In the Sioux City spin room, after last night's debate, rival campaigns were surprisingly eager to praise Ron Paul. "Ron Paul could win Iowa," mused Stuart Stevens, a top adviser to Romney. "Ron Paul's a factor, and he will do well," said Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond. "The people who support him are going to come out. They've been working on that for four years."
You can read this between the lines. If Paul wins the caucuses, and Romney loses them again, the political press is ready to declare the whole process a waste. Chris Wallace said as much on Fox. That would be good, in the aggregate, for Romney. If would be a wash for Gingrich -- winning would be better, but coming in second to Paul would get him crowned the "real" winner of the caucuses. (I don't write these rules. Blame the people who trumpeted McGovern in 1972 after he lost narrowly to Muskie in New Hampshire.)
But when I talked to Republicans who didn't have a horse in the race, I heard something completely different -- air coming out of the Paul balloon. They argued that Paul had blown his shot at winning the caucuses by allowing himself to spend nearly five minutes discussing the complete lack of existential foreign policy threats, and the ease with which America could blow off its bogeyman. It went by quickly, but here's the transcript of the moment, according to these doubters, that Paul wandered off the golf course.
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