Newt?s seething. Perry?s desperate. Huntsman wants to get noticed. Santorum needs to make a mark.
All of it adds up to a long ? and potentially painful ? weekend for Mitt Romney, who will run the gantlet at back-to-back New Hampshire debates.
Continue ReadingGavin on Mitt?s weekend
The 2012 front-runner played the pincushion role before, in the lead-up to the 2008 GOP primaries. But this time around, Romney has largely avoided being perforated by rivals. That?s likely to change on Saturday and Sunday due to a mix of personal animus and strategic imperatives.
?In 2008, he found himself in the middle of a circular firing squad ? and it really put him on an uncomfortable defensive posture throughout the whole debate,? recalled Rich Killion, a New Hampshire-based strategist who is neutral in the Jan. 10 primary. ?Truly, this [weekend], he could be seeing two or three candidates come at him.?
?Gov. Romney has been this nominal front-runner from the get-go yet he?s not been anybody?s big target in the debates,? said Chip Saltsman, Mike Huckabee?s campaign manager in the 2008 presidential race. ?We?re gonna see that change this weekend, and now these guys are making the decision.?
One veteran GOP strategist put it even more bluntly: ?He will be a political pinata, no question about it. The question is, how does he handle it??
The chances of a Romney pile-on are fairly high, especially with a field that?s been whittled to six candidates, down from eight just a few weeks ago.
There are two debates within 16 hours of one another ? an ABC News-sponsored event on Saturday night, followed by an NBC News-sponsored forum the next morning. The two face-offs are consuming gobs of time for all the campaigns, and essentially freezing campaigning over much of the weekend in what is an already-condensed run-up to the Jan. 10 primary.
Newt Gingrich is the safest bet to go after Romney ? the only question is whether it?s a strafing run or a full shock-and-awe bombing. The former House speaker, who has repeatedly denounced Romney for the barrage of negative ads that helped sink his fortunes in Iowa, has made clear he is going to draw sharp contrasts, emphasis on ?sharp.?
But Gingrich isn?t the only one taking the stage with issues with Romney. Jon Huntsman, who has staked his fortunes on New Hampshire without any notable rise in the polls, also has no love lost for Romney. Rick Perry, as he demonstrated at the Dec. 10 debate in Iowa, has a unique ability in the field to get under Romney?s skin.
Then there?s Rick Santorum, who isn?t known to harbor any ill will toward Romney but has consistently gone after the front-runner at the debates for months ? the problem was that he got very little time from the moderators to make that case. That?s certain to change this weekend, given his squeaker of a loss to Romney in the Iowa caucuses.
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