The battle is on among three candidates who’ve held dozens of events around the state this month, hoping to win the votes of conservative Iowa Republicans.

Recent polling indicates the doggedness of Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, may be paying off. Santorum has held more then 350 town hall meetings here in the past year.

“Hour-and-a-half town hall meetings, in some cases with two or three people in some counties,” Santorum said this week. “But all the folks here, when I started coming to Iowa, said that’s what the people of Iowa expect and I think, in the end, we’ll see a lot of folks respect that.”

A CNN/Time magazine poll conducted in Iowa just before Christmas Eve found Santorum getting the support of 16 percent of likely Caucus-goers, good enough for third place behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul — and ahead of competitors Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann as well as Newt Gingrich. Perry has spent millions running ads on Iowa radio and TV stations, trying to get conservatives to take a second look at his four-month-old candidacy.

“Why should you settle for anything less than an authentic conservative who will fight for you and fight for your values and not make any apologies to anybody?” Perry asked a crowd in Indianola today.

At least 100 people crowded into the room to hear Perry, who seemed to aim at rivals Mitt Romney and Gingrich rather than Bachmann and Santorum.  

“You don’t have to settle for Washington and Wall Street insiders who supported the Wall Street bailouts and the ObamaCare individual mandates,” Perry said in Indianola. “You don’t have to settle for that.”

Perry, the current governor of Texas, consistently presents himself as a “Washington outsider” — a theme Bachmann blasted during a news conference in Creston Wednesday.

“Just because he’s held office outside of Washington, D.C.  does not mean that he is not a political insider. It’s what you do in your office that matters,” Bachmann said. “There aren’t very many politicians who’ve spent more time paying off political donors than Governor Rick Perry has.”

Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, has been banking on a big finish in Iowa’s Caucuses, but that recent Time/CNN poll found Bachmann would finish last among the six candidates who’ve been campaigning in Iowa.  On Thursday, Bachmann will finish a 10-day, 99-stop tour of the state.

“The media a lot of times is trying to tell us who our next president is going to be, but I understand something about Iowans. Iowans are very independent, thoughtful people,” Bachmann said to a crowd in Creston today. “You don’t tell Iowans what to think. They tell everybody else what to think.”

Santorum often sounds the same message, that Iowans can ignore the pundits and decide for themselves who the GOP nominee should be.

“I can tell you, 80-90 percent of the people at most of these town hall meetings come out and they sign up to help us because they see what’s burning in my belly for this country,” Santorum said.

There are 1774 precincts in Iowa and Santorum claims to have Iowans lined up to speak on his behalf in about a thousand of those Caucuses on January 3.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney attracted an overflow crowd in Clinton today, prompting the presidential hopeful to steer into a different restaurant and make comments to a crowd there first before reaching his scheduled location and the people who’d packed into Homer’s Deli.

“This is an extraordinary welcome in Clinton. I will not forget it. I thought when I was coming to a place called Clinton I might have some difficulty — at least you’re not called Obama,” Romney said, getting laughter from the crowd.  “But I have received such a warm welcome here. I am so happy, so pleased to be with you. I am optimistic about the future.”

Romney closed by stressing an economic message. A few minutes earlier, Romney pivoted from a man’s question about Iran’s threat to blockade a major shipping route in the Persian Gulf to send a subtle signal about rival Ron Paul’s statements about Iran.

“It’s unacceptable, in my view, for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” Romney said. “And for those that say, ‘Well, but the Soviet Union had a nuclear weapon,’ the difference is we had mutually assured destruction and the Soviets were not suicidal.”

Romney warns the Iranians might turn nuclear material over to terrorists intent on striking at Israel and the U.S.  Ron Paul has also advocated closing U.S. military bases around the world and shrinking the size of the Defense Department. It’s part of Paul’s pledge to cut a trillion dollars from the federal budget. Romney aired a different view in Clinton today.

“I know there are some that think we should shrink our military and who think it’s just too big. The world isn’t safer. The world has not become safer in the last few years. It’s a more dangerous world and I want to maintain a strong military that is so superior that no one else in the world wants to test it,” Romney said, getting applause from the crowd.

Romney shook hands and signed autographs for about five minutes before popping into the deli’s kitchen to meet the staff and exit the restaurant. Romney is scheduled to hold a town hall meeting early this evening in North Liberty. Over 300 people gathered in Muscatine just before sunrise today to hear Romney speak at a coffee shop that overlooks the Mississippi River.