GOP contest looks like 3-way race

WATERLOO, Iowa — The leading Republican presidential candidates scrambled to take command of a new landscape on Sunday after Tim Pawlenty abruptly ended his campaign and a three-way race began taking shape to find a nominee who can emerge as the strongest challenger to President Barack Obama.

While Texas Gov. Rick Perry had hoped to turn the contest into a two-man duel with Mitt Romney, he starts by facing Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose weekend victory in the Iowa straw poll reordered the top tier of candidates. As Perry arrived here on the second day of his announcement tour, he shared the spotlight with Bachmann at an evening rally.

Perry spoke first but made no reference to his rival. Unlike Pawlenty, who attacked Bachmann's qualifications at Thursday night's debate and seemed to pay a price for doing so, Perry chose to send a more subtle message that he was coming after her: making his first Iowa appearance in her childhood hometown but not taking her on directly.

Bachmann declined to arrive at the dinner until after Perry had finished speaking. And she, too, made no acknowledgement of her rival even as he sat at a dinner table just feet from where she stood. While Bachmann, Perry and Romney each have made cutting attacks on Obama, they now face the need to begin drawing distinctions with one another and set up what could be a long and hard-edged campaign for their party's nomination.

Perry and Romney are both presenting themselves as the candidate best able to create jobs. Perry and Bachmann are both appealing to social conservatives. Romney calls himself the candidate who knows how the private sector works, Perry has a long record in government even as he runs on an anti-Washington platform and Bachmann lays claim to the insurgent spirit among conservatives.

The contrasts are becoming increasingly clear as the slow-to-start campaign accelerates and candidates prepare to participate in three debates next month alone.

Bachmann is counting on a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses early in the new year. Romney is investing heavily in the New Hampshire primary. Perry said he would not focus on a narrow strategy and pledged to compete in all corners of the country by emphasizing economic issues and his record of promoting job creation over the past decade in Texas.

"At the end of the day," Perry told supporters here, "getting America working again is what the bulk of the people really care about."

Romney on Sunday appeared at a private fundraiser in Nantucket, Mass., and held no public campaign events. But in New Hampshire on Monday, aides said, he will continue his focus on Obama and criticize the president's Midwestern bus tour this week, avoiding being dragged into the back-and-forth of the Republican nominating contest until he has to.

Bachmann is seeking to expand her appeal and win over voters who admire her passion but remain unsure of her experience. She appeared on all five Sunday morning talk shows and was peppered with questions about her opposition to raising the debt ceiling, her views about gays and lesbians and the role that faith would play in a Bachmann administration.

"All of these kind of questions aren't what people are concerned about right now," the Minnesota congresswoman said on NBC's "Meet the Press." But pressed on the issues, she said, "I think my views are clear."

Pawlenty's abrupt departure from the race on Sunday, after he finished a distant third in the straw poll, created one of the most significant ripples yet in the Republican nominating fight. The former Minnesota governor had a core group of loyal fundraisers and supporters from Iowa to Florida that rival campaigns immediately started to pursue.

He said that he had no immediate plans to endorse another candidate.

Perry's entrance is not likely to alter Romney's strategy, at least for now. Senior aides to the former Massachusetts governor have long believed that they would face a social conservative who would emerge out of Iowa. The Romney campaign may be content to watch Perry and Bachmann clash, waiting to see how Perry develops as a candidate before deciding its approach.

If Bachmann emerges from that clash early next year in a stronger position than Perry, the contrast with Romney would be particularly sharp. But if Perry were to prevail, Romney is positioned to make the case that his experience in the private sector — as a businessman and the organizer of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah — trumps years as a politician in Texas.

For now, the campaign is unfolding as a Romney-Perry-Bachmann competition. But Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah and ambassador to China, is steadily increasing his criticism of Romney, reflecting his strategy of positioning himself as an alternative to Romney in New Hampshire.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who finished a close second in the Ames straw poll, could also influence the race with his strain of libertarian views that have become more popular in this economic climate.

"This is a very fluid situation right now," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as he arrived at the Waterloo event Sunday evening. "From here on, you are shooting with real bullets."