Republicans ready for Iowa test

3 January 2012 Last updated at 00:18 ET

Front-runner Mitt Romney drew crowds to a packed event in Clive, Iowa late on Monday

Six Republican presidential candidates are preparing for the first official test of the US election season in the rural state of Iowa.

The hopefuls toured Iowa on Monday, the last full day of campaigning before the Hawkeye State's caucuses.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum lead the polls ahead of Tuesday's vote, but the race remains unpredictable.

Tuesday evening's caucuses will involve about 120,000 Iowans gathering in homes, schools and public buildings.

Iowa's ballot is the first contest to pick the Republican who will challenge Barack Obama for the White House.

Spread across some 1,700 meetings in all of Iowa's 99 counties, the meetings see Iowans elect 28 delegates to the Republican National Convention, to be held in Florida in August.

Spreading the message

As the vote neared, candidates spent Monday in a last-minute flurry of campaign events at coffee shops, pizza restaurants and hotel lobbies in an effort to to win over undecided voters.

Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who has surged in Iowa polls in recent days, spoke in front of a packed house at a breakfast cafe in Polk City.

Despite concentrating almost exclusively on Iowa, Mr Santorum, a social conservative who appeals to Iowa's evangelical Christian voters, said his new-found popularity was helping his prospects for the long primary season to come.

"I would just say this - we've raised more money in the last few days than we've raised in the last few months," he said.

He has campaigned hard in every one of Iowa's 99 counties, impressing social conservatives with his message of rejecting gay marriage and abortion, even in cases of rape.

The beneficiary of a pre-Christmas poll surge, Texas Congressman Ron Paul restated his libertarian-tinged policies at campaign stops in Des Moines, Mason City and a series of other towns.

Mr Paul - the oldest candidate in the race, at 76 - returned to Iowa after spending the holiday weekend in Texas.

He has faced scrutiny over racially charged newsletters published in his name during the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Paul - who wants an end to US military intervention overseas, and calls for the abolition of the Federal Reserve - said he had faith in his nationwide organisation, but conceded he needed a good result in Iowa.

A poor show in Iowa would be a "real challenge" for the campaign, he told the Associated Press. "We've invested a lot of time and money in doing well here."

Front-runner

In the city of Marion, front-runner Mitt Romney - whose 2008 campaign came unstuck in Iowa - exuded confidence.

"We're going to win this thing with all of our passion and strength," he said, before reprising his criticism of President Barack Obama.

"I want to see America united. I watch a president who's become a great divider, the great complainer, the great excuse-giver, the great blamer," Mr Romney said.

Mr Romney, a wealthy former businessman and governor of Massachusetts, has remained at or near the head of the pack throughout a long build-up to the primary campaign.

Persistent doubts about his conservative credentials have allowed others to remain in the hunt, though. Mr Santorum criticised Mr Romney on Monday, saying the nation needed a true commander-in-chief, not simply "executive experience".

Nevertheless, the former Massachusetts governor will win, analysts say, if the evangelical Christian vote is fragmented across competing conservative candidates - including Mr Santorum, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Former House Speaker New Gingrich - whose own poll numbers surged spectacularly in November and early December - admitted on Monday that a barrage of attack advertisements had seriously eroded his support in Iowa.

At least $12.5m (£8.1m) has been spent on largely negative political advertising in Iowa in recent weeks.

"I don't think I'm going to win," he said, adding: "Whatever I do tomorrow night will be a victory because I am still standing."

Long campaign

Iowa experts say the state's weather could be a determining factor in voter turnout on Tuesday, with Mr Paul's dedicated supporters the most likely to brave poor conditions.

The forecast for Iowa on Tuesday is partly cloudy, BBC Weather says, with temperatures likely to hover just above freezing during the day.

