Tough Numbers for Romney

Last week, Boston Daily and pretty much every other media outlet spent a lot of time talking about “the speech.” Despite all that free publicity, Mitt Romney’s numbers are slipping in the land of corn and ethanol.

According to the latest Newsweek poll out of Iowa, Romney is way behind Mike Huckabee. Here’s what Politico writer Jonathan Martin had to say about it:

After a prolonged inspection of the candidates in the race and a period of waiting to see who else might run, many Hawkeye State Republicans seem to have narrowed the contest to a choice between two former governors.

All the mojo seems to be with Huckabee – a Newsweek poll released Friday shows him ahead of Romney by a staggering 39 percent to 17 percent margin.

Ouch.

Polls change all the time, and they likely will again before caucus-goers in Iowa finally and officially pick a candidate. That said, those numbers have to be pretty discouraging for Romney. After all the money his campaign has spent in Iowa, he trails a guy who apparently wants to quarantine everyone with HIV/AIDS. That’s tough to do.

Meanwhile, in other early-primary states, Romney still leads in New Hampshire but is running third in South Carolina. And, depending on which poll you’re reading, he’s also third in the national GOP primary race.