There are times when watching a political result that all you can say is "wow." Last night's Iowa Caucuses were such a moment. This writer prays his wife will forgive him for being up until after 4:00am awaiting the final result. We've been up all night to await election outcomes before, but I can't recall the last time I was up all night awaiting an outcome during primary and caucus season.
When the final result came in, even though the numbers showed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at the top literally by just a few votes, it is former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) who can be the one to claim victory. Within a matter of a month, he came from around 3% of the vote to effectively tie at the top of the caucus margins. His numbers might have been even higher without the presence of Dr. Ron Paul in third place. Romney supporters have to be concerned because having ran in Iowa four years ago, and having had a ground operation in Iowa for months, Romney's margins of support have remained the same in Iowa for over a year-indeed Romney's national numbers remain static, which indicates that his base among Republican voters has yet to expand in real terms. A person would have a hard time winning a General Election with such an unenthusiastic and static base. Yesterday we said in this space that Tennesseans should hope for a muddled Iowa result, and Tennesseans got just that.
Governor Romney does have history on his side at this juncture, however. Though he won in Iowa by numbers that can at best be negated this early in the election cycle, Romney stands almost certain to win New Hampshire. That means that Rick Santorum needs a strong New Hampshire finish and must win in South Carolina to remain a viable option for conservative voters within the party who have been looking for a choice that isn't Mitt Romney. Santorum has shown that he has the ground game to get it done in a tight race, he now must convince the party's conservative majority to unite behind him to keep a moderate from the nomination for the second cycle in a row, rather than divide the conservative vote and simply throw the GOP nomination to Romney.
Last night, I renewed an election year tradition began in 2008 with my good friend Adam Graham, a great conservative and Republican activist and writer from Idaho and host of The Truth and Hope Report, and Tennessee's own Blue Collar Muse Ken Marrero (Davidson County GOP). Warner Todd Huston of The Prairie State Report (Illinois), John McJunkin (Arizona), and Hatton Humphrey of the East Coast Conservative Podcast (New York State) joined very late in the program for what we hope will be the first of several live roundtables on results nights during the primary season. In 2008, these roundtables became an internet staple, and they can still be found floating around. The host's chair alternated between Adam Graham and myself. We began the roundables anew last night with out Iowa Caucus Reults Roundtable. As you can hear, when we left the air, we still didn't have a final result.
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