Last week, months of copious analysis, debate and discussion about the Iowa caucus came to fruition, with thousands of Iowa GOP voters banding together and, with a collective sigh that could be heard ‘round the country, announced to the world that they were finally ready to settle on Mitt Romney as a probable candidate.
Of course, I use the term “candidate” rather loosely. Watching the Republicans the past few months has been a bit like browsing around the disabled section at the Humane Society.
Hardly a single member of this current field would actually have a prayer of defeating Obama in a general election, just as two-legged Toto probably wouldn’t make the best running partner. Sorry, Sarah McLachlan, but hardly any of these dogs should be outdoors on their own, let alone included in the hunt. That said, the top three candidates deserve a bit of analysis.
Ron Paul, who finished a respectable third, has an extremely dedicated and organized group of followers, and interestingly enough has inspired swaths of young voters across the country.
That said, Paul’s ability to give bunches of impressionable, Ayn Rand-adoring college students their first political hard-on doesn’t in any way outshine the fact that his domestic policy is far too extreme to draw in the ever-important independent voters who, you know, actually like the EPA, and schoolteachers, and stuff. But we’ll let him have his fun for now. See you in 2016, Mr. Paul. Second-place finisher Rick Santorum, whose policy seems built upon discrimination against gays, clearly tapped into the strong Christian right presence in early GOP caucuses, which as you may remember was formerly wielded by evangelical blimp Mike Huckabee, who won the thing in Iowa back in ‘08. We can see how far that got him – a multi-million dollar-a-year contract with Fox as a political pundit.
Not bad for a simpleton bent almost entirely on putting his extremist Christian views into mainstream politics. Maybe Rick Santorum will be so lucky, and with his new funds finally be able to take down Dan Savage’s infamous website. But God, I hope not.
Had Santorum won by more than a few percentage points, he might be considered somewhat of a strong contender. But his loss to Mitt Romney, however close, simply reveals that, for the most part, even in far-right caucus Iowa, most voters are finally ready to stop messing around and choose the one serious-ish candidate in this sideshow.
Sure, Romney may be the biggest flip-flopper since Julius Rosenberg, but that doesn’t undersell his eloquence, experience, presidential look and intelligence, which oddly enough have been difficult to find within this field in recent months.
Sorry to say it, Paul-ites, but it’s Romney, it’s always been Romney, and it was always going to be Romney.
We’ll just have to see if the reluctance with which caucus voters eventually came to this decision will prove to haunt him in the general election, against the political behemoth that is Barack Obama’s grassroots campaign.Good luck, Romney. Your party had better hope that your bite’s stronger than your bark.
