Tuesday, January 3, 2012
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — In the kickoff contest of the 2012 presidential race, Republican candidates argued right up to today's finish line in Iowa over which candidate the voters can trust and who they can count on to defeat President Barack Obama.
With large numbers of likely caucus goers still undecided or willing to change their minds as the Iowa race wound down, a confident-but-cautious frontrunner, Mitt Romney, said in an interview broadcast today on NBC that he's poised to claim "the kind of send-off we need for a pretty long campaign season." Backing off earlier declarations he'd win outright, he told MSNBC he expected to be "among the top group."
Unpredictable to the end, many of Iowa's GOP voters still hadn't settled on a favorite candidate just hours before they cast the first ballots of the 2012 presidential contest.
"It might come down to the speeches at the caucuses," Phil Ubben of Sioux City said. "I want to support someone who can go all the way and defeat the Democrats in November."