In Iowa, Romney Fights to Become Caucus Favorite

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Mitt Romney in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Seen as the strongest challenger to President Obama, he is still struggling to solidify his lead.

DES MOINES — Mitt Romney sought to convert his tentative standing atop the polls into a first-place finish in the caucuses here, telling Iowans on Sunday that he had the “capability to go the full distance” against President Obama, as his rivals beseeched voters not to settle on a candidate lacking full commitment to their conservative values.

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Representative Ron Paul was in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in a poll released Saturday night.

Just as confidence had been rising among Mr. Romney and his aides that they could pull off a win here on Tuesday night, they were faced with a new challenge from Rick Santorum, who emerged as the latest in a rotating cast of surging alternatives, ebullient about his rising standing in the polls and support from excited crowds on Sunday in Sioux City and Rock Rapids.

“Don’t put forward somebody who isn’t good enough to do what’s necessary to change this country,” Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Sioux City, feeding off his new status as a real contender here. “Put forward someone that you know has the vision, the trust, the authenticity, the background, the record to make that happen.”

Still decidedly in the mix was Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas, whose dedicated followers could still propel him into the lead on Tuesday night and in the nominating contests that will unfold in the coming months.

Even though the Republican race remained fluid, the Democratic Party stepped up its involvement in the opposing contest, and several aides to the president’s re-election team arrived here to open a war room at a downtown hotel. The prime target was Mr. Romney.

They held a news conference to highlight Mr. Romney’s record as chief executive of the private equity firm Bain Capital, introducing an Indiana worker who was laid off in the early 1990s when his company was bought by Bain.

Iowa’s caucuses do not have an especially good record of predicting Republican nominees. But the result here could be an indicator of whether Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is succeeding in rallying conservatives behind him or whether he faces months of struggle to win delegates and resolve the rifts within the party.

After months of campaigning, a long series of debates and the rise and fall of one challenger after another, no one has yet shown that they can knock off Mr. Romney. Despite running a largely mistake-free campaign, Mr. Romney has yet to prove that he can break through the ceiling of support of about 25 percent in many polls that has defined his candidacy in a fractured field.

Mr. Romney’s campaign aides were watching Mr. Santorum’s new strength carefully. They said that while they were satisfied that Mr. Santorum’s rise was further fracturing the anti-Romney vote among him, Mr. Paul, Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, they could take nothing for granted when only half of likely Iowa caucusgoers say they have committed to a candidate.

And on a day when all but the most politically involved Iowans were at home celebrating the new year and watching football, Mr. Romney’s campaign workers were calling the homes of potentially supportive caucusgoers they have been recruiting for months, wishing a happy new year to their families and offering a gentle reminder to attend the caucuses.

Mr. Romney’s campaign had been optimistic enough about a possible victory here that it decided over the weekend to keep him in Iowa through Tuesday night to be in place for nationally televised interviews from Des Moines on Wednesday morning — a sign that they expected him to be talking about good news here.

But a senior aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, played down the importance of a first-place showing, saying that “our strategy was never based on a win in Iowa” and that the campaign would be “happily surprised” if he were to secure one.

Preparing for a potentially longer fight, Mr. Romney’s strategists in Boston were increasingly turning their focus on New Hampshire, South Carolina and the biggest January primary state, Florida, where voters are receiving absentee ballots this week. The campaign has been aggressively working to get out the early vote there, and Mr. Romney’s advertising team has begun to inquire about ad rates across the state.

Reporting was contributed by Jill Abramson from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Michael Barbaro and Sarah Wheaton from Des Moines.

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Mitt Romney Waxes Poetic as He Woos Iowa Voters

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As Mr. Romney has rolled across the state on a three-day bus tour, he has been breaking into song — or at least reciting the lyrics of his favorite patriotic anthems.

“I love that song: ‘O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,’?” Mr. Romney said of “America the Beautiful” at a stop in Mason City on Thursday. “If you count corn as an amber wave of grain, why, you have them right here. What a wonderful place this is.”

At a stop in Cedar Falls, Mr. Romney waxed poetic about the history of the national anthem. “I’ve been talking about music lately,” he said. “I happen to love the patriotic songs of America.”

Mr. Romney often eases into the musical portion of his speech while saying how much he loves the country, the unspoken assertion being that he cares for the nation in a way that President Obama never will.

“The president said he wants to fundamentally transform America,” Mr. Romney said on Wednesday in North Liberty. “I kind of like America. I’m not looking for it to be fundamentally transformed into something else. I don’t want it to become like Europe.”

He continued, “I want America to be more like America, if you will. I want the songs, that patriotism we have.” He then began quoting directly from his favorite verses of “America the Beautiful.”

But Mr. Romney is also using the patriotic songs to try to elevate his own political speeches — making them, in a way, more like Mr. Obama’s eloquent and inspiring rhetoric in the state four years ago. (Indeed, Mr. Obama became so famous for the soaring remarks he wrote himself that his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, borrowing a line from former Gov. Mario Cuomo, remarked that you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose.)

And Mr. Romney does not just recite the lyrics — he annotates them, offering his interpretation of the meaning. “Most of the time when we sing a song, we don’t think much about the words,” he said. “But I’ve begun looking at these words and thinking about them.”

“O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,” he said, is a reference to the country’s soldiers. (“Any veterans in this room here today?” he asked. “Thank you for your service.”)

And “O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years,” he continued, is an allusion to the nation’s founders. (The founding fathers, he said, “created something not just for their time, but that sees beyond the years.”)

Voters seem to be responding to Mr. Romney’s patriotic appeal. “For me, my father was killed in World War II, so those songs always tug at my heartstrings,” said Donald Good, 67, a dentist from Ames.

Mr. Romney’s performance has improved as well.

On Wednesday, when he first used the line about corn counting as an amber wave of grain, he was met with pin-drop silence. He tried it again at the next few events, to polite laughter. By Thursday night, at a rally in Ames, Mr. Romney had perfected his delivery.

”If corn qualifies as an amber wave of grain, we have it right here,” Mr. Romney said as the crowd applauded and cheered.

Mr. Romney exalted: “It does! It does!”

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