Romney picks up pace with poll position in Iowa

REPUBLICAN Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has a hint of a swagger about it as a good showing looks more likely next week in the Iowa caucuses, where his 2008 campaign crashed badly.

While his staff dampened expectations of winning the caucuses vote this time, large crowds gathered at Romney events in the state and his Iowa poll numbers increased again.

“It’s a fair wind that blows in Iowa,” Romney mused to no one in particular as he headed toward his campaign. “It’s very nice.”

A Gallup daily tracking poll showed the former Massachusetts governor retaking the lead from the fading campaign of Newt Gingrich.

That was after a CNN survey that also showed Romney in first place, despite putting relatively little time and money into campaigning in Iowa, which opens the 2012 presidential voting season on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Gingrich has struggled under a blitz of negative ads from Romney and his backers while another rival, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, has had to explain racist comments written in his name in the 1990s.

Romney’s mood was ebullient as he hit the road again, traversing rural Iowa to shake hands, blast Democratic President Barack Obama’s economic policies and urge voters to go to the polls on his behalf.

Supporter Greg Greco told Romney at a campaign stop in Cedar Falls: “You’ve got this thing. Keep going.”

Romney sought to dampen that overconfidence, telling a crowd, “Sure, I want to win Iowa but everybody wants to win Iowa.”

In a push toward the finishing line, Romney’s campaign was bringing popular Republican and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to Iowa for campaign events. Christie is seen as a vote-winner among conservatives who are wary about Romney’s moderate record as Massachusetts governor.

In 2008, Romney invested heavily in Iowa only to lose to the surprising upstart campaign of Mike Huckabee, ex-governor of Arkansas and a former Baptist preacher, who dominated in Iowa but failed to catch on elsewhere. Senator John McCain of Arizona eventually won the Republican nomination.

Romney’s campaign staff has worked overtime to lower expectations this time around.

A senior adviser warned that Rick Santorum, who enjoys some of the same Christian conservative support that boosted Huckabee, could overtake Romney by Tuesday.