Amid the news vacuum that Romney created with his speech this week is a detailed look at the ground games in Iowa by Politico. Jonathan Martin was tasked with taking on the Romney and Huckabee camps. I'll have more in this later. For now, take the first paragraphs from each piece. It gives you a good idea about the massive differential between the campaigns:

ON MITT: "Mitt Romney has built the most formidable Iowa operation of any GOP presidential candidate on what might be described as three legs of a campaign stool: time on the ground, top local talent and cold, hard cash."

ON HUCKABEE: "Either Eric Woolson is a master at lowering expectations or Mike Huckabee is taking a gigantic gamble that his skeletal Iowa organization can still somehow earn a victory on Jan. 3. "

Its obvious from the NIE blindside earlier this week that Huckabee is clearly lacking in staff (or at least needs to pull up Drudge every now and then on the Blackberry). But the INS craziness today points to something different altogether.

Regardless, Huckabee is a threat to Romney. But I believe the speech will do some good in the next week. As Mike's rise has shown... anything can happen now that people are paying attention.

Labels: Jonathan Martin, mitt romney, Politico