After All This, Romney's Going to Win?
Mitt Romney is probably going to win the Iowa caucuses today, January 3, 2012, when normal people are so mad at Washington they dressed up in powdered wigs.
Mitt Romney is probably going to win the Iowa caucuses today, January 3, 2012, when normal people are so mad at Washington they dressed up in powdered wigs. Romney! The boring Mormon guy who created the model for Obamacare! Iowa offered the best chance that someone more interesting would break through -- someone who says more exciting things than lame jokes like "I fell on da butt in Dubuque." (For a while a guy was still leading the polls even after defending himself from sexual harassment allegations by breaking into song!) But no. The Huffington Post's poll average shows Romney winning with 22.2 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 19.4 percent, Rick Santorum with 17.1 percent, and Newt Gingrich with 12.9 percent. The New York Times' Nate Silver puts Romney's chances of winning at 42 percent. Real Clear Politics has Romney ahead, averaging 22.8 percent of the vote to Paul's 21.5 percent. Romney's so confident he said, "We're going to win this thing," before qualifying that a few hours later with a probably.
Politico's John F. Harris and Alexander Burns detailed their outrage at this all-socks-for-Christmas turn of events -- right now "politics is more fluid and radicalized and impatient with the status quo" and yet the frontronner is "an emphatically conventional politician." And, they protest, Republican politics is more conservative, yet Romney is moderate. Further, with a great opportunity to beat an incumbent president, "Republicans produced a field of dwarves." Now the most important thing to watch for in Iowa tonight is how much Romney wins by.