In the wee hours the Iowa GOP finally called the caucus for Mitt Romney by a whopping eight votes, but the story of the night was close second place by Rick Santorum. Suddenly many on the right are rallying behind Santorum, thinking he could maybe pull this out. Of course they would be mistaken.
Santorum has based his entire campaign on Iowa, a state not known for picking winners. He has spent months campaigning there and was the only candidate to visit all 99 counties in the state. The entire base of his finances have also gone to winning Iowa.
But what now? Outside of Iowa Santorum has no real operations. A poll released this morning shows Santorum gaining some ground in New Hampshire, but he is still in fifth and his support seems to be coming from Gingrich supporters. South Carolina is even worse, where Santorum is in last place. Outside of Iowa, Rick Santorum is a nobody.
Hearing Newt’s speech last night he sounded as though he was staying in the race to run interference for Santorum, but the polls show something different. By Newt staying in the race, he will actually be helping Romney and hurting Santorum since most Newt voters would end up going for Santorum.
The only real help Santorum will see is from Ron Paul. Many of Paul’s supporters would switch to Romney should he drop out. As we know from 2008 Ron Paul is not one to drop out, so that will give Santorum a little boost, but he still has Gingrich screwing with him.
But now here comes the big monkey wrench. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are both expected to announce they are suspending their campaigns today. So where do their supporters end up going? I could see some Perry voters going to Romney, but not many and I doubt he’ll see any boost from Bachmann’s supporters. That means they will split between Paul, Santorum and Gingrich and keep the primary season going even longer.
The only guarantee Mitt Romney has towards the nomination is for Newt to drop out. Newt won’t do that, so we have quiet sometime to go yet. Santorum most likely did see a small flood of new campaign money last night, so there is a chance he could pull off another state or two and that’s going to keep the GOP split even longer.
So who was the big winner last night? Simple – Barack Obama. We got our first taste of a highly fractured GOP last night and that is good news to the President. The primary season just started, so we can expect to see it get even uglier in the coming weeks. Reagan’s 11th commandment has been ripped up and the gloves are coming off and if we know one thing at all from history it’s that Republican voters are highly reactionary. They will take every attack to heart and most of them will be focused on their likely nominee, Mitt Romney, so that will translate into decreased enthusiasm going into the general.
Yes – things started looking even better for a second Obama term after last night. We also get a few more months of the highly entertaining clown car that is the GOP primary.
I just love politics – don’t you?