The Golden Report

1 DAY UNTIL IOWA (28 delegates)
8 DAYS UNTIL NEW HAMPSHIRE (12 delegates)
19 DAYS UNTIL SOUTH CAROLINA (25 delegates)
22 DAYS UNTIL THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

QUOTE OF THE DAY (SHOT) “I don’t think I’m going to win,” Newt Gingrich, to ABC News about his chances in tomorrow’s Iowa Caucus

AND/BUT (CHASER) ”We may pull off one of the greatest upsets in the history of the Iowa caucuses,” Newt Gingrich in a tele-town hall later tonight

QUOTE OF THE DAY RUNNER UP: “You got a name? You got a name? You got a name?” Rick Perry to POLITICO’s Mike Allen after being challenged to answer questions about the loyalty of his campaign advisors.

AND FINALLY...RICK SANTORUM SAID THE FOLLOWING TODAY ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

TODAY ON THE TRAIL- All over the state. From the Washington Post’s team of political reporters group-filing tomorrow’s A1 lead piece:

“Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s agenda included four cities, spread over 269 miles. Former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) drove a 171-mile circuit around Iowa’s navel. And Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), the third candidate in the lead pack, began a long trek across northeastern part of the state, making five stops over 391 miles.”

“Over the past few months, Iowa has embraced and then rejected four charismatic front-runners: Rep. Michele Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich and pizza executive Herman Cain.”

KEY PASSAGE: “Now, the state seems set to split its vote among three candidates chosen, instead, for the ideas they represent.

For Romney, those are steadiness and electability.

For Paul, they are small government and personal liberty.

And Santorum’s appeal is based on his socially conservative views on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.”

WHAT WE MISSED: Newt Gingrich is recovering from the flu, which his campaign says was particularly bad on Friday and Saturday last week

THE LATEST FROM SANTORUM- He’s facing very tough questions about his endorsement of Mitt Romney in 2008 and about his position on abortion- and conflicting statements he gave on both during a Meet the Press interview yesterday. As Santorum is surging in the polls, he is now undergoing intensive media scrutiny.

THE LATEST FROM ROMNEY- He won the day. According to POLITICO’s Alexander Burns.

“…There were three good omens for Romney Monday that suggest no matter who wins in Iowa, he’ll be in good shape for the long haul.

The first was a harsh attack on Rick Santorum, mounted by Rick Perry on cable TV and on the campaign trail. The Texan blasted Santorum for having “raised the debt limit more than Obama” and supporting “the bridge to nowhere in Arizona” (he meant Alaska.) Both Perry and his wife, Anita, vowed to press on after Iowa, taking their campaign to South Carolina and also New Hampshire, where Perry isn’t scheduled to appear this week.

Perry wasn’t the only other Republican attacking Santorum. In a second Romney-friendly development, Ron Paul’s campaign got in on the action, with national chairman Jesse Benton accusing Santorum of having a “horrible record on the Second Amendment,” and telling POLITICO Santorum’s record on “so many other issues is so poor he can’t stand up to real criticism.”

And in a third, counterintuitively pro-Romney turn of events, Newt Gingrich vowed to stay in the race past Iowa and train his guns more intently on the GOP front-runner, whose supporters Gingrich blames for tearing down his own campaign.”

AND THEN ROMNEY PREDICTED VICTORY, TELLLING SUPPORTERS TONIGHT

“We’re going to win this thing with all our passion and strength and do everything we can to get this campaign on the right track to go across the nation and to pick up the states and to get the ballots I need and the votes I need to become our nominee. That’s what we’re going to get, with your help.

THE LATEST FROM PAUL- National Journal- “Paul Battles Assumptions He Can’t Win Outside Iowa”

“Paul has sought to defy the conventional wisdom that his campaign will end in Iowa by beginning to air television ads in New Hampshire, which votes Jan. 10, and in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Jan. 21”

Indeed, Paul is on the air in New Hampshire with what his campaign his calling his “closing argument”

INSIDER ADVANTAGE POLL TODAY GIVES ADVANTAGE ROMNEY, but the top three are well within the margin of error

Romney 23%
Paul 22%
Santorum 18%
Gingrich 16%
Perry 10%
Bachmann 6%
Huntsman 2%

PPP POLL TODAY GIVES ADVANTAGE PAUL, but still, we have a three-way race on our hands. 

