Follow-ups

Texas Voter ID

Wednesday’s post was concerned with the Texas Voter ID law going up against the DOJ, with the suggestion that the approach should include the unconstitutionality of section 5 of the 1964 Voting Rights Act.

J. Christian Adams followed up later Wednesday with the news that Attorney General Greg Abbott had indeed used this approach, by amending the complaint to aim it directly at the unconstitutionality of the law. Good news.

list provided by Townhall.com

Delegate Count

On March 7^th I commented on the actual result of Super Tuesday compared to the negative media about Mitt Romney—even though he increased his lead. I was amused to see that Rick Santorum has been complaining about Fox News being a shill for Romney, and that the media is all in the Romney camp. You can hear the clip here.

Santorum seems to believe that mentioning the delegate count (fact) while also spending a disproportionately large amount of coverage on Santorum’s wins is “shilling” for Romney. It’s not true, and the interviewer called him on it.

One thing this extended campaign has done: show us more of who the candidates really are. Here is my new assessment: Rick Santorum complains about unfair treatment even when he has been treated disproportionately positively. What is he likely to do against the Chicago machine? Plus, he’s aware that there is no way (barring Romney dropping out, which isn’t going to happen) for him to earn enough delegates to get the nomination—but he is staying in the race based on the fantasy that all those Romney voters were wrong, and their delegates will gladly flee to him during a brokered convention just 2 ½ months before the final election.

Then there is Gingrich. We have learned (if we didn’t know it), that he is vindictive and delusional. He has no path to the nomination; his only reason for remaining in the contest is to do whatever it takes to deny Romney the nomination. (Think about the dirty tricks of Huckabee last time around, but expanded to the entire national convention, instead of just a state caucus or two.) Gingrich continues to put out ads that are clearly false and damagingly negative against Romney—because in Iowa Romney PACs put out accurate but negative ads against Gingrich. Does this man have the best interests of the nation in mind? Or is he using followers and their money for his own misplaced passions?

In case you missed it (because, even though it has been covered, the most reported story has been Santorum’s “big wins,” here are the delegate increases since Super Tuesday (during which Romney won 276, Santorum won 90, Gingrich won 81, and Paul won 21):

·         Romney 80[*]

·         Santorum 70

·         Gingrich 24

·         Paul 4

Gingrich and Santorum both claim that Romney isn’t a strong front runner, because he hasn’t sealed the deal. Yet it was a similar situation four years ago. The difference then was that Romney looked at the odds, and at what was best for the country, and stepped out of the race. Then he worked to get the GOP nominee elected—and as many conservative candidates around the country as he could help. It would be better for our country if Santorum and Gingrich were more interested in making sure Obama is defeated than following their personal dreams. 

One More Thing

Santorum has portrayed himself as the social conservative. While Romney has portrayed himself as the fiscal conservative—and economic turnaround expert—it might turn out to be a pleasant surprise to those Santorum devotees once they come to learn about the real Romney. There was an opinion piece in the Deseret News (the more conservative of the two newspapers in Salt Lake City), identifying Romney as much more conservative on all fronts than his opponents and the media have portrayed him. If you want to read something positive today, read this one.

 

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[*] This list comes from the Romney campaign and coincides with Real Clear Politics. There are discrepancies in counts from one news source to another, because each state has its own formula for allotting delegates. One difference is accounted for because Wyoming was separated into two days (primary and caucus, one before Super Tuesday, and one after—both of which Romney won), plus the assignment of unpledged RNC delegates, which went up another 9 for Romney this week.

The End of the Beginning

What happened on Super Tuesday? A good outcome for Romney, moderately respectable for Santorum, a very low threshold of positive for Gingrich. Paulistas hung in there. Before we look at the numbers, take a look at some of today’s headlines from Real Clear Politics:

·         Romney Has No Clear Path to 1144 Delegates

·         Doubts About Romney Aren't Going Away

·         It Ain't Over, and It Won't Be for a While

·         With No Knockout, Bruising Battle Plods On

·         Danger Signs for Mitt Romney

·         Tuesday Sets Up Long Slog to Nomination

·         Mitt Romney: The Candidate of "Eh, I Guess"

·         Inconclusive Tuesday

·         Super Tuesday Ends in Split Decision

·         Romney Racks Up Delegates as Campaign Underscores Weakness

Those are all just from today. But just the negative ones, so here’s a list of the positives:

·         It Will Be Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama

·         Romney Takes Another Step Toward Nomination

·         Ohio, Romney & November

Yes, that is ten against to three neutral/positive. These are from a wide range of mostly conservative pundits, so if you ever thought conservative media was in Romney’s pocket, you haven’t been keeping score. MSM stories tend to run 70+% negative toward Romney, as you’d expect. So, essentially all of Romney’s success is in spite of overwhelmingly negative media.

