All eyes turn to Ames



By MOLLY BALL | 8/8/11 4:26 AM EDT

The most important week of the 2012 presidential race so far begins now.

Whatever happens in Thursday’s debate and Saturday’s straw poll in Ames, the Republican field is likely to be narrowed. No candidate will come out of Ames the same as he or she went in. Some may not come out at all. And one will emerge as the top challenger to Mitt Romney, whose decision not to compete in the straw poll turned the voting largely into a contest between Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann.

The week will also be key for Rick Perry, the Texas governor who’s been weighing a run, but won’t be on the Ames ballot. The less strength everyone else in the field shows, the wider the opening for him to get in.

For all its detractors who claim the straw poll has little predictive value, it has shaped every Republican presidential race for years. Even those who skipped competing — Romney, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman — won’t be able to ignore the results. And those votes won’t be cast until after the debate — Huntsman’s first — two days before Ames.

It’s a week that will prove or disprove the conventional wisdom: Ron Paul’s struggling to be taken seriously, Rick Santorum’s hoping for attention, Herman Cain’s fading fast, Gingrich is sliding toward irrelevance and Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s run remains mostly confusing.

The stakes are highest for Pawlenty and Bachmann, as the former Minnesota governor pits two years of organizational build-up against the enthusiasm that has made the congresswoman the Iowa frontrunner as both try to prove their viability.

Former state GOP chairman Richard Schwarm said that though Pawlenty started early and did all the traditional things, “he’s got a curse that he may be the second choice of too many and not the first choice of enough.â€