Iowa left Mitt Romney much farther ahead in the contest for the Republican nomination than Tuesday’s numbers indicate. He tied with Rick Santorum and Ron Paul was only 3 percentage points behind them. But no one believes either Paul or Santorum will be the nominee — including, in their honest moments, Paul and Santorum.
Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, is a one-issue man who was defeated by 17 percentage points when he ran for re-election in his home state. The people who know him best decided that government was about more than abortion and same-sex marriage. He has done nothing to qualify himself to be president of the United States, beyond being a citizen and above the age of 35. He doesn’t have a campaign staff or the funds to hire one.
In sum, the 30,007 votes he won in Iowa Tuesday only mean that many Iowans couldn’t bring themselves to vote for anyone else. Mr. Santorum has had his flash in the pan, his 15 minutes of fame.
As has been noted before, Ron Paul is a libertarian, non-interventionalist, pacifist whose views are 180 degrees out of sync with traditional Republicans. He doesn’t have a prayer of winning the nomination.
That leaves Romney going into New Hampshire for the Jan. 10 primary with a crippled Newt Gingrich as his only significant competitor, except for Jon Huntsman of Utah. Huntsman skipped Iowa to bring a middle-of-the-road message to New England. He has yet to catch fire there, despite his sterling qualifications, but could keep Romney’s margin from soaring.
Gov. Rick Perry almost went home to Texas, but reconsidered and pushed on to South Carolina. He was one of the few who campaigned in every Iowa county. He was the biggest spender — by about half a million dollars — in the campaign. The fact that he gathered only 10 percent of the votes for all of that effort and money should tell him that his bid for the presidency has been rejected. Michelle Bachmann got that message loud and clear and dropped out of the race Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, Mr. Romney and his supporters must deal with the fact that three voters in Iowa chose someone else for every vote he received. He keeps bumping his head against that 25 percent ceiling.
A determined Newt Gingrich will go into New Hampshire with a do-or-die fire in his belly. He remains the only contender likely to win enough votes there to keep Romney from breaking through and scoring in the 40s or above.
Santorum will peel off the born-again vote. Paul will win some of the youngsters who want mind-altering drugs to be legalized and think a demilitarized America would keep them out of uniform.
New Hampshire will give the Romney campaign a solid opportunity to win a convincing victory and send its candidate to South Carolina to start piling up delegates. The inevitability of Mitt Romney’s nomination will become obvious before the daffodils bloom.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