If you were to read the headlines without doing any math, you might think Super Tuesday had been an unmitigated disaster for Romney. So maybe we should do the math to find out the truth.

There were ten states voting yesterday. Romney won six (60% of the states). Santorum won three (30% of the states). Gingrich won one, (10% of the states). Paul won zero, but he and all of them did pick up some delegates. And it’s delegates that count toward the nomination, so we want to look at those, but before we do that, let’s look at percentage of voters, and the lead winners held over the second place finisher.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	59.5 % (+19%)	0%	0%	40%
Vermont	39.8% (+14.3%)	24%	8%	25%
Massachusetts	72.1% (+60%)	12%	5%	10%
Idaho	61.6% (+43.4%)	18%	2%	18%
Ohio	38.0% (+1%)	37%	15%	9%
Alaska	32.6% (+3/6%)	29%	14%	24%
Tennessee	28%	37.3% (+9.3%)	24%	9%
Oklahoma	28%	33.8% (+5.7%)	27%	10%
North Dakota	24%	40.0% (+12.9%)	8%	28%
Georgia	26%	20%	47.2% (+21.3%)	7%

Romney came in second in three of the four states he did not win (3^rd in the final state, North Dakota). In addition to the three he won, Santorum came in second five times (plus 3^rd in Vermont and not on the ballot in Virginia). Paul, who won zero, came in second in Virginia, Vermont, and North Dakota (with a very close 3^rd in Idaho). Gingrich did get that important win in his home state, but he still got less than half the voters there; he came in third or dead last in all the rest. There’s a little more to rub in about Gingrich: he had tried to claim Romney barely won his “home state” of Michigan last month, but Romney hasn’t lived there for forty years (he still won, but it was close). However, Massachusetts, where Romney has been living since his 20s resoundingly supported him. Gingrich’s support in Georgia was much more tepid. And in his other home state,” Virginia, where he has been living for the past decade, he failed to get on the ballot. If Romney had failed to get a vote in Michigan, then Gingrich might have something to say about that, but Romney won the “other home state.”

OK, but since the delegate count matters in the end, that’s the real story. Here’s how that went.

State	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul
Virginia	43	0	0	3
Vermont	9	4	0	4
Massachusetts	38	0	0	0
Idaho	32	0	0	0
Ohio	38	21	0	0
Alaska	8	7	3	6
Tennessee	11	26	11	0
Oklahoma	11	18	11	0
North Dakota	7	11	2	8
Georgia	19	3	54	0

 Romney was awarded 168 delegates in states he won, plus 48 in states he didn’t win (he got delegates in every state), for a total of 276 for the day.

Santorum was awarded 55 delegates in states he won, plus 35 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 90 for the day.

Gingrich was awarded 54 delegates in the state he won, plus 27 in states he didn’t win, for a total of 81 for the day.

Paul was awarded 21 delegates for the day.

The total for the day was 468 (not all estimates are the same; these are the current estimates from MSNBC.com, which may vary slightly from RealClearPolitics.com). Romney was awarded 59% of the votes. Santorum got 19%. Gingrich got 17%. Paul got a little under 5%. Put another way, if you add up all the non-Romney delegates, that’s 192, or just 41% of the delegates.

Of the 731 delegates assigned so far, Romney has 404, Santorum has 161, Gingrich has 105, and Paul has 61. Romney has 55% of the delegates so far.

Is it a sure thing that Romney will get the nomination? No. But he is a very strong and very clear front runner. Santorum would need to garner over 60% of the remaining delegates (with Utah and California looming ahead) in order to have a chance. Another thing we’ve seen is that, when Romney goes in person to spend time in a state, so that people see him instead of the media-created perceptions of him, the trend surges in his favor. My guess is that more of that surging is likely to happen after healthy Super Tuesday wins.

Who Is the Establishment?

