China Syndrome

On the ground in Iowa, TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro interviews the China-friendly businessman whose grounds hosted Romney's stump speech the night before the caucuses. Turns out he has an interesting reason for backing the GOP's China-basher extraordinaire.

Quite Something

Mitt Romney is just finishing up a speech bashing China -- inter alia -- at a factory in Iowa that openly prides itself on its ability to outsource work to China.

Funny How Things Play Out

Benjy Sarlin explores one of the odder dynamics of the GOP primary cycle: The more the candidates vied to be the anti-Romney, the more shots they took at each other and the fewer they took at Mitt, leaving him largely untouched in some of the most bruising campaign battles leading up to the Iowa caucus.

Lights, Camera, Absurdity ...

Our ace video editor Michael Lester compiled this blooper reel from outtakes of TPM's Campaign In 100 Seconds series:

The Horror (Picture of the Day)

Pizza Ranch manager in Boone, Iowa debuts "Santorum Salad".

Final Snapshot

With all the polls entered and one day before the election, the TPM Poll Average of Iowa is:

Romney, 21.3%
Paul, 20%
Santorum, 17.3%
Gingrich, 15%
Perry, 9.6%
Bachmann, 7.2%

Here's the latest look at the chart:

'It Breathes, It Eats, And It Hates'

Photos of the L.A. arson spree.

Join Us Tomorrow Night

Be sure to join us tomorrow night at 8 PM Eastern for live results of the Iowa Caucus, the first 'voting' of the 2012 primary cycle. We'll have live county by county results of the totals out of Iowa.

Sounds Right

Campaigns have a way of not working by logical principles or, perhaps we should say, Newtonian physics. But I think Roger Simon has the gist of where the GOP primary campaign is right now. Namely, 1st, 2nd and 3rd are equally wins for Mitt Romney tomorrow night. And a Santorum surge doesn't matter all that much. Why? Because there are only two candidates in the race who have the wherewithal to seriously challenge Romney over the long haul: Gingrich and Perry. If they're losers tomorrow night, they're probably done. And Rick Santorum just doesn't have the money or the organization or the staying power outside a state like Iowa to seriously challenge Romney.

Like I said, I resist these deductive reasoning approaches to campaign analysis. There are always emergent properties we can't quite predict. But this analysis is pretty hard to find fault with.

Comments

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Southward Ho!

Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann will head straight from Iowa to South Carolina, bypassing New Hampshire.

Who Decides

What does the typical Iowa GOP caucus participant, with their outsized influence on the nominating process, look like?

Water Into Wine

Inside Ron Paul's effort to win over Iowa evangelicals.

Romney On The Stump

He's tapping into the darker fears about Obama more than you may realize.

Wave of Firebombings in Queens

A string of four firebombings -- suspected to be bias crimes targeting Muslims -- tonight in Queens.

Apparently no one was injured in the attacks, though two of the attacks seem to have triggered major fires.

Recount in the Murdoch Primary?

Rupert Murdoch just got set up with a Twitter account over the weekend. And one of his first tweets seems to express at least some warm feelings if not quite an endorsement of Rick Santorum ...

Good to see santorum surging in Iowa. Regardless of policies, all debates showed principles, consistency and humility like no other.

Thanks to TPM Reader BG for the tip.

Hiring: Associate Editor (NY)

TPM is announcing a new position as Associate Editor working from our New York office. Full job listing after the jump.

Yet Another Iowa Poll (PPP)

We've got yet another late poll out of Iowa tonight. This one from PPP.

The numbers aren't dramatically out of line with the trend we've seen develop over the last week. But they heighten the drama.

And the results are: Paul 20%, Romney 19%, Santorum 18%, Gingrich 14%, Perry 10%, Bachmann 8%, Huntsman 4%, Roemer 2%.

Newly updated trend chart after the jump ...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Mitt Romney hasn't had to pay any attention to Rick Santorum -- until now.

Santorum Flashback

Last January, as we and others reported at the time, Rick Santorum expressed particular dismay over an African American being pro-choice: "The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"