Paul 20%
Romney 19%
Santorum 18%
Gingrich 14%
Perry 10%
Bachmann 8%
Huntsman 4%

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR TOMORROW AND TOMORROW NIGHT

• Caucus officially starts at 8pm.
• The first results should start coming in at about 8:30pm.
• Four years ago, Sen. Obama’s victory in Iowa was declared at 9:25pm ET.

• In 2008, Republicans saw a record caucus turnout of 118,000+ and many party officials also expect a record or near-record turnout this year.
• There are more than 1,700 precincts in Iowa that will be holding caucuses tomorrow night.

• In the modern primary system, only one Republican has won Iowa and gone on to be elected President (George W. Bush in 2000)
• In 2008, John McCain became the only Republican to finish outside of the Iowa top 3 and still go on to become the nominee
• Herbert Hoover is the only Iowan to be elected President

2008 REPUBLICAN IOWA CAUCUS RESULTS

Mike Huckabee 34.4%
Mitt Romney 25.2%
Fred Thompson 13.4%
John McCain 13%
Ron Paul 9.9%
Rudy Giuliani 3.4%
Turnout: 118,411

2008 Iowa Presidential Vote: Barack Obama 828,940 (54%) John McCain 682,379 (44%)

THE EVENING REPORT’S CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:

Mitt Romney will become the Republican nominee. He may face a challenge from the Republican right over the next six weeks but it will not be long, drawn out or fatal. A Santorum or Paul win in Iowa ultimately helps Romney. Santorum doesn’t have the organization to compete nationally and he will be crushed in New Hampshire next week. Paul is too crazy to ever win the Republican nomination or the presidency. It will be clear that Romney is the nominee by the State of the Union in three weeks. He may lose some states during the primary season and because of the way the party is awarding delegates, it may not be until March when he officially becomes the nominee, but everyone will know in a matter of days or weeks that 2012 will be Obama v. Romney.

COMING ATTRACTION: GOP BATTLE PLAN AGAINST OBAMA: USE HIS OWN WORDS AGAINST HIM- The Washington Post Monday top story-

“GOP officials in Washington are quietly and methodically finishing what operatives are calling “the book” — 500 pages of Obama quotes and video links that will form the backbone of the party’s attack strategy against the president leading up to Election Day 2012.

The document, portions of which were reviewed by The Washington Post, lays out how GOP officials plan to use Obama’s words and voice as they build an argument for his defeat: that he made specific promises and entered office with lofty expectations and has failed to deliver on both.

Republican officials say they will leverage the party’s newly catalogued video library containing every publicly available utterance from Obama since his 2008 campaign. Television and Internet ads will juxtapose specific Obama promises of job gains, homeowner assistance, help for people in poverty, lower health insurance premiums and stricter White House ethics standards against government data and news clippings that paint a different reality.

The decision by GOP officials to finalize a strategy at this stage underscores the view, in both parties, that the general-election campaign has begun — even if an official Republican nominee has not been selected.

The new GOP playbook is designed to take one of Obama’s great assets — the power of his oratory — and turn it into a liability. It details hundreds of potential targets, partially a result of a president who Republican strategists say is unusually prone to making detailed promises.”

FINALLY- Take a few minutes to think about how far we’ve come over the last six months leading up to tomorrow’s caucus- which itself is only the start of the Republican primary season. Through 13 debates, we’ve watched candidate after candidate rise and fall in public opinion polling. The title frontrunner has been awarded to Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney and, in the past week, we’ve seen the Santorum Surge. Tomorrow, Iowans caucus. And then, it’s on to New Hampshire…and South Carolina…and Florida…and Nevada…and…

WATCH- Political analyst & satirist James Kotecki today released a new video: The Iowa Surge Song (Old MacDonald Parody).

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