I’ve been puzzled by the constant insistence that an expensive barrage of Romney attack ads are decimating his opponents. They complain it’s unfair and harms the process. I’ve had to look for those attack ads; they’re nonexistent here in Texas so far. (For various reasons, the Texas primary is still up in the air. We only know it won’t be on the originally scheduled April 3^rd, and may be all the way into June. So no need to campaign here right now.)

What we do get is a constant barrage of anti-Romney ads. This past couple of weeks, during every commercial break on just about every talk radio station, enough times to practically memorize it, we have heard this ad from Time to Choose, a pro-Gingrich PAC [proviso: I did not do an exact transcript, so this is what I remember, based on the wording at the Time toChoose website]:

The Republican Party is at a Crossroads. There’s a battle going on between the establishment minority, and the conservative majority. Between the GOP establishment that wants to protect its own power at all costs, and the conservative majority that wants power returned to the people.

The establishment minority wants us to hold our noses and vote for the Massachusetts moderate. They tell us he is the best man to beat President Obama. They tell us he is the best we can do.

We’ve been down this road before. They gave us Gerald Ford. We got [crashing noise]. They gave us Bob Dole. We got [crashing noise].  They gave us John McCain. We got Barak Obama.

Now they’re trying to give us a Massachusetts moderate. Don’t let them. Not this time….

So the question at hand is, who is the GOP establishment? And how do they control so many voters in so many states?

It seems to me that if someone served in Congress for two decades, including a stint as Speaker of the House, and then stayed in the DC area to push for various causes, one might consider that person part of “the establishment.” Quite often, Gingrich teardowns of opponents are only true if you substitute his name in, in place of the opponent.

I googled the anti-Gingrich ads, since we haven’t seen them here. There’s a collection here. Only those listing Romney as approving the message are from the Romney campaign. Any others are by a Romney PAC, which can by law have no contact with the campaign. There may be some technical details that aren’t true, but I can’t find any. In fact they seem scrupulously true, and where it is opinion, those opinions are expressed with clear rationale. Hardly something to follow up with untrue attack ads, as Gingrich has done.

What about anti-Santorum ads? There are some of these credited to Romney that are actually done by Ron Paul people. But Restore the Future, a pro-Romney PAC, did this one:

Again, it’s scrupulously true. It may be that each and every point can be answered with reason by Santorum, but except for some painful minutes during the last debate (answering mainly Ron Paul), Santorum hasn’t spent the time explaining.

Is this so unfair that Santorum’s response should be to do robocalls recruiting Michigan Democrats to mess up the GOP primary vote? I think not. And apparently even that underhanded tactic didn’t work.

That question, then, comes up again: Who is this GOP establishment? The RNC has been all about fundraising, but every time they call, it’s absolutely all about defeating Barak Obama, not about pushing a candidate. And if they were pushing a candidate, what is the likelihood that they would choose a governor from a very blue state who never cozied up to them in DC? For that matter, how would a Massachusetts former governor become part of the establishment, or even acceptable to such an entity?

Becoming acceptable consisted of spending millions of his own money on a first campaign, going up against a much-disliked but chosen “establishment” candidate, and then stepped out of that race gracefully, and instead of going back home to enjoy his wealth with his family, he continued to campaign—for others. Rick Perry was a beneficiary of that. So were countless other candidates for governor, senate, congress, and also for John McCain for president. Because, as Romney articulated then and now, the important thing is to keep the liberals like Obama from taking away our freedoms and making America worse.

He worked tirelessly and selflessly, not even certain it would ever be worth running for president again. But his selflessness did indeed ingratiate him to many who got elected. So, among current Congress and Senate, yes, there are far more endorsements for Romney than for Gingrich and Santorum, who were their colleagues in those august bodies. Because he’s been an inside-the-beltway pal for so long? No. Because he worked so hard to put forward conservative ideas and promote conservative candidates wherever he could.

What I see happening is that the negative press (72% negative on main stream media, nearly 60% negative on Fox, plus some vitriol from Mark Levin and a fair amount of negative from Rush Limbaugh) tends to convince people that Romney is not a reliable conservative. Then, when it’s nearer time for a state to vote, they start seeing Romney in person, and hearing more of his own words. And, despite what pundits say, he is believable and engaging, and able to connect with people. Plus there’s the fact that everything he says, and everything he reveals about his record, shows a consistent conservative.

So it isn’t some far-off “establishment” that is making Romney’s nomination look likely; it is many people, across many demographics, looking for the best alternative to Obama. We may have found him and just don’t all know it yet.

