Mitt Romney In Iowa: 'Why Don't We Just Caucus Right Now?'
NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa -- Mitt Romney wrapped up the last of three events in Iowa Wednesday by permitting himself a rare moment of giddiness.
"This is going to be so much fun," he told an audience of roughly 600 Iowans in a warehouse. "Why don't we just caucus right now?"
Wednesday was a very good day for Romney, and his comment reflected both excitement about a growing sense of enthusiasm for his candidacy as well as potential anxiety about whether there is enough time between now and Jan. 3 for Iowa Republicans to change their minds and disappoint him like they did in 2008.
It appears, however, that the former Massachusetts governor is not likely to be embarrassed here the way he was four years ago. Instead, the state may be a major stepping stone to Romney clinching the Republican nomination. A CNN/Time poll out Wednesday afternoon showed Romney leading the field with 25 percent in Iowa, up from 20 percent a month ago.
The primary process has chewed up Romney's rivals one by one, leaving him perched at the head of the pack with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who may still do very well in Iowa but who will likely never be accepted by the majority of Republicans because of his views on foreign policy. Paul has also come under fire recently for racist comments that appeared in newsletters that bore his name in the '80s and '90s.
Romney was greeted by large crowds at his stops on Wednesday. Romney aides said they expected 150 people at an event on Tuesday night in Davenport only to see 500 people show up, and that each event has been bigger than they expected. A 7 a.m. breakfast in Muscatine was attended by roughly 300 people, a lunch time visit to Clinton had to be split into two venues because 400 people came to see Romney and his wife Ann, and then his evening town hall was standing-room only.
"We can feel the enthusiasm," Ann Romney said in Clinton.
After Romney's appearance in a North Liberty plastics molding factory, Pat Novak, a 56-year-old process engineer, said he was going to caucus for Romney after going back and forth between him and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
"I'm a big Perry fan," Novak said. "But I think Mitt is now ready to be president and Mr. Perry needs a little more time."
Novak said he was "confident now that [Romney] is a conservative."
Doug Vincent, a 57-year-old logistics manager, said he also had been on the fence, but that seeing Romney in person "pushed it over the edge."
"I feel much better about him. I can get behind him now," Vincent said. "I just feel like when he speaks he's speaking from the heart. It's not BS."
Romney was originally scheduled to leave Iowa before the weekend, and it was thought he might not return even for the caucuses. But now he will go to New Hampshire on Friday and return to Iowa on Saturday, and then stay in the state all the way through Tuesday.
Romney was asked Wednesday whether he felt there was any danger in allowing expectations to grow for him to win Iowa. He dismissed the thought.
"We're pretty late in the process," Romney said, appearing to argue that there is not much time for Iowans to turn on him.
"I'm not predicting a win here," he said. "I feel like it's going to be a good strong showing."
Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom echoed his boss, and reminded of the continued possibility of a drawn-out primary lasting all the way to the GOP convention in Tampa, Florida, next August.
"We hope to do well in Iowa but we are not projecting how we're going to finish," Fehrnstrom told The Huffington Post. "We understand the road to Tampa is a long one. We will win some contests, and lose some. At the end of the day, we expect to have the 1,144 delegates we need to win the nomination."
Romney has waited until very late in the process to go all-out for a win in Iowa. If he were not leading in the polls, and if former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was still surging, then Romney would not be spending much time here. The Romney campaign has never seen Iowa as a likely success for them given the state's very conservative base, made up in large part by evangelical Christians who have shown some uneasiness with Romney's Mormon faith in the past.
Romney is expected to win New Hampshire on Jan. 10, and his campaign has prepared to make that their firewall in the event that Romney was eclipsed in Iowa by a surging conservative. But as of now, the candidate surging from the right flank is former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who could do very well here in Iowa but would have a very long way to go to convince most Republicans he is ready for a showdown with President Obama.
