READY, AMES, FIRE
MURPHY, MIKE
READY, AMES, FIRE by Mike Murphy Ames, Iowa THE AMES STRAW POLL may have looked like a huckster's carnival, but under the bigtop lurked the first killing field of the GOP race. The "invisible...
...The first victims were Lamar Alexander, Pat Buchanan, and Dan Quayle...
...That means move polls, raise money, answer questions...
...Remember poor old Walter Mondale...
...still, Dole is now Bush's main competitor for the regular Republican vote in Iowa...
...Here's why 31 percent is a sign of potential trouble in Iowa for Bush...
...His treasury is the strongest in GOP primary history, emitting a force field of inevitability that makes it brutally difficult for his opponents to raise money...
...Where does it go from here...
...Bush and an unelectable oddity, so it's over, Bush wins...
...Senator John McCain has the best chance of upsetting Bush, but the fewest choices of how to do it...
...so Bush will control his destiny with his own performance over the next five months...
...Her problem...
...Then harness his campaign's tremendous muscle at the right time to fuel the "great comeback" and make his near-certain Iowa win in January mean something...
...Forbes has the toughest job...
...controversy swirling around rumors of cocaine use by Bush is just such a bump in the road and offers a corresponding opportunity to reduce expectations preparatory to the roaring comeback...
...how well Austin handles the rhythm of this period will be the real strategic test of the Bush campaign...
...The media agreed up to a point: Okay, it's a two-man race between Gov...
...Ames was the first demonstration of the inescapable gravity of the nominating process, in which tiny numbers of votes in early states are fantastically multiplied by perceived expectations to either crush campaigns or catapult them mightily ahead...
...Small enough to leave a tiny drop of blood in the water...
...It's a zero-sum theory: Drive Bush and Dole's negatives so high that there is nobody left to support but Forbes...
...He's still front-runner by a mile...
...Gary Bauer also needs to get on the air and start solidifying his support from religious conservatives...
...It'll fail again...
...Despite the silly myths about retail campaigning, in Iowa as in all the early states, paid advertising is the big campaign driver...
...he needs to put them in play on television...
...Dole has cooked up her own new adjective ideology—"courageous conservatism" (get it...
...To gain traction, Dole is going to have to ratchet up her performance beyond her feel-good stump speech...
...McCain will feel the pain of being partially ignored by the media if he stays out of Iowa's headlines, but as the leader of the anti-ethanol forces in the Senate, he can't get a good story out of Iowa...
...That win was widely reported as a loss...
...Mike Murphy has run 16 successful Republican senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns...
...By placing a respectable third in the straw poll, Elizabeth Dole got back in the race...
...Paid television ads will pop up soon...
...There are few natural opportunities in the process for the Bush campaign to hit the rocks between now and the Iowa caucus...
...No doubt about it, George W. Bush was the biggest winner at Ames...
...If on that cold Iowa night next January, Bush "wins" the Iowa caucus with a number like 31 percent, the media will gleefully devour him...
...The smartest move for the Bush campaign is to prepare for some bumps and use them to let expectations slacken a bit...
...He said he'd win and he did...
...This straw poll was big—almost one quarter the size of the likely Iowa caucus vote—so the 69 percent who voted for someone other than Bush cannot be dismissed with the usual patter about straw polls: a motley collection of high-turnout malcontents with nothing better to do than show up, wear funny hats, and howl encouragement at Alan Keyes...
...Buchanan saw himself deposed as king of Iowa's religious Right by Gary Bauer...
...Look for that slogan and more on Iowa and New Hampshire television as soon as Dole tries to take voter share away from Bush and move media polls...
...The implied Bush message: "We're gonna mow through these second-tier losers like extras in a Jackie Chan movie...
...success demands more success...
...Alexander's weak showing choked off his fund-raising and ended his campaign...
...Meanwhile, back in Iowa he'll have to fend off the Forbes/Bauer attack from the right and deal with Elizabeth Dole's attempt to break through as the regular Republican alternative...
...The caucus and the 36-day Iowa-to-California nominating process is five long months away...
...Nobody in the national press thinks he can be nominated, and they're right...
...Nearly a third of the voters in the typical Iowa caucus are religious conservatives, so if Bauer can unite that vote behind his candidacy—as Pat Robertson did in 1988—he'll finish second, or even first...
...He beat Gary Hart 49 percent to 16.5 percent in Iowa...
...Quayle's even weaker showing marginalized him and put his campaign into the purgatory of the cash-poor: no money for TV, field staff, or a multistate organization...
...The Bush campaign needs to reduce expectations and buy some insurance for the Iowa caucus by persuading reporters that his huge money and endorsement advantages mean a firewall of support in the states beyond Iowa...
...Watch...
...Forbes will dust off his trusty video blowtorch soon and start trying to tune up George W. with attack ads...
...He can set the agenda and make news...
...Bauer has an opportunity to surprise a lot of people...
...It's down to five, and it ain't over yet...
...Her dodgy performance with the national media on whether Medicaid should fund abortions last week was not a good sign...
...Bauer has some cutting issues—abortion, China—that count with a big chunk of the caucus electorate...
...Cruel gravity has begun to winnow the field in the presidential race...
...I think Bradley will be powerfully upsetting Gore in New Hampshire at the time, and McCain will benefit if an upset virus is in the New England air...
...In the barroom primary held the night before the straw poll, in which reporters and campaign henchmen, led by Bush spinners, handicap the likely result, the official off-the-record unofficial Bush win was Texas-sized, anywhere from 50 percent (the favorite figure a few weeks ago) to 37 percent (the lowball estimate of the day before Ames...
...Look for Bush to make that strategy believable with early television ads in later states, perhaps even California...
...He's given free advice this year to Sen...
...But with just 31 percent of the total vote, Bush won small...
...Most GOP primary voters are for him, albeit with soft support...
...Iowa will now be a race between Bush, Forbes, Dole, and Bauer...
...Nonetheless, Forbes's money makes him a powerful catalytic factor in the race...
...The "invisible primary" of early money and endorsements is now over and the real race has begun...
...It's the front-runner's nightmare, and to avoid it next January, Bush is going to have to do better...
...Unfortunately for the eventual Republican nominee, Pat's hot tamale applause lines may be headed for the top of the Reform party ticket...
...In other words, no campaign...
...And Hart was flung into New Hampshire on the magic carpet of "momentum...
...But Bush, Inc., wanted to clean clocks in Ames and that didn't happen...
...Bush can handle a fight...
...Timing is the key to the underdog's campaign, and since everything that happens in Iowa will happen again and with far greater impact in New Hampshire, McCain has picked the right place to plot his ambush...
...He could make the next six months very expensive in cash and headaches for the other candidates, particularly Bush...
...John McCain...
...That strategy didn't work last time because Forbes is, well, Forbes, and even Republican primary voters don't seem to want to vote for him...
...The Forbes Ames spin was to cite his decent second-place result and declare it a two-man race...
...McCain's shot is to let Iowa change the race—Bush wins below expectations, Bauer second, Forbes or Dole a weak third—and be craftily prepared in New Hampshire and South Carolina to deliver two stinging defeats to Bush...
...The "is it bigger than a breadbox...
...It's a tall order, but McCain is wise to marshal his resources and create a formidable campaign in New Hampshire, still the linchpin of the nomination process and still the iceberg that can puncture the hull of any front-runner...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 47
