Coming second: Rick Santorum. Photo credit: Michael Righi
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has won the Iowa caucus – but only just. Romney beat rival Rick Santorum by a mere eight votes, leading The Guardian’s Ewan MacAskill to describe the result as “essentially a draw.” The Iowa caucus is not viewed as a reliable indicator of the overall winner and there are still many votes to go before the GOP presidential candidate is decided. But the result has sent the political commentariat into overdrive, with mounting speculation as to the effect on Romney’s campaign and the Republican race overall.
Some commentators argued that Romney did well to squeeze even a narrow win in what was a tough state for the former Governor of Massachusetts and that he will do well elsewhere; others, such as MacAskill, suggested the Iowa caucus “throws the Republican race into disarray and opens the way for a protracted and messy race.”
So will the result of the Iowa caucus prove key to deciding the Republican candidate who will face off against President Barack Obama? Or is this just much ado about nothing?
Good news for Obama. According to Gary Younge on The Guardian’s Comment is Free, the result shows Republicans’ lack of passion for the Romney campaign: “Republicans haven’t had a field as weak as this since 1996 and he still can’t break 25% in a swing state the party will want to win back against Barack Obama come November”, he wrote. Younge argued that the real winner in all this is Obama, as the resulting struggle for the GOP nomination will either produce an unelectable candidate – Santorum, who has compared homosexuality to bestiality – or turn out as an overall win for Romney but with damage to his credibility.
Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are all but out of the race, reported Howard Kurtz for The Daily Beast, having finished with ten and five percent, respectively. The Iowa result is particularly embarrassing for Perry: the Texas Governor’s campaign spend in the state amounted to $364 per vote, according to Felicia Sonmez in The Washington Post, while second-place Rick Santorum spent just 73 cents per vote.
Result provides more questions than answers. On the one hand, said Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast, the result looks bad for Romney because even though he had “a huge financial advantage” he still failed to attract even a quarter of voters. But on the other hand, Romney’s campaign presence in Iowa was minimal until the very end, and the state’s evangelical voters “wield an outsize influence” which helps to explain the Santorum surge, wrote Kurtz. Only one thing is clear after the Iowa caucus:”The Republican Party remains deeply divided, and that could be a problem when the Iowa results are long forgotten”, Kurtz argued.
Santorum failing to make the most of Iowa. Santorum’s campaign has failed to take the initiative and capitalise on the Iowa result, argued Ari Melber at The Nation: “Santorum’s aides failed to get him on prime time television for a ‘victory’ speech, for example, which would have provided his largest, unfiltered audience to date.” Melber pointed out that Santorum’s campaign also failed to make the most of internet interest on the night of the Iowa caucus by updating the website to ask for donations.
Senator John McCain is widely expected to endorse Mitt Romney ahead of the New Hampshire primary, reported The New York Times.
Romney unstoppable? Alan Silverlieb argued at CNN that the result suggests Romney now has a clear path to the Republican nomination, as exit polls showed he won the voters most interested in beating Obama rather than furthering their values: “In sum, Romney won the pragmatic establishment while Santorum won the GOP’s most conservative core and Paul dominated the outsiders."
