After a recount, the vote tally from the Iowa Caucuses show that Rick Santorum defeated Mitt Romney by a whopping 34 votes. Previously Romney had been declared the winner by eight votes.
In the grand scheme of thing, this means little. It doesn’t change the delegate vote one iota. It does mean that the talking point that Romney won both Iowa and New Hampshire needs to come to a halt. It is funny to read stories about this development suggesting that the Iowa caucuses were a split a decision, yet when Romney was considered to have won there was no such talk. He might as well have won by 8,000 votes judging by some of what was said in the aftermath.
I do note that there seems to be a lot of confusion about the vote tally.
The deadline for final certification of the results was Wednesday. Party officials said eight precincts failed to follow the rules and fill out the official forms on caucus night, meaning those results can never be certified, while other precincts turned in forms that didn’t meet the legal requirements.
And yet we continue to allow this state to have over-sized influence on the nomination process. Are we prepared to just ignore Iowa yet?
I think that increasingly South Carolina is being perceived as the must-win state for primary candidates. Iowa and New Hampshire can be, and have been, won by a full-bore campaign that expends all its resources. By the time SC rolls around, though, only people with money are still in the race.
Then again, as the years go by, people might try to focus on SC the way they currently do on Iowa and NH. But for the time being, it’s perceived as too big to win without an extensive advertising budget.
[…] Rick Santorum Won Iowa – Paul Zummo, The American Catholic […]
Sadly, Iowa has a significant liberal element even in the Republican party. Need I say more?