Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has, to his credit, been largely consistent on the deluge of negative ads in Iowa against former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Those ads, many from super PACs supporting his candidacy, are all fair game says Romney.
But in an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday, Romney tried to have his cake and eat it too, claiming the multi-million dollar ad assault hadn’t been responsible for Newt’s fall. The polls suggest that’s not the case.
Mitchell: Newt Gingrich has tanked. And by all accounts, it’s because of the super PAC barrage of ads from both you and some of the other campaigns. But the super PACs that are supporting Mitt Romney have just been savage against Newt Gingrich…Do you have an apology to make to the voters in Iowa and around the country, for the kind of negative advertising that’s been run?Romney: Actually, Speaker Gingrich’s numbers have gone down more in New Hampshire than they have in Iowa. And I don’t think there are any negative ads in New Hampshire at all.
Mitchell: But they’ve really plummeted here Governor because of those ads.
Romney: They’ve gone down even more in New Hampshire than they have in Iowa. And the nature of a campaign is that you’re going to have attacks coming from the Obama team, their super PAC has already gone after me, the Obama PAC has. If you can’t stand the heat in this little kitchen, wait until you get Obama’s kitchen…
Sounds good, except it’s not true.
By the raw numbers, Gingrich has dropped from the mid twenties to the mid teens in New Hampshire. That’s certainly significant. But the drop in the raw numbers for Gingrich in Iowa has been from the low thirties to the low teens. He scored 33 and 31 points in the first week of December, but he’s scored just 13 points in four of the last six Iowa polls over the last few days. The Newt plunge has been especially steep in the Hawkeye state, where he’s been bashed by negative ads.
We asked the Romney campaign about the Governor’s statement.
“According to the RCP [Real Clear Politics] average, Newt has dropped from 16% (12/20) to 14% (12/30) in Iowa over the past 10 days (2 point drop),” Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul wrote in an email to TPM. “According to the RCP average, Newt has dropped from 21% (12/20) to 17% (12/30) in New Hampshire over the past 10 days (4 point drop).”
In other words, if you look at the time period after Newt was already bloodied up in Iowa, Romney’s statement is true. But of course, that’s a pretty convenient way to look at it. Newt has dropped nationally as well, that’s beyond dispute. But the drop in Iowa is especially sharp, and nearly all reports from the ground point to the power of negative ads as the cause.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Poll Editor at TPM. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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