As Iowa is now within reach, however, Romney could end the presidential primary election quickly with back-to-back wins, provided he does very well in South Carolina on Jan. 21, or wins it outright.
Romney tried to keep himself in reserve, calling the idea of successive Iowa and New Hampshire wins "delightful but not necessarily realistic."
"I can't possibly allow myself to think in such optimistic terms," he said.
Quite soon, he may not have to use such self-restraint.
BACKGROUND ON MITT ROMNEY:
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Moving Forward
Mitt Romney lost to Rick Santorum in Louisiana, but he maintains a lead in the delegate race. His campaign also continues to dominate the GOP field in fundraising. Romney's next stop is Wisconsin, where he's touting his economic record.
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Widening Lead
Mitt Romney continued to grow his lead in delegates with the Illinois primary, which he won commandingly, with a double-digit margin over Rick Santorum. The victory helped Romney further along his path to the nomination. But his team quickly followed it with a gaffe. The next day, senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom compared Romney's campaign to an Etch A Sketch, saying the general election would represent a "reset button."
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On The Upswing
After a rocky road in the South, Mitt Romney came back with a pair of impressive primary victories. The former Massachusetts governor overwhelmingly won Puerto Rico primary with more than 80 percent of the vote. Romney is a firm supporter of statehood, while Rick Santorum, his chief GOP rival, controversially suggested English should be the main language in the U.S. territory. Romney's big Caribbean win came despite the fact that he shortened his Puerto Rico visit to focus on campaigning in Illinois, a critical primary state. Romney emerged victorious in Illinois, picking up at least 41 delegates. Leading in the delegate count, Romney looks to be on track to clinch his party's nomination.
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The Race Goes On
Mitt Romney's campaign admitted that primaries in the Deep South represented "a bit of an away game," and he lost to Rick Santorum in both Alabama and Mississippi. Romney still maintains a wide lead in delegates, but the prolonged fight has increasingly stressed the campaign's finances, forcing Romney to break from states with upcoming primaries to raise money in New York.
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Back In The Game
After a string of losses, Mitt Romney ended February with double wins in Michigan and Arizona. HuffPost's Jon Ward reports:
Mitt Romney's narrow win over Rick Santorum in Michigan on Tuesday, combined with his decisive win in Arizona, allowed his campaign a sigh of relief. He knew he had narrowly missed hitting an iceberg. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had 41 percent to Santorum's 38 percent, with 99 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Romney won Arizona with 47 percent to Santorum's 27 percent, with 89 percent of the vote counted. "We didn't win by a lot but we won by enough and that's all that counts," said Romney, who was measured in his exuberance, reflecting in his body language the knowledge that a long fight still lies ahead.
Heading into Super Tuesday, the Romney campaign is focused on Ohio, where polling shows him neck-and-neck with Rick Santorum. -
Still Confident
Recent polling shows Mitt Romney tied with Rick Santorum - or lagging behind - in Michigan, but his campaign is staying positive. "We're going to win Michigan," Romney adviser Stuart Stevens said after the GOP debate in Arizona. Romney has garnered endorsements from several of his home state's major newspapers, including The Detroit News, The Oakland Press and the Detroit Free Press. But the Free Press endorsement was less than glowing:
For the past 12 months, Romney has been refashioning himself as something other than what his record suggests. He has made gestures toward economic and social radicalism, and eschewed the common sense of cooperative governing that made him a success in Massachusetts. Romney was also dead wrong when he opposed government bailouts for the auto industry (Michigan's most vital economic engine) in late 2008. And he has since adopted a recalcitrant and, at times, revisionist defense of his position in the face of overwhelming evidence that the bailouts he opposed were necessary. [...] That's a mistake he will need to correct if he becomes the GOP nominee and hopes to even compete with President Barack Obama in the fall. But Romney, unlike the zealous Rick Santorum, the impulsive Newt Gingrich and the backward-thinking Ron Paul, is preferable to the rest of the field.
