How bad was it? How would you like the headline,"Romney squeezes out Santorum from behind?" The pundits said that Romney finishing 1, 2 or 3 would be a win. But Romney barely winning by single digits was a loss. He didn't even get a prime time address. It was so bad that the Romney people arranged for John "Get Off My Lawn" McCain to endorse him in New Hampshire to pick up positive media.
Romney did not reach the number he won in Iowa in 2008 and pathetically it was the Romney people who had to call the county caucus leader to get the final results for him to eek out the win--not the state party chairman. I thought Romney even made his wife Ann look bad when he had her become a political figure making remarks.
The lack of enthusiasm at the Caucus was commented on by all the journalists. This is the Party that believes defeating Obama is a Do or Die Moment for the Republic and they had less Republicans voting in the Caucus than in 2008. Democrats and independents made up the slight increase over that year. The gender breakdown was revealing--57% men 43% women. While shots of the Democratic caucus revealed vastly more women and younger people. Only Ron Paul drew younger voters.
Republican spin experts on Diane Riehm tried to portray Romney's win as significant saying that the Iowa Caucus was more right-wing than the rest of the primaries. But the details of last night showed that the Caucus goers were only 36% born-again Christians, more moderate and well-to-do than past years. In other words, this year's Iowa Caucus was different from the past. For $10 million and having run in Iowa before and having an organization when only Ron Paul had one,Romney could not reach 25%. His win was the lowest percentage victory in Iowa Caucus history. It was so bad that Barack Obama was only 5,000 behind Romney and he hadn't been in the state.
Romney's best hope today is that Michelle Bachmann's press conference will overshadow any statement by him. Meanwhile Rick Perry has gone home to think about things. But Newt is raring to go. Even Jon Huntsman got off a tweet last night that Romney would be the best representative of the bankers.
Remember Romney just got a 6 vote victory over a man who wants to make birth control illegal and wants to invade Iran. Borowitz tweeted last night that Romney must feel bad sitting between a lawn gnome (Ron Paul) and a man against man-dog marriages. In other words, the Caucus diminished Romney further. There is no spin around that.
The conservatives firewall is South Carolina and now it looks like Newt will be the only Southerner in the race and now Newt wants to make the race personal. He still is in the lead in South Carolina. For Romney I believe he has to be near 50% in New Hampshire to re-start the inevitability theme. Oddly enough Bill Kristol commented last night that Romney's performance in Iowa hurt his inevitability theme and the idea he was electable. If you can't soundly beat a man who you can't google, what will you do against Barack Obama?
Andrew Sullivan last night was live-blogging and coming to the defense of the young people for Ron Paul. I thought Ron Paul looked and acted senile last night and left the strange comment,"No one has ever done a poll about the Gold Standard." Even Frank Luntz noted that at the Romney gathering there were no young people and that no blue collar voters and that the GOP can't leave them all to Obama. But the other aspect of this was that the young people for Paul were all young white males--no women.
An interesting factoid of last night was that none of the candidates ever set foot in the one Iowa town that had a majority Hispanics. Maybe by voter suppression, the GOP can limit the electorate to white, relatively wealthy and elderly people. That's what the process is looking like.
The immediate take-away from last night is that there is no there there. David Frum this morning tried to portray a Mitt Romney presidency as a centrist one where he would retain most of Obamacare and not be radical in dismantling the safety net. But I think that is delusional because I do not believe a GOP candidate can pivot immediately away from extreme right positions to the center. It's not your father's Republican Party anymore. The other take-away is that there is no way Romney can generate any enthusiasm for his candidacy and that hating Barack Obama is not enough to win.
Who won last night? Dan Savage and Barack Obama
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment