In Massachusetts, Santorum declared, "fees went up, taxes went up, spending went up. We saw Romneycare instituted, which was the template for Obamacare." He paused for a second, before asking, "That's the reality of the candidate we want to put up as a contrast?"
In private, advisers to the other Republican governors concede that Saturday night is as close to a now-or-never moment as it gets with respect to knocking Romney down a notch. The debate has a perfect moderator for partisan knife fighting: ABC's George Stephanopolous, who famously morphed a 2008 Democratic primary debate into a discussion of Barack Obama's ties to Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright alongside questions about why he didn't wear a flag pin on his lapel. Unlike the second debate this weekend -- a Sunday morning affair moderated by NBC's "Meet the Press" and Facebook -- viewers won't lose interest when the NFL playoffs air hours later.
Whether the rest of the field can seize the moment remains unclear. After all, it's not as if there was a lack of thirst for a sustained Romney attack in the past. Former presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty talked up the political dangers of Massachusetts's health care prior to whiffing, mightily, on a chance to press Romney about it during a debate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry's attacks have been deflected either as tired lines ("nice try," Romney said to one) or oddly-timed (going after the former governor for hiring a lawn care company that employed undocumented workers). Gingrich's pledge to stay positive has limited his maneuvering on the debate stage. He recently spent his time apologizing for an attack on Romney's private equity days at Bain Capital instead of launching new ones.
But political desperation can do strange things to candidates. Gingrich has all but formally conceded that he's abandoning his positive campaign pledge. And on Saturday, the Bain issue resurfaced -- not once, but twice. In the morning, Santorum took Romney to task for having the wrong kind of business experience.
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The Iowa caucuses are an electoral event in which residents of the U.S. state of Iowa meet in precinct caucuses in all of Iowa's 1,774 precincts and elect delegates to the corresponding county conventions. There are 99 counties in Iowa and thus 99 conventions.
These county conventions then select delegates for both Iowa's Congressional District Convention and the State Convention, which eventually choose the delegates for the presidential nominating conventions (The Iowa caucuses are noteworthy for the amount of media attention they receive during U.S. presidential election years.
Since 1972, the Iowa caucuses have been the first major electoral event of the nominating process for President of the United States. Although only about 1% of the nation's delegates are chosen by the Iowa State Convention (25 Republican delegates in 2012, assigned proportionately), the Iowa caucuses have served as an early indication of which candidates for president might win the nomination of their political party at that party's national convention, and which ones could drop out for lack of support.