A Detroit News editor later complained that Romney had removed critical sections from the paper's endorsement. The campaign claimed that it did so to avoid copyright infringement, but at least one attorney had said that excuse doesn't pass muster. -
Tied For First
Once considered the presumptive front-runner, Romney is now struggling to break away from rival Rick Santorum. Mark Blumenthal reports that Romney might find smoother sailing ahead:
Although the national polls currently show a close race, Romney's campaign is well organized and flush with cash and thus able to compete for delegates in every state. For now, Santorum's campaign must focus more narrowly on the upcoming primaries. Moreover, the majority of Republicans continue to believe that Romney will win. On the CNN/ORC International poll, for example, more than two thirds of Republicans (68 percent) now say they expect Romney to win the Republican nomination, up from 41 percent in December. And if Romney does win? Two thirds of Republicans on the CNN poll say they would be either "enthusiastic" (21 percent) or "pleased" (44 percent), while only 11 percent say they would be "upset" -- 25 percent say they would be "displeased but not upset." Taken together, these results tell us that while the polling volatility may continue, most Republicans remain open to a Romney nomination.
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'Severely Conservative'
After a rough week, Mitt Romney headed to Washington to prove his conservative bona fides at CPAC, stressing his upbringing and his history as a governor and business leader:
Mitt Romney gave one of the most important speeches during his second turn as a presidential candidate on Friday at CPAC, and instead of just defending his credentials to the audience of grassroots activists, he suggested that he is the most authentic conservative in the Republican primary. The presidential hopeful said he "fought against long odds in a deep blue state" while serving as governor of Massachusetts and that he was "severely conservative" during his tenure. Romney acknowledged to the crowd that he did not come to conservatism as a young activist, telling them that if he had heard the names of foundational authors Friedrich Hayek or Edmund Burke when he was a young man, "you could have told me they were infielders for the Detroit Tigers." "My path to conservatism came from my family, from my faith and from my life's work," Romney said. "Those aren't values that I just talk about. They're values I live every day." "I know conservatism because I have lived conservatism," Romney said.
A day later, Romney's campaign got another boost when he won the Maine caucus, defeating Ron Paul by 3 points. -
Bad Day
Mitt Romney's campaign hit a setback with his triple losses to Rick Santorum in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Although Romney didn't seem overly worried during his concession speech, the results underscore some of his weaknesses as a candidate.
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Caucus Season Battles
Mitt Romney aimed to preserve his frontrunner status as he entered caucus season in early February. He started the month strongly, with a decisive victory in the Nevada caucus. With Rick Santorum poised to gain a bit of momentum in Colorado and Minnesota, Romney ramped up rhetoric geared at social conservatives. He slammed Obama for his policies on birth control and emergency contraception, stating that "This kind of assault on religion will end if I'm president of the United States." Romney won both Minnesota and Colorado during his 2008 bid for the nomination.
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Westward Bound
After a big win in the Florida primary, Mitt Romney headed west to keep the momentum rolling. Polls show the former governor with a commanding lead in Nevada, while rival Newt Gingrich continues to slip. The morning after his victory in Florida, the former governor hit a bit of a snag when he continued a streak of poorly phrased remarks that call attention to his time at Bain Capital. During an interview with CNN, Romney said that he's "not concerned about the very poor," a line that other candidates quickly jumped on.
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Regaining Momentum
Mitt Romney enters the Florida Primary with a very solid lead in the polls. Poll averages show the former Massachusetts governor around 41 percent, over 12 points ahead of rival Newt Gingrich. With a win in Florida's winner-take-all contest looking increasingly inevitable, his campaign has started to look ahead to future nominating contests. AP reported on Romney's future beyond the Sunshine State:
Romney's advisers -- and unaffiliated Republicans -- see a widening path to victory beyond Florida. "A lot of the contests are states he won four years ago. Some of them are big primary states like Michigan. Arizona, we didn't get to in 2008, but we think that's good, fertile territory for us," said Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. "Other states -- Colorado, Minnesota, Maine -- these are all contests we won in the past, where Mitt still retains a strong base of support."
