It's pretty early in the cycle for reporters to be getting so sick of your campaign's spin that they start doing posts actively debunking your claims and making clear to readers what spin you're using. That's why it should be really troubling for the Pawlenty campaign that Christian Heinze of The Hill is taking time showing how both the candidate, the campaign manager, and the campaign's spokesman are misleading the public and other reporters when it comes to expectations in the upcoming Ames straw poll. The nut of the Pawlenty campaign's problem is that while they are running in the back of the pack nationally (6th or 7th place), they are running much better in Iowa (3rd place). They have tried to confound their stronger Iowa standing with their weak national standing to make a non-win at Ames look like a strong performance. Here's Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant:
“We want to show progress in Ames, [do] better than sixth or seventh.”See what Conant is doing there? Conant has framed an performance in Ames that is better than sixth place as a win for Pawlenty. But that's relative to national performance, not Pawlenty's current standing in Iowa. Quite simply, Pawlenty should finish in the top 3 at Ames. Winning it would be a surge, but getting second or third is not a great indicator of anything other than recent accurate polling in Iowa. And if Pawlenty doesn't finish in the top three at Ames, it will be a bad sign for his campaign.