Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

A.C. Kleinheider thinks that Fred Thompson ought to compete in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll next month, in a bid to deal a knockout blow to Mitt Romney's campaign. It seems to make sense at first - Romney has placed a huge emphasis on winning the Ames straw poll. But Kleinheider is wrong. Fred Thompson's better move is to skip Ames.

Romney is the only major Republican candidate actively focusing on winning the big Ames straw poll, a win that demonstrates a campaign's prowess at the political ground game. And while it is true that Thompson would deal Romney a major blow if he competed in the Ames event and won it, or even came close to Romney, it is in Thompson's best interest to skip Ames.

With Rudy Giuliani and John McCain both skipping the event, winning it has been greatly devalued while, for Romney, losing it - or even winning it unimpressively over the field of single-digit Republicans - would be a disaster. If Romney is the only major candidate actively competing at Ames, there is almost no conceivable margin by which he can win and not face at least some question of whether or not he met "expectations." Remember, McCain, Giuliani and Thompson's names will be on the ballot. They will get some votes, but if they don't get many, the media will duly note that they weren't competing actively in Ames. Any vote for them is a positive showing.

The seven second-tier Republicans have little to lose in Ames. Even getting close to 10 percent would be a "win" for someone like Tom Tancredo, or Tommy ("The Other") Thompson, or Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback or Duncan Hunter. Collectively, the seven could grab as much as a quarter of the Ames vote. That leaves 75 percent for Romney and the Big Three who aren't competing. If each of the three get 10 percent - not improbable given recent poll numbers in Iowa - that means Romney would "win" the straw poll with less than half of the vote, an unimpressive result as the media will note he had little in the way of major competition.

If Fred Thompson were to enter the Ames contest, he would lower the "expectations" bar for Romney. He might also force Giuliani and McCain to rethink their withdrawal from the Ames straw poll. That's the variable that Kleinheider forgot: Thompson entering the race chances the stakes and the political calculus for Giuliani and McCain too.

It is not disastrous for McCain and Giuliani to lose a straw poll, even the venerable Ames straw poll, to Romney if they don't compete with him. It would be, however, disastrous to them if they skipped the event and Fred Thompson won it. 

Thompson's best course of action regarding the Ames straw poll is the one the McCain and Giuliani have, no doubt, also embarked upon: Publicly skip the poll, while covertly encouraging their Iowa supporters to build a grassroots effort to make a respectable showing in the Ames poll. Such a strategy lowers the risk for each of the three candidates while simultaneously raising the risk for Romney.