The unfortunate quote was accompanied by an unflattering image of Rhoades looking disheveled in front of a table filled with half-empty liquor bottles. The image circulated across the blogosphere and settled on the main page of the Drudge Report for six hours under the one-word headline, “Sunk.”
In the meantime, second-place finisher Ron Paul stood onstage in the ballroom of the Renaissance Savoy Hotel in Des Moines, declaring a victory for his near win: “Thank you, Iowa! Together we just made the first step in bringing fiscal sanity back to Washington, D.C. Now we move on to New Hampshire!” Paul knew better than that, however. When he had first learned the outcome from his number crunchers, what he had really thought was, “Reagan must be stopped.” To have any chance in the contests in the states ahead, Paul needed to be positioned as the opposition candidate to the right of Romney in order to unleash a flood of contributions from conservative activist groups into his coffers. Now he was seeing his path to victory evaporate as Reagan had stolen the support of his most valuable constituency: the Tea Party. He covered up his feelings, though, boldly predicting to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “Reagan is our Howard Dean. He won’t get through February.”
In the living quarters of the White House, there was a shock of a different kind.
The Secret Service agent standing outside the door let Robert Gibbs enter the family’s quarters. Gibbs, the President’s press secretary during his turbulent first two years in office, now chaired Obama’s reelection campaign and had just learned the news.
Michelle Obama was sitting alone on the couch, watching American Idol. “Hey, Bob, how are you doing?” Michelle asked, without looking up from the television.
“How am I doing?” Gibbs asked, taken aback. “Haven’t you heard the news?”
“No.”
“Reagan is going to win Iowa. He has a path to winning the nomination.”
“What?” Michelle exclaimed, jumping to her feet.
The President emerged from his bedroom. Gibbs filled him in: Reagan was going to finish first, ahead of Ron Paul and a long way ahead of Romney.
Team Obama had hoped all along that Reagan would win, but none of the Washington smart set had given him much of a chance. Too extreme and too polarizing, they said. A country in crisis would never hand over the keys to Reagan. Internal polling indicated that if nominated, Reagan would lose to Obama by double digits.
The President breathed a sigh of relief. Obama’s camp had spent the past year fixated on Romney, believing that the moderate Republican, with a background in business and an unlimited bankroll, could have siphoned off the independent vote which had been so vital in handing Obama the 2008 election.
“Are you sure?” asked the President.
“I checked the numbers myself three times,” answered his aide. “It’s a done deal. We can stick a fork in Romney.”
Not everyone in the Democratic Party shared Obama’s optimism, though. Bill Clinton, watching the returns come in while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, turned to his wife Hillary and said, “We have a big problem here. This isn’t a campaign. It’s a movement.”
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