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Romney won, a great victory for someone who was not even expected in the top 2 a month or so back in this state.
Ron Paul performed very well, above my expectations anyways, but guess what he lost hahaha. Paul has no chance in NH or SC.
I think Romney will win NH in a walk. I wouldn't count Paul out yet, though. He's tenancious, and if he can ride out the storm until a couple of others drop out he will likely pick up some of their supporters who won't want to back the "establishment" candidate.
Paul attracts a lot of younger voters so he would likely fare very well in states with a lower median ager, but unfortunately for him most of the the "younger" states don't hold their primaries until after Super Tuesday.
Could someone please pass me a bucket pf popcorn and a Snuggie because watching the Republicans backbiting, sniping and snarking is becoming highly entertaining.
I don't know if it's gotten quite as entertaining as Hitlery vs Osama in 2008, but on behalf of the GOP that I don't belong to, thank you.
High levels of entertainment value seems to have paid dividends in the general election last time around. With the biggest hate-fest in the primaries, the Dems did win after all.
I think Romney will win NH in a walk. I wouldn't count Paul out yet, though. He's tenancious, and if he can ride out the storm until a couple of others drop out he will likely pick up some of their supporters who won't want to back the "establishment" candidate.
Paul attracts a lot of younger voters so he would likely fare very well in states with a lower median ager, but unfortunately for him most of the the "younger" states don't hold their primaries until after Super Tuesday.
Ron Paul cannot win a closed Republican primary. Period. End of story. He will likely pull 15-20% or so in NH because of independents, but he has no chance in SC and probably not even FL.
True, to a point. If delegates were the only concern, then Bachmann would not have dropped out, and Newt Gingrich would not have been P'Oed with a 4th place finish.
The point is - the Iowa Caucus is NOT about the delegates - it is about the momentum. It helps to narrow the field and throw support behind 3-4 candidates to move onto the future contests. Do you think that Obama would have won in 2008 if he had come in 3rd or 4th and Clinton was 1st? Probably not - they all got close to the same number of delegates from the state. The point was - Obama gained traction, got tons of money and support, and pushed forward.
The same could happen with Santorum. And Romney's survival, in a state which he was not expected to win, could also help him later in SC, especially if he has a decisive win in NH.
The map shows exactly what I expected when I saw the percentages: Santorum won the usual 25% GOP hard-core evangelicals who always vote rigidly for whomever invokes God's name most often. No surprise here and no real insights can be taken from this, it's SSDD.
Map shows that rural, thinly populated areas of Iowa went for Santorum, this year's evango-fascist, white, gun nutter, wack-job candidate. He might win the GOP nomination with that bunch, but he'll lose a national election with that demographic, as he has nothing else to offer. America wants to elect a President, not a Pope. He'll likely not win the GOP nomination either.
Keep in mind that this was the Iowa caucus, where a collection of 121,000 mostly extremists voted, out of Iowa's three million people, or just 4% of the population. That tiny turnout allows wack-job candidates to make an initial splash before REAL primaries sort out eventual losers like Santorum. Iowa's "straw poll" and "caucus" processes are at best a cartoonish show and if I had my way they'd be shut down in favor of real balloting, either by mail or down at the local school house....
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That is a matter of opinion and I don't think many share yours. If they did he would be a heck of a lot more popular than he is.
Nita
Popularity will matter in the election, but his popularity has nothing to do with how effective he has or hasn't been. Popularity is whimsical, and it depends entirely upon how a president is perceived to be doing. Most people in this country have proven to me that they have a very limited knowledge and understanding of history, economics, governmental policy, and foreign affairs, and they generally have only a cursory knowledge of the issues that they're debating. I'm not saying I'm a know it all, either, but I have generally found that people who are the most passionate about economics (the debt, for example) really don't understand what they're talking about.
Take the debt, for example. How many times over the past two years have we heard about how important it is to slash government spending? How many times have we heard about the national credit and the debt ceiling? How many times have we been warned about inflation?
Well the debt has swollen, and yet I don't see prices going up substantially -- do you? Sure, when the price of oil goes up on speculation, the price of everything else goes up with it. But that has nothing to do with Fed policy. There's no Fed inflation right no to speak of. In fact, retailers in the 4th quarter continue price cutting, not price hiking. This is merely one example. There are more examples to show that the people, the average guy who craps on about the national debt and returning to the gold standard really don't have any f*cking clue what they're talking about. But since they heard it from Ron Paul or Fox Business News or CNBC, it must be true.
What we need now are policies that favor the working class and the middle class. That means a freeze in taxes for the middle class and continued benefits for the working poor, and gradually higher taxes for those who have more resources. If Americans are dumb enough to vote for the same people who put us into a subprime mortgage scam bubble, then we deserve whatever misery we get. Hopefully the rest of us who don't vote for such idiocy will be buffered from the consequences.
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Santorum's showing in Iowa
