WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin draws crowds with her hide-and-seek bus tour. Michele Bachmann says Palin’s plans won’t dissuade her from her likely presidential bid. Iowa GOP activists travel to New Jersey to implore Gov. Chris Christie to run, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry weighs a campaign.
The Republican presidential field is far less settled than it seemed just a week ago, and it shows few signs of jelling soon.
With campaigning off to a slow start in early-voting states, half a dozen potential candidates are mulling whether to jump in. So keen is the interest, among journalists at least, that two news helicopters tracked Palin’s East Coast bus trip to Philadelphia on Tuesday.
The stepped-up interest follows decisions by three prominent Republicans — Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels — to forgo a campaign, making the field less crowded than some had expected.
Meanwhile, GOP activists don’t appear ready to start narrowing their choices just yet. They seem unconcerned that an important Iowa straw poll is 74 days away and President Barack Obama’s re-election team is setting up shop in dozens of states.
Unease about presumed front-runner Mitt Romney is prompting some Republican activists to continue casting about for new faces, such as Perry or Christie, or even familiar faces, such as Palin or Rudy Giuliani.
Other party insiders, however, say the talk is unfair to Romney and other candidates. Several of them could prove to be formidable challengers to Obama, these Republicans say.
“Look at the housing numbers today,” said Republican consultant Danny Diaz, referring to a key index of home prices that hit its lowest level in nine years. Obama will be vulnerable on housing, jobs and the overall economy, Diaz said, and the eventual Republican nominee’s clout will make the current hand-wringing seem foolish in retrospect.
One thing is not debatable: The race is off to a much slower start than was the 2008 version.
In Iowa, which holds the nation’s first caucus, campaign traffic had reached deeply into the 99 counties at this stage four years ago. Now, it has barely scratched the surface, Crawford County GOP Chairwoman Gwen Ecklund said.
Only former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who registers scant support in national polls, has visited Ecklund’s county, part of GOP-rich western Iowa. “There isn’t a whole lot of commitment or excitement for any one candidate yet,” Ecklund said.
The biggest excitement in recent days has surrounded Palin. Her bus tour, which stopped Tuesday at the Gettysburg battlefield, Liberty Bell and New York City, is equal parts carnival, photo op and breezy history lesson. Her meeting and dinner with real estate mogul and almost-candidate Donald Trump did nothing to tamp down the frenzy.
