Mr. Romney is the rare candidate who actually does this from the stage.
“We should have rented a bigger room, my goodness!” Mr. Romney exclaimed Saturday night in Sioux City, admiring the sight of a few hundred viewers in a spillover space. Nor is he the best counter in the world: “There are over a thousand people — I guess, 1,500 people here!” he said outside a West Des Moines supermarket Friday. It was closer to 500, The Des Moines Register reported, generously.
“You’re getting crushed by camera people,” Mr. Romney said Sunday at a crowded restaurant in Atlantic, Iowa, a not-so-subtle nod to the packed-in event as well as to the abundant media attention the perceived front-runner is attracting. (In fairness, Mr. Romney’s crowds swelled considerably over the weekend, including two overflow events Sunday.)
When asked who the last Republican presidential candidate they were truly excited to support was, voters typically say Ronald Reagan, or sometimes George W. Bush. It underscores the dazzle-gap that has afflicted this year’s field, a point that was reinforced by the serial longing among Republicans for other candidates to run and the frantic speed-dating with alternating front-runners throughout.
In home-stretch interviews, prospective voters here portray President Obama as the true flashpoint of the race, as he was in the last one. He is often viewed as a Republican lightning rod rather than the Democratic luminary of four years ago who attracted four-digit crowds to his Iowa rallies — audiences that no Republican has come close to this year.
Voters are likely to express their admiration for their choice in fiercely pragmatic terms such as “most electable,” “solid,” or “someone who won’t embarrass us.”
“Jesus Christ is not running,” said Jim Hanksaker, a farmer from Radcliffe, Iowa. (Neither is Governor Christie, although he was in the state Friday, appearing with Mr. Romney outside a supermarket in West Des Moines.) By the same token: “I don’t see Gingrich as the antichrist,” said Mark Oltrogge of Calmar, who was in fact very much impressed with Mr. Gingrich’s talk at Mabe’s Pizza in Decorah last week and even dubs Mr. Gingrich “a rock star, kind of.”
“Rock star, kind of,” is typical of the conditional excitement that is marking these last prevoting days.
A. G. Sulzberger contributed reporting.
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