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Battling Newt
Mitt Romney's campaign suffered a blow in South Carolina, when GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich won the state's primary with 40 percent of the vote. Romney came in second with 28 percent. Romney struggled to garner excitement from the conservative voting block in the Palmetto state. Heading into Florida, Gingrich continued to surge in the polls, challenging Romney's frontrunner status. In Florida, the two candidates hammered each other with negative attack ads. In the final debate before Florida's 2012 primary, Romney came out swinging against Gingrich, but the former House speaker held back his usual fiery, aggressive attacks, propelling Romney to a victory in the critical debate.
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Concedes Iowa
More than two weeks after the Iowa caucus, a final certified tally showed Rick Santorum actually won the contest, beating Mitt Romney by 24 votes, 29,839 to 29,805. The Des Moines Register reported that votes from eight precincts will never be counted, however, and therefore the ultimate tally remains inconclusive. HuffPost's Elise Foley reports:
Officials found inaccurate counts in 131 precincts, including one that had an error by 50 votes, the Des Moines Register reported on Thursday. Chad Olsen, the party's executive director, told the Register that the results showed "a split decision." The final tallies, exempting the eight precincts that will not be tallied, were 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney, according to the Register. The Santorum campaign said the change in results could change the narrative of Romney as a frontrunner.
Romney called Santorum to congratulate him on the win, CNN reported. -
Pressure To Release Tax Return
Mitt Romney has declined to release his tax returns, despite pressure from his Republican presidential rivals and the White House to do so. At a GOP debate in South Carolina, a stuttering Romney said he will "probably" release his tax records in April if he becomes the party's nominee. He acknowledged it is the tradition for candidates to reveal their tax information, but said doing so at this point in the election would only give Democrats reason to go after him. Romney later revealed that his effective tax rate is 15 percent, below the rate paid by many middle-class families. Romney was booed for again waffling on the issue at the final GOP debate in South Carolina, days before the state's primary. HuffPost's Amanda Terkel reports:
"Why not, should the people of South Carolina, before this election, see last year's return?" asked [moderator John] King to applause from the audience. "Because I want to make sure that I beat President Obama," replied Romney. "Every time we release things drip by drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks. As has been done in the past, I'll put these out at one time so we have one discussion of all of this. I obviously pay all full taxes. I'm honest in my dealings with people. People understand that. My taxes are carefully managed. I pay a lot of taxes. I've been very successful. When I have our taxes ready for this year, I'll release them."
Romney finally released his tax records for 2010, on Jan. 24. The records show he paid an effective rate of 13.9 percent in 2010, considerably lower than the average middle class American. The records also show Romney had a Swiss bank account. Two days later Romney revised his disclosures for his overseas account. From NBC:Mitt Romney could face new questions about his overseas investments after a campaign official acknowledged to NBC News that his campaign is revising his federal ethics forms to report more than a half dozen offshore holdings, including income from a multi-million dollar Swiss bank account that was not disclosed last year.
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Endorsements
Romney continues to pick up high-profile endorsements such as. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole have backed Romney. and an unofficial endorsement from former President George H.W. Bush. In a surprise to many, Tea Party favorites Nikki Haley and Christine O'Donnell have also backed Romney. On Jan. 15 Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman dropped out of the race and endorsed his former rival. Just as notable as Romney's growing roster of endorsements are the names absent from the list. Many national party leaders have not yet endorsed the frontrunner, or any of the Republican presidential candidates in the field.
