IOWA CITY, Iowa — Rick Santorum bagged at least four pheasants
during his hunting trip Monday at Doc’s Hunt Club. Those four birds
were just the “clean kills” that he was certain were the result of
his own marksmanship — a conservative count, Santorum
emphasized to the crowd of reporters who showed up at the hunting
club in Adel, west of Des Moines.
While the former Pennsylvania senator was pleased with his
outing, most of the reporters who showed up were more interested to
know if Santorum had bagged even bigger game during this political
season — the endorsement of his hunting companion, Iowa Rep. Steve
King. But the conservative Republican congressman said he wasn’t
quite ready to make that commitment.
“You know, I came here today to shoot some pheasants with
my friend Rick Santorum and we’re having a great day,” King told
the reporters assembled for Monday’s press conference. “So I’m
going to deliberate on all of this and I’ve got a few days yet
before a decision has to be made.… I’m leaving that
open.”
He had expected to have already made up his mind as to
which of the GOP presidential candidates to endorse, King said, but
“the dynamics of the entire race” had left him still undecided. “I
want my head and my heart to come together,” the congressman said,
leaving open the possibility that he might make an endorsement
sometime before next week’s first-in-the-nation caucus — or maybe
not.
King’s indecision is perhaps symbolic of the state of the
Republican race here in Iowa, where the fight among a large field
of contenders has left many voters still unresolved about their
preferences as the Jan. 3 date approaches. In a long campaign
defined by up-and-down cycles in the polls, where no front-runner
has been able to sustain a lead for more than a few weeks, many
Iowans haven’t yet made up their minds and may not make their final
choices until after they arrive at their precinct locations next
Tuesday night. With conservatives apparently divided between four
candidates — Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas
Gov. Rick Perry, and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — the current
polls indicate that the candidates most likely to win Iowa are
former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron
Paul.
One veteran Iowa observer, Davenport-based GOP consultant
Steve Grubbs, says that situation might make whoever places third
the de facto winner. “It’s not about who finishes first,” said
Grubbs, who until recently was statewide director for the
now-defunct Herman Cain campaign. “Ron Paul — maybe he wins at 27
percent, but it’s still just 27 percent.” With Paul winning the
libertarian vote and Romney winning moderates, Grubbs sees the key
action as the fight among the four conservatives who are now going
all-out here in the final week. “I think that’s what the story is,
right there — who will be the conservative who comes out of Iowa?
That’s the exciting part of the race.” And among those candidates,
Grubbs says, “Santorum’s got the momentum right now.”
Santorum certainly agrees with that. “Well, I definitely
feel that way,” he said at his press conference with King at the
hunt club in Adel. “We’ve got momentum, but it takes a strong
foundation and that’s what we’ve done. We’ve built a very strong
foundation here in Iowa. We’re very excited that we’ve got a
thousand caucus captains, people who are going to be there, most of
whom if not all of whom have met me, who can go in… and say, ‘He
was here. I met him when he was here. Let me tell you, I looked
into his eyes and this is what he believes.…’”
Among those caucus captains is Aaron Rupp, an engineer
from Cedar Rapids who met Santorum for the 11th time Monday. Like
many other Santorum supporters, Rupp is an evangelical Christian in
a state where social conservatives have traditionally played an
outsized role in deciding Republican caucuses. Despite the current
numbers showing Paul and Romney leading the Hawkeye State — with
about 43 percent of the GOP vote between them, according to the
Real Clear Politics poll average — the question of whether the
social conservative vote will coalesce behind one of the other
candidates has bedeviled Republicans here. In November and early
December, it appeared that Gingrich would emerge as the
conservative favorite, but then came a barrage of attack ads —
first from Romney, then from Paul and later from Perry. Within two
weeks, Gingrich’s support was cut nearly in half. “I think Newt has
been in freefall,” says Grubbs. “I’ve never seen so many negatives
fall on the head of one candidate in such a short period of
time.”
Meanwhile, Santorum’s candidacy has picked up a string of
major Iowa endorsements, including the support of Bob Vander
Plaats, president of the Family Leader, an important social
conservative organization. That endorsement
became somewhat controversial last week when some suggested
that Vander Plaats was engaged in a pay-for-play arrangement with
Santorum, which the candidate described Monday as a
misunderstanding. “I’m happy I got his endorsement,” Santorum told
a reporter who asked about the controversy. “I don’t see it as any
trouble. I think obviously some people who didn’t get the
endorsement are trying to stir the pot and make it what it
isn’t.”
Another reporter asked Santorum about the poll numbers,
which show him just now beginning to break into double digits here
in Iowa. “We still have a week to go and no votes have been cast,”
he answered. “We feel very good. We have a lot of energy on the
ground. Our campaign is clearly the one that is rising right now
and has the momentum. And we feel that’s going to continue on over
the next week. As I’ve said from the very beginning, we’re going to
surprise a lot of people with how well we do on caucus
night.”
