Bachmann, Perry vie to be surprise Iowa finisher
On Aug. 14, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry converged on the Black Hawk County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner in Waterloo, Iowa, with their heads held high.
Fresh off her Ames Straw Poll win, Bachmann was nonetheless already showing signs of hubris on that mid-August night. She remained in her bus, parked outside, ahead of her remarks and refused to enter the building until the house lights had been dimmed to her liking -- and after she was twice introduced by the emcee. It was a celebrity-style act that miffed more than a few attendees.
Perry, on the other hand, shone as brightly as his freshly polished cowboy boots. The charismatic Texan worked the room with Clintonian ease and, seemingly overnight, passed Bachmann for the lead in the nation's first voting state.
Bachmann and Perry were the stars of the show, with Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich mere afterthoughts in the media narrative of the impending battle for Iowa.
Three months later, it is the latter three candidates who are jostling for position atop the Iowa heap, while the Minnesota congresswoman and the Texas governor hold down fourth and fifth place in most recent polls.
With a top-three Iowa finish likely essential for both Bachmann and Perry to move on to New Hampshire as viable contenders for the nomination, each candidate is crisscrossing the Hawkeye State at a breakneck pace to try to make up lost ground the old-fashioned way.
The two candidates set out last week on major Iowa bus tours that have generated a significant amount of local media attention.
Perry's road trip will last two weeks, while Bachmann is aiming to hit all 99 counties in a 10-day sprint that makes previous late-campaign blitzes in the state look like leisurely strolls.
Despite recent portrayals of the race as a two-man fight between Romney and Gingrich, both underdog candidates can find plenty of reasons to believe that their efforts won't be in vain.
With Gingrich's recent surge in Iowa already deflating significantly, an opening appears to exist for either Bachmann or Perry to once again rise to the top of the heap at just the right time.
"There is a real opportunity for a Perry or Bachmann surge here," said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's communications director, Tim Albrecht, who has been watching the race's dynamic as closely as anyone in the state. "You have to give the edge to the candidates putting the time in on the ground here. Both Bachmann and Perry are doing the exact right things to achieve a top-three finish in Iowa. It's just a matter of who is the better messenger and who has the better message."
In sprinting toward the finish line, the former front-runners-turned-insurgents have largely ignored one another and instead have punched up. Bachmann last week engaged Ron Paul in a memorable debate exchange over foreign policy, and she and Perry have become increasingly aggressive in challenging Gingrich and Romney on all fronts.
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Through direct mail, cable appearances and stump speeches, Perry and Bachmann have each painted the former House speaker and the former Massachusetts governor as unreliably conservative and claimed for him- or herself the mantle of purest voice on the right.
Unable to afford a TV ad barrage, Bachmann is instead left to hope that she can reach enough undecided caucus-goers in far-flung community centers, pizza joints and country inns to make up the difference.
Perry's still formidable campaign war chest, however, has allowed him to stay on the air alongside the other well-funded candidates in the race: Romney and Paul.
With no more debates on the schedule before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Perry also can hope at last to fully take advantage of his formidable retail politicking skills and seal the deal with undecided caucus-goers.
Perry's apparent upper hand over Bachmann can be seen in recent Iowa polls, in which he has trended slightly upward from where he was last month, while Bachmann's position has remained essentially flat.
But most Iowa political watchers continue to believe that Bachmann -- or even Rick Santorum, who has remained in sixth place in most Iowa polls -- remains capable of generating significant last-minute support.
"I think one of the strong evangelical candidates -- Bachmann, Perry or Santorum -- will have a shot at competing to be in the top three," said Steve Grubbs, who chaired Herman Cain's Iowa campaign.
"Moderate, libertarian and conservative will be the top three," he added, alluding to Romney and Paul as the candidates who will fill the first two categories. "But who the conservative is will be interesting. Gingrich can hold on to that spot if he bounces and stops falling."
Gingrich on Monday explained away his sudden Iowa decline by noting the barrage of negative ads that have been launched in his direction, and he may soon be forced to take a more combative stance against his upstart rivals.
Gingrich's campaign has made its own TV ad buy in Iowa's major media markets, according to a Republican source, but his ability to harness his bare-bones operation to turn out supporters on Jan. 3 remains an open question.
By the time he sets out on his own post-Christmas 44-city Iowa bus tour, Gingrich may again find himself an underdog, clawing to catch up to a newly resurgent conservative challenger. But this time, he will have only a week to do it.
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