How fast they turn: Conservative pundit Bob Novak predicted Romney would take Iowa. Wrong.

Then he said Mitt would take New Hampshire. Wrong.

Now? Novak's political newsletter says Romney's at "death's door."

"While Romney can dig into his own massive fortunes to stay alive, it's hard to imagine where he can win if he can't win in two states where he has spent huge amounts of money and time," the Evans and Novak Political Report said Wednesday. "The voters who know him best - including those in his neighboring state of New Hampshire - aren't quite sold on him."

Given Novak's first two predictions, maybe this is good news for the Romney campaign.

Olympic reminders: Romney never misses an opportunity to tout his leading role in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, especially when he saw a couple Olympic jackets in the crowd.

Romney asked Chuck and Judy Houdesheldt, of Blue Grass, Iowa, to stand up and show off the yellow volunteer jackets. Then Romney talked about the great volunteer spirit of this country. He called for 20,000 volunteers for the Olympics and 40,000 people responded.

But as it turns out, Chuck and Judy were not among them. They bought the coats from some college students.

Speed speaker: Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Chris Cannon were stumping in Iowa for Romney, and that included a whole bunch of precinct stump speeches. Cannon was assigned to the Jasper County caucuses, which had such an unexpectedly high turnout that the meetings were split between a bunch of middle-school classrooms. Cannon had 20 minutes to "elbow his way" into seven or eight rooms, giving him 2 1/2 minutes at each stop.

Comedy relief: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" before the Iowa caucus, garnering chuckles from the audience, and probably many Iowa voters and journalists, and even scoring a chance to play a vintage Fender guitar with the band.

Rival Mitt Romney didn't watch the appearance, according to his spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom. "It was on too late," he said.

Asked his own impression, though, Fehrnstrom took a quick shot: "It was hard to tell the difference between the person who makes a living telling jokes and amusing himself and the late-night TV host."

Ouch.

Holiday Inn expertise: Huckabee recently quipped that he was doing OK with foreign policy because he had stayed in a Holiday Inn Express (cue the quirky hotel commercial), so we thought we'd ask Romney about his own stay.

"Governor, you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, how do you feel?" Burr yelled out while waiting for the network cameras to set up. Romney resisted a pot shot at Huckabee, but still answered.

"It didn't help," he joked. "I tested my I.Q. last night and this morning and it's the same."

So much for those commercials.

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* BURR and CANHAM report from Washington for The Tribune. They can be reached at tburr@sltrib.com or mcanham@sltrib.com. For more political tidbits, check out blogs.sltrib.com/utahpolitics