Shining City Moment

Last night, the closing statements to the presidential debate were worth listening to. All agreed this was a critical election, and it’s important who we choose  to represent us and our values. Newt Gingrich, trying to convince us he’s the answer, offered himself up to debate Obama. And while that might be a delight to see, Gingrich has been much better against the media than he has been against opponents, against whom he seems at times to be throwing a petty tantrum. Plus, there’s no guarantee that Obama will risk agreeing to a series of humiliating debates.

Ron Paul went first, reiterating the connection between economic policy and freedom for all. As usual he’s right on economics, but he does it with a tone of a slightly exasperated professor saying, “Why don’t you people get it yet?”

Rick Santorum went last, agreeing that the stakes are high, but trying to convince that he is “the” conservative in the race, and that he is electable. He urges South Carolina not to settle for a moderate, but to do what they did in 1980, voting for Reagan before he was the Reagan we know. It was well said, but it was essentially the small message: “South Carolina, vote for me.”

Romney’s closing statement went third, but I’ve saved his for last. He used the moment so beautifully to talk to Americans about beautiful, positive American ideas. There was a piece by Jon Kraushar from November, called “Want to Know Who Will Win in 2012: Look for the Smile.” I’ve been thinking about his observations since then. At that moment, the two most positive, smiling candidates were Romney and Gingrich. Then, in  December, as Gingrich began to be a serious contender, he got angrier and more erratic, and then started sinking in the polls. He may maintain momentum long enough for South Carolina, but if the cheerfulness theory holds, I don’t expect him to make much further progress.

Santorum is someone I often like. Ideologically according to a couple of those charts where you compare your beliefs and see who should be your candidate, I align with him about 97% of the time, and Romney only maybe 96% (both seem surprisingly close both to me and each other). But Santorum, coming always from behind, often seems tense and pressured in debates--better among townhalls, I think. Romney almost always seems cool under pressure, and is by nature pleasant, cheerful, and positive. He’s extraordinarily hard working and detail oriented, but he appears at ease. There’s something Reaganesque about that, even if he isn’t as media savvy as Reagan, who came from that world.

Anyway, Romney’s closing statement is a nice moment I want to remember from this campaign, regardless of outcome. Here is the transcript, as well as the two-minute video. Enjoy.

I agree with a lot of what these last two men have just said; I think this is an absolutely critical election. I  but believe that the founders took very careful thought in the preparation of the words of our Declaration of Independence, that said that the Creator had endowed us with certain unalienable rights. Not the state, but the Creator. Among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And by virtue of those words, the pursuit of happiness, this became the place on the planet where we were able to pursue our dreams as we might choose. People came here from all over the world, wishing to pursue happiness in their own way. And that has made us the most powerful economic engine in the world, where we can guard freedom because our military is the strongest in the world, coming from that powerful economic engine.

This president’s changing that. He’s changing the very nature of America. He’s turning us, not, from a merit society, an opportunity society, where people are free to choose their own course. But instead he’s making us an entitlement society, where people think they’re entitled to what other people have, where government takes from some and gives to others. That has never been the source of American greatness.

We need to return to the principles upon which this country was founded. Our president said, I think in a very revealing way, that he wants to fundamentally transform America. He’s wrong. We need to restore the values that made America the hope of the earth. And I understand those values. I will do everything in my power to restore those values by keeping America free, by fighting for free enterprise, by standing up to President Obama and pointing out how he has made it almost impossible for our private sector to reboot. I will get America working again. I will defeat Barak Obama and keep America as it’s always been, the shining city on a hill. Thank you.

Santorum on the Constitution

Back in September I talked about the philosophical differences between the American and French revolutions. Exciting stuff, I know. So it caught my interest this week when Rick Santorum talked about the comparison as well.

Santorum was answering a voter’s question about his understanding of the Constitution, since Ron Paul is often framed as the Constitution expert candidate, and they often disagree. Santorum started by pulling out his pocket Constitution (which shows I’m not the only one carrying one around at all times, just in case). Then he followed up (without notes or speechwriter) with a serious philosophical answer:

Ron Paul has a libertarian view of the Constitution. I do not. The Constitution has to be read in the context of another founding document, and that’s the Declaration of Independence. Our country never was a libertarian idea of radical individualism. We have certain values and principles that are embodied in our country. We have God-given rights.

