Saturday, January 7, 2012

Iowa Caucus Wrap Up



Well, the 2012 Iowa Caucus is over and the national media have now vacated the state faster than a class of graduates.  Officially Mitt Romney won with 30,015 votes(24.6%), narrowly edging out Rick Santorum who had 30,007 votes (24.5%).  There's some questions about some of the vote counts so I think you could call it a tie.  Ron Paul came in third with 26,219 votes (or 21.4% of the total). 

Those were the three coveted "tickets out of Iowa" with the remaining candidates divvying up the electoral crumbs.  Michele Bachmann, who beat Dr. Paul in a squeaker at the Ames Straw Poll this summer, dropped out after her poor showing in the caucus.

While I was definitely a little disappointed that Paul didn't come in first, Reason magazine editor Matt Welch gives seven reasons why Paulistas like myself should take heart.  Among them:
Paul more than doubled his vote over 2008, while Mitt Romney's stayed exactly the same. Seriously, Romney got 30,000 votes (25 percent of the total) in 2008, then 30,000 votes (25 percent of the total) in 2012. Paul vaulted from 10 percent to 21, from 12,000 votes to 26,000. His message of freedom, limited government, attacking the Federal Reserve, and ending wars foreign and domestic is undeniably on the grow.
Paul's delegate- and caucus-focused strategy means that he will likely punch above his electoral weight. The campaign focused not just on doing well at the caucus, but making sure Paul-friendly humans get nominated as county delegates, so that when the 25-delegate pie is eventually divvied up Dr. No will get more than projected.
Barring an unexpected and popular new Republican entrant, Paul is virtually guaranteed of making the Final Four once more. Last time around, Paul finished fifth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, on the way to an overall fourth-place showing in the delegate count. This time Paul finished third in Iowa, and is polling at second in New Hampshire.
Ron Paul, and more importantly his ideas, are in it for the long haul. Other candidates will run out of money; Ron Paul won't. Most politicians see their business in primarily transactional terms of winning, losing, and influencing legislation; Paul sees his as proselytizing for freedom. "Where we are very successful," he said his speech last night, "is re-introducing some ideas the Republicans needed for a long time, and that is the conviction that freedom is popular."
Okay, I feel a little better.

When I was watching some evaluation of Ron Paul's performance a pundit on TV said that Paul did well in college towns because college campuses were rife with "isolationists" against the wars.  While it may have happened, I personally couldn't recall a single instance of any talking head in the media leveling the dreaded term "isolationist" against Cindy Sheehan or the myriad of anti-war protesters when Bush was in office.  But now that Obama is commander-in-chief and Ron Paul is the "peace candidate," suddenly anti-war college students are now "isolationist."  My compliments to the media; you never cease to amaze.

3 comments:

  1. Only two delegates from our precinct and one was a Newt backer. Our Paul campaign county chairman was a poor representative at our precinct. Enough so that I'm contemplating contacting Drew Ivers about it.

    I won't broadcast the reasons publicly, but I'm definitely not pleased with the guy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's too bad. Our Jones County RP chairman, Roger Kistler, worked his butt off and did a great job. I wrote up a speech and presented it at my precinct caucus (even though public speaking is definitely not my forte). Must not have been very convincing because Santorum won my precinct handily.

    ReplyDelete
  3. College students are now ISOLATIONISTS???

    What a crock. The media spin machine can portray black as white and vice versa.

    May they continue to flounder in ratings and become more irrelevant every day.

    ReplyDelete

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