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Early Success
Despite the Republican Party's hesitance to unite around Mitt Romney, his campaign has surged as voters continue to believe he is the candidate with the best shot of beating President Obama. Romney won the New Hampshire primary and was originally declared the winner of the Iowa caucus. Even though Romney barely campaigned in Iowa, hoping to avoid an embarrassing repeat of his campaign-crushing loss in 2008, he seemed poised to emerge victorious over Rick Santorum in Hawkeye state, by just eight votes. Recounts later revised those results to put him in a close second. As expected, the former Massachusetts governor went on to easily win the first in the nation primary in neighboring New Hampshire.
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Battle For The Anti-Romney
Throughout the presidential primary season, rival Republican candidates have surged past Romney only to fall back down to Earth. One after another, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Governor Rick Perry, former pizza CEO Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich each experienced a volatile bump and fall in their campaigns, while Romney stayed steadily at the top of the field. Due in part to this sense of inevitability and electability, Romney is poised for a strong finish in the Hawkeye State despite his rocky history with Iowa voters.
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Tea Party Opposition
While Romney has achieved solid polling numbers both in key primary states and on the national level, one group of Tea Party organizers has publicly announced that their primary mission will be to deny him the GOP candidacy. HuffPost's Jon Ward reports:
Interviews with top officials at FreedomWorks, a Washington-based organizing hub for Tea Party activists around the country, revealed that much of their thinking about the 2012 election revolves around derailing the former Massachusetts governor. "Romney has a record and we don't really like it that much," said Adam Brandon, the group's communications director.
When Romney sought to extend an olive branch to the Tea Party with his official debut at a rally in New Hampshire, FreedomWorks followed through with their promise, though the turnout at the protest was minimal. -
Questionable Campaign Contributions
While Mitt Romney has proven himself to be a formidable fundraiser over the course of his campaign, some of the donations have sparked intense scrutiny. HuffPost's Paul Blumenthal reports that Romney is blowing his competition out of the water when it comes to campaign cash from lobbyists:
According to disclosure reports filed at the end of July, 61 registered lobbyists and five lobbyist-linked political action committees contributed $137,650 to Romney's campaign between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2011. The former Massachusetts governor raised more money from lobbyists during this period than all of his competitors combined.
But the influx of lobbyist dollars into Romney's campaign isn't the only cash flow raising eyebrows. Over the summer, Romney drew fire after it was reported that an LLC popped up, donated $1 million to a pro-Romney super PAC, then vanished 3 months later. Ed Conard, former managing director of Bain Capital, the group that Romney co-founded and once headed, later came out as the name behind that group. Romney dismissed the questionable contribution days later at a townhall meeting, telling a questioner that there was "no harm, no foul." -
Mitt: Mormon -- And 'Weird'?
Mitt Romney, son of former Michigan Governor and GOP presidential candidate George W. Romney, comes from a large family of Mormons whose bloodline runs into Mexico. From The Washington Post report on Romney's relatives south of the border:
Three dozen of Mitt Romney's relatives live here in a narrow river valley at the foot of the western Sierra Madre mountains, surrounded by peach groves, apple orchards and some of the baddest, most fearsome drug gangsters and kidnappers in all of northern Mexico. Like Mitt, the Mexican Romneys are descendants of Miles Park Romney, who came to the Chihuahua desert in 1885 seeking refuge from U.S. anti-polygamy laws. He had four wives and 30 children, and on the rocky banks of the Piedras Verdes River, he and his fellow Mormon pioneers carved out a prosperous settlement beyond the reach of U.S. federal marshals. He was Mitt's great-grandfather.
Whether or not questions of Romney's faith will be visibly at play in the 2012 cycle remains to be seen. Team Obama's attack plan against Romney will include reminders of the former governor's quirkiness, though no direct links to his religion, according to an earlier Politico piece:The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama's reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama's advisers in about a dozen interviews, "weird."