The Constitution is not the “why” of America; it’s the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. It’s the rules we have to play by to ensure something. And what do we ensure? God-given rights. And so to read the Constitution as the end-all, be-all is, in a sense, what happened in France. You see, during the time of our revolution, we had a Declaration of Independence that said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [that they are] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

So we were founded as a country that had God-given rights that the government had to respect. And with those rights come responsibilities, right? God did not just give us rights. He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them.

See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leaves out. He leaves out rights and responsibilities that we have from God that this Constitution is to protect. And he says, “No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.” No, we don’t. America is a moral enterprise….

My understanding of our founding documents and the purpose of this country is different. I would argue that [Paul’s] understanding of the Constitution was similar to the French Revolution and the French understanding of the Constitution. The French had 21, I think, constitutions, but their constitutions were initially patterned after the American Constitution. Gave radical freedom, like ours does. But their founding document was not the Declaration of Independence. Their founding watchwords were the words, “liberty” and “fraternity.” Fraternity. Brotherhood. But no fatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clerical revolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules. 

Rick Santorum is right. I don’t mean to say that Ron Paul personally is atheist; I don’t believe he is. (Actually, neither was Woodrow Wilson, the father of American Progressivism—i.e., movement toward Marxist socialism.) The question is, what is the philosophy underlying libertarianism?

The Spherical Model, by giving a three-dimensional view of philosophies, rather than the usual right/left paradigm, allows us to see where libertarianism fits. Instead of right/left, what we want to know about a philosophy is, does it civilize? The north/south orientation is between freedom (north) and tyranny (south). The west/east orientation answers the question of whose interests: individual and family, local community on the west, on over to state, nation, region, world in the east.

Libertarianism is always western oriented (western on the sphere, not related to western on our world map), toward local and individual. A principle of freedom is to limit government so that the most local level possible takes care of a problem. So, very often libertarians are right, because government has overreached. The west/east exception is when the state, nation, or region (our allies, so often beyond our vicinity) is in fact the best level, such as with international defense and trade policies.

The main problem with libertarianism is that it tends to occupy the entire western hemisphere of our model, including north (freedom) and south (tyranny). Santorum is right that following God’s law is essential for maintaining freedom. As soon as the libertarians start claiming we have a “right” to addictive mind-altering drugs, pornography, prostitution, and other vices. Even though they argue that those behaviors only affect the individual, those behaviors are savage; savagery overlays tyranny on the sphere. The only way libertarianism can avoid the chaotic tyranny of anarchy is if the people involved are so personally righteous that they never choose savage behaviors.

But what we saw with the French Revolution was that, when you have a people who take God out of the philosophical movement, you get savagery, not matter how much you talk about the rights of man. If the rights don’t come from God, along with the responsibilities He requires of us in His law, then they are just an invention of man, subject to whoever is in power. And that is a definition of tyranny.

I do believe we’d be better off if the political debate were entirely between Constitutional Republicans and Constitutional Libertarians—a northern west/east debate. The debate we actually have (once the primaries, with Ron Paul involved are over) is between northern freedom lovers and southern tyrannical power seekers.

But one thing we can thank Ron Paul for is shifting the debate, so it isn’t just about the degree of southeast-ness (statist tyranny quadrant). I working on a piece about that shift, coming soon.

To Iowa and Beyond

I had a post almost completed for today, a civilization question, instead of the political election questions that have dominated here the past month. But I got distracted late last night watching the Iowa returns.

Screen Shot of the Interactive Map*

My son Political Sphere gets off work at midnight, and he wanted to see how it turned out too. We lasted until almost 2:00 central time, shortly after the lead changed from Santorum by 18 to Romney by a few. At that point, Romney was projected as the winner. Either way, both are assigned 11 Iowa delegates. I’m not displeased or surprised by the ending (except maybe for how very close it is). The party has gone through one non-Romney after another. Just before Christmas the non-Romney of the day was Gingrich, and while I much prefer him to Obama, I feel better about Santorum taking that slot.

Santorum gave a nice speech before the crowds in those wee hours, thanking the people who so often told him, “Welcome to Iowa.”  You can see the speech here; it’s about 20 minutes. In there he mentioned his intention to remove all regulations costing over $150 Million a year. Prior to this administration the average number of such regulations was 60; under Obama that has risen to 150—not exactly a stimulus to increase jobs. So I’m with Santorum on that plan.

