Iowa Back in Play for Romney

After getting burned badly by Iowa in 2008, Mitt Romney has generally been keeping his distance from the state this time around. But with no other single candidate gathering the support that Mike Huckabee won in the last election, Romney's strategy might be changing, reports the Wall Street Journal. "I'll be here again and again," he said on a visit there yesterday, only his third of the year. The reason: He's favored to win in New Hampshire, and if he combines that with an earlier win in Iowa on Jan. 3, his campaign may have unstoppable momentum.

“The opportunity’s still there [for Romney] because, frankly, nobody’s got a ground game,” a former state House speaker tells Politico. Still, Romney has only a skeleton crew in the state, and both Politico and the Journal say it's anything but a slam dunk that he's conservative enough to win over the majority of caucus-goers. And if he expands his presence only to lose again, it could hurt. “I’d love to win Iowa. Any of us would,” said Romney yesterday. “You have an enormous say in who the next president’s gonna be." (More Mitt Romney 2012 stories.)