Some have claimed that "weird" is simply a code word for "Mormon," a faith that some voters have appeared apprehensive about supporting in a White House bid. Romney himself has walked a line between addressing his religion upfront and downplaying its overall significance. But others say Romney's demeanor on the campaign trail is enough on its own to justify the Obama campaign's "weird" tactic: HuffPost's Jon Ward reported on Romney's campaign trail demeanor:There were awkward moments as well. He walked up to two women in their early 40s sitting at a booth together in Mary Ann's and asked, "Do you guys know each other?" A few minutes later, posing with a few waitresses, Romney nearly jumped away from them with a howl, pretending as if one of them had grabbed his backside. He laughed -- there is supposedly a backstory about someone actually pinching him a few years ago -- but it was nonetheless a jarring sight. Afterward the waitresses said they had not grabbed him.
(More of Romney's awkward exchanges here.) Attempting to make a $10,000 bet at a GOP presidential debate didn't help Romney's image of being a multi-millionaire that's out of touch with the average American. Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10K to settle the argument over whether his health care plan included an individual mandate that President Obama used as a model for his nationwide plan. -
Standing By RomneyCare
Even before Romney's official entry into the 2012 race, Republican pundits around the country were urging the former Massachusetts governor to simply apologize for what they had determined to be his primary Achilles' heel: the state health care overhaul he helped push through in 2006. Instead, however, the one-time Blue state governor has taken a different tack. In a speech to the Michigan Cardiovascular Center in May, Romney addressed the health care reform plan, which the Obama camp has repeatedly cited as an inspiration for the national health care reform passed last year. He admitted that it was viewed as a liability, but defended it, portraying it as a fundamentally different program than the national law. HuffPost's Jon Ward reported at the time:
Romney spent half of his speech defending the Massachusetts plan -- which required the six percent of the state's citizens who were not insured to obtain health insurance or pay a "bond" of roughly $125 a month -- before turning to a critique of President Obama's health care overhaul passed last year by Congress. He admitted that some of the aspects of the state plan, which has already led to government price controls to try to rein in costs, have not worked like he had hoped, but concluded: "Overall am I proud of the fact that we did our best for our people and got people insured? Absolutely."
Romney has taken a few lumps from his rivals for his role in the reform package, and he can almost certainly expect to weather more before the primary is over. -
Pet Causes
HuffPost's Andrea Stone reports on Romney's charitable efforts:
The richest remaining candidate in the Republican presidential field has a net worth somewhere north of $200 million. With a fortune amassed as a venture capitalist at his firm, Bain Capital, he has been generous to many community, civic and political advocacy organizations. But the vast majority of his philanthropic contributions have gone to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the form of the tithes required of all Mormons in good standing. The former Massachusetts lay bishop has spoken candidly about his religious faith, but his prodigious contributions to the LDS Church will do little to mollify evangelical primary voters whom polls show have a deep prejudice against electing a Mormon president.
For more on the giving habits of the other GOP presidential candidates, click here. -
Returning To The Trail
Mitt Romney's strong second-place performance in the 2008 primary allowed him to effectively secure a default frontrunner status in the 2012 GOP race, even before his potential rivals were officially known. While his return to the campaign trail as a likely favorite has given him a chance to build his fundraising ties after spending much of his own money in the 2008 contest, the general lack of enthusiasm surrounding his candidacy has played a part in giving rise to fresh faces in the primary, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Questions have also risen about the Romney campaign's earlier decision to keep him out of the trenches during prime stumping time over the summer. In early August Politico reported on the state of Romney's campaign, likening it to a "Mittness Protection Program:"
This is hardly your traditional Rose Garden campaign, in which a strong incumbent or frontrunner molds politics to follow his non-political day job. Romney doesn't currently hold office or any other job. But more importantly, he's a Republican frontrunner of unprecedented weakness, and one whom the American people barely know. And while his advisers describe the decision as a strategic choice to pick only the big fights, it has obvious negative consequences: Romney's identity remains hazy, voters remain unmet, and his rare appearances raise the stakes for gaffe free - or at least vaguely normal - performances.
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First Posted: 12/28/2011 9:28 pm Updated: 12/29/2011 11:41 am