Ron Paul has one of the most organised get-out-the-vote operations in Iowa

A respected opinion poll published on Sunday by the Des Moines Register newspaper suggested Mr Romney remained the most popular candidate, with 25% support. Mr Paul was at 22%, while Mr Santorum scored 15%.

However, Mr Santorum's support is thought to have risen in recent days.

After Iowa, the state of New Hampshire holds its primary election on 10 January. Mitt Romney has a big lead there.

Over the next six months, each US state will vote on the presidential contenders before a final nominee is selected.

The eventual Republican nominee will be anointed at the party convention in August before running in the 6 November general election against Democratic President Obama, who is seeking a second term.

Voters remain concerned by the slow pace of economic recovery from the recession that started during the end of the presidency of George W Bush and officially ended in 2009.

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On private call, Republicans say attacking Obama personally is too dangerous: Yahoo News exclusive

Obama greets a crowd at Wilkes Barre/Scranton International Airport (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Republicans on a private Republican National Committee conference call with allies warned Tuesday that party surrogates should refrain from personal attacks against President Barack Obama, because such a strategy is too hazardous for the GOP.

"We're hesitant to jump on board with heavy attacks" personally against President Obama, Nicholas Thompson, the vice president of polling firm the Tarrance Group, said on the call. "There's a lot of people who feel sorry for him."

Recent polling data indicates that while the president suffers from significantly low job approval ratings, voters still give "high approval" to Obama personally, Thompson said.

Voters "don't think he's an evil man who's out to change the United States" for the worse--even though many of the same survey respondents agree that his policies have harmed the country, Thompson said. The upshot, Thompson stressed, is that Republicans should "exercise some caution" when talking about the president personally.

On the call--which Yahoo News was invited to attend because of a mistake by someone on the staff of the Republican National Committee--Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George W. Bush, encouraged Republicans to turn around Democratic attacks lobbed at the GOP presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, for starters) for "flip-flopping."

"I don't like playing defense," Fleischer said. He suggested the listeners to Tuesday's call label the president as a flip-flopper on the following issues: opposing tax increases for those making under $250,000, opposing the Bush tax cuts, opposing raising the debt limit, and opposing a health care mandate.

"When it comes to flip flopping, Barack Obama is the king of flip flopping," Fleischer said. "You can offer that to anybody," he suggested.

Thompson noted that Obama may be boxed in by similarly strong personal approval numbers for Republican lawmakers as he ponders attacking the GOP House majority during the 2012 campaign.

"Obama running against Congress is not going to work," Thompson said.

In a poll conducted in early November by the Tarrance Group and the Democratic group Lake Research for Politico and George Washington University, voters gave their personal member of Congress a 46 percent approval rating--even higher than the 44 percent personal approval numbers for Obama in the survey, Thompson said. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.)

Fifty-eight percent of the voters surveyed disapproved of how Obama is handling relations with Congress, according to Tarrance's November poll.

"It's a tough road for him when you look at those numbers," Thompson said of the president.

Thompson said that his group's research suggests that voters are giving Obama higher approval on foreign policy than on the issue of jobs and the economy.

Voters aren't simply looking at the president as the symbol for a "broken Washington," Thompson said.

Update 3:40 p.m.: Republican National Committee communications director Sean Spicer followed up with Yahoo News to say the story "misses the point" and that Tuesday's call wasn't about ways to avoid attacking the president, it was about sharing the best strategies for attacks. "It makes more sense to focus on his failed policies than on personal attacks," Spicer told Yahoo News of their data regarding the president.

Ari Fleischer also emailed Yahoo News to share his complete list of Obama flip-flops, which, in addition to the points above, includes: promising to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term; vowing to lower unemployment below 8 percent following the stimulus; falling short on shovel-ready jobs; contradicting himself on constitutional rights-- condemning Bush but then supporting "warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detentions, secret renditions and kept [Guantanamo] open; giving lobbyists waivers to work at the White House after saying they wouldn't work there; and refusing public financing in 2008 after vowing to accept it.

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