I’m reminded of an aside about Iowa. We went on a family trip once where we stayed in a vacation home along the Mississippi, across from Keokuk, Iowa. On the coffee table at that house was a funny book about Iowa, trying to convince people that it actually existed. Most people, it said, when Iowa is mentioned, actually picture Ohio, or maybe that western state with the potatoes (Idaho). But Iowa is more or less invisible. We laughed about it, because it’s true we don’t know a whole lot about Iowa. But the primary caucus there, being the first, does get them some attention and respect. And the people there take it seriously. They really do turn out to meet the candidates, and they ask questions and study. If everybody took the process as seriously as Iowa does, we’d have a better electorate. So, thank you, Iowa.

Now, getting into a little of the nitty-gritty, I read something while I was waiting for results, from Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean back in the day. It was that campaign that started using online media to connect with voters. He wrote a book I read a couple of summers ago, called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He’s a strategist, and a liberal one. I couldn’t come up with that kind of thinking in my own mind; I don’t think that way. For that arcane expertise, there must be people like him, I guess, along with Karl Rove, Dick Morris, or, more for research than implementation, Frank Luntz.

Anyway, Trippi's article yesterday had some interesting things to look at. He said:

Watch Dubuque: The county in the northeast corner of the state is heavily Catholic and an area Romney scored well in four years ago. If Rick Santorum isn’t winning here it means the Santorum surge isn’t real or isn’t big enough to matter. The state is 23% Catholic—if Santorum, a pro-life Catholic himself, consolidates the Catholic vote in Dubuque and elsewhere, the Iowa surprise could be a Santorum win.

So I did that. I moved my mouse over the interactive map and found Dubuque County. Dubuque went Romney 31% (779 votes), Paul 26% (659 votes), Santorum 24% (601 votes). That eastern point of the state actually went pretty heavily toward Romney. I don’t know if that actually means Santorum’s surge is only temporary. He will, of course, suddenly get an influx of funding, because of his Iowa success. It isn’t likely to give him a win in New Hampshire, where Romney polls very strong (and is the basket in which Huntsman is putting all his eggs). But we’ll see.

Scrolling over the state gave some other info. If I’m not mistaken, at the point when Santorum was up by 18 votes statewide, two counties had not completed their count: Clinton and Keokuk. Then there was a change. Keokuk was complete, but Lee and Kossuth were not. And then Clinton County completed its votes, giving an edge to Romney. The other two remain incomplete this morning; I don’t know the story behind that. Political Sphere suggests that a precinct in each of those counties failed to have a turnout, so the precinct chair hadn’t bothered to turn in a count. They are pretty small. Total votes for Kossuth County are in the 400 range, and total for Lee a little over 600. Going by the percentages uncounted, we estimate there could only be about 20 votes possible from Kossuth and maybe 30 from Lee. Tiny amounts, but in this race enough to be decisive. It is one of those object lessons: every vote counts.

We were amused to notice that in Pottawattamie County, where Romney edged out Santorum by a couple of percentage points, Santorum got exactly 666 votes. Not a good omen. Especially if those voters chose Santorum based on his religion (Catholic), because they were afraid of Romney’s (Mormon). If so (not saying it is), they really needed either one more voter or a defector.

There were exit polls, and we wondered about the name for these, because the data was up well before the results. And this was a caucus, so people don’t come and go all day; they come at 7:00 PM and stay until they’re done, and then leave. So, these are probably “entry polls.” Anyway, Romney did well among middle and upper middle class, older, more educated voters, as well as the less intensely conservative and moderate. Moderate to liberal thinkers, particularly young voters, went with Paul. Tea Party middle income with some education went with Santorum.

According to the map, Romney only won 17 of, I think, 99 counties. He did tend to get the larger population centers (such as they are in Iowa). Santorum may have won more individual counties. But Ron Paul also led in a significant number of them. For people who like politics just for the sport of it, this was an exciting event.

Commentators describe Iowa as a winnowing state, rather than a selector. It looks like Michelle Bachmann, who won the straw poll in Iowa just last August, is out. Iowans liked her then, and her message has remained pretty much unchanged. This is why political science is a mystery to me. As of this writing Perry is still in. I’d like to see him stay through South Carolina at least. We’ll see. Gingrich is certainly in until then. So now, beyond Iowa, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

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* Interactive Map found here.