Mitt: Screw Iowa?

Mitt: Screw Iowa?

Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Romney said he needed to do well in the New Hampshire and Florida primaries and Nevada's caucuses, while emerging from those early states with enough money to convince undecided voters that he would have the financial firepower to get to the finish line.

He said he expected to win in Nevada, as he did in 2008, and that he saw Florida's primary as pivotal, with only two candidates likely to emerge from that state able to compete in the later primaries. Less clear was his thinking on the nation's first nominating contest—the Iowa caucuses—where socially conservative voters dominate and where Mr. Romney placed a distant second in 2008.

Atlantic: "This looks like a sign that Mitt Romney is indeed planning to skip Iowa in 2012."

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. When will you learn. No one ever wins with the Screw Iowa strategery. (No, McCain doesn't count. He didn't win; it's just everyone else lost.) Skipping Iowa means you let someone else, a Pawlenty, Barbour, or a Daniels, emerge to take over your niche as the grown-up alternative to Bachmann or Gingrich or Paul or Paul.

This strikes my more as a Hillary Clinton style expectation reducer. You know you can't win Iowa? Hint at skipping it, so that your mediocre performance looks adequate.

But much like the early stages of the 2008 Democratic race was a contest (largely between Edwards and Obama) to emerge as the Not Hillary, the 2012 GOP race will come down to Mitt vs. Not Mitt.