then she has tumbled, tumbled in a pretty intense way in the polls. it s really unclear why because she has at least at the beginning she had done pretty well in debates. she had been here campaigning very hard. she, like rick santorum at the end of this campaign, was around the state. she did all 99 counties. guess what, she was even born here. she was born in water loo, iowa. she is a native daughter of the state. she did not do very well. very disappointing. at the end of the day, suzanne, you know this. you ve covered many campaigns. you need money to go on. if you re not doing well, the money dries up and that is a critical problem for her. it s a mystery. she actually won that straw poll back over the summer here. do we have any sense of why her campaign just didn t gain the traction that was necessary? you know, she was competing with other candidates here who were pretty strong when it came to being socially conservative, which is really where she was appealing. t
she repeated misstatements about the risks of getting the hpv vaccine. she had a consistency problem. i asked her about this at the beginning of the campaign. i said do you understand now you re running for president. she said, yes, i ve made a lot of mistakes in the past. i must meet a higher credibility test. that was before a few other con throw versal statements. you make a key point. this campaign up until the final ten days, two weeks in iowa was defined by what? the debates. in june or very first cnn debate, michele bachmann turned in a pretty strong performance. she went up in the polls. in the future debates she was not viewed, this is a race for the presidency. republicans, especially, again, up until the final ten days before iowa, even iowa was tracking the polls. the praise was defined by those debates and who was the most presidential. republican voters clearly made a decision in iowa last night, and the new hampshire polls, the south carolina polls, the