They’re Num­ber One!

The Iowa cau­cuses are over. Turnout was roughly com­pa­ra­ble to four years ago, so there doesn’t seem to be any par­tic­u­lar enthu­si­asm surge over 2008. That was a big year for the Iowa cau­cuses, but it still led to mas­sive Repub­li­can defeat nation­ally the fol­low­ing November.

The lat­est polls going into the cau­cuses had been show­ing a vir­tual tie between Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Lake Jack­son, TX), for­mer Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum (R-​​PA), and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney. The polls were, for once, pretty accurate.

What do the scores mean for the can­di­dates left in the run­ning? What do they mean for the rest of the pri­maries and for the gen­eral elec­tion next November?

What, me surprised?

Who’s sur­prised?

Paul’s pres­ence in the top tier isn’t sur­pris­ing. He did well in the Ames Straw Poll, com­ing in a close sec­ond — even though most news out­lets pretty much ignored him. Paul has a ded­i­cated, faith­ful, and almost cult-​​like fol­low­ing, and Iowa’s seems to be one cen­tral hub. He got around 20 per­cent of the evan­gel­i­cal vote. Most com­men­ta­tors expect him to fade rapidly from now on, but his lib­er­tar­i­an­ism may tend to make him do bet­ter than antic­i­pated in New Hamp­shire, the “Live Free or Die” state. If he does well in New Hamp­shire, per­haps the media will begin pay­ing attention.

English: Governor Mitt Romney of MA

Sur­vivor?

Rom­ney had to place in this tied-​​for-​​first posi­tion in order to main­tain his assumed front-​​runner sta­tus. Though nearly 80 per­cent of Iowa cau­cus par­tic­i­pants appar­ently wanted UnMitt, his cam­paign is try­ing to keep an air of inevitabil­ity. This must be some­thing of a chal­lenge for them, when the story for months has been watch­ing the parade of UnMitts, one after another, jump ahead of him in the pop­u­lar­ity poll, only to fade like a short-​​lived fruit fly. Bach­mann, Trump, Gin­grich 1.0, Perry, Cain, Gin­grich 2.0, each had a moment. Rom­ney remains at the roughly 24 per­cent ceil­ing he’s had for the last year. Unable to gather strength, but able to keep from get­ting voted off the island, his best hope is merely to be the last man standing.

, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.

Dull, but Not Mitt

The biggest win­ner is prob­a­bly Rick San­to­rum. As Gin­grich 2.0 col­lapsed in the past cou­ple of weeks, the vac­uum formed by the lack of an UnMitt has pulled another can­di­date up, the last one avail­able (Hunts­man is not viable, for other rea­sons). San­to­rum has thus become the Fla­vor of the Month. It isn’t hard to under­stand why. He’s the last ultra-​​rightist in the run­ning, less excit­ing than any of the pre­vi­ous UnMitts, which is why his day has taken so long to come. There are com­men­ta­tors who seem to be sur­prised at his sud­den surge, but the expla­na­tion should be obvi­ous. There weren’t any UnMitts left.

In all pre­vi­ous cases, the UnMitts soared to great fan­fare. Once the pub­lic actu­ally learned some­thing about them, how­ever, they col­lapsed like stacks of Jenga blocks. If San­to­rum doesn’t do well in New Hamp­shire, a fail­ure there could be enough to cement the image of him sim­ply fol­low­ing the pattern.

Gin­grich and Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Perry demon­strate the pat­tern per­fectly. Both are on the way down; since Newt was the most recent peak, he hasn’t yet fallen as far as Perry, so he nat­u­rally scored bet­ter in Iowa. Bachmann’s peak was so long ago, such a fad­ing mem­ory, she hardly received mention.

What does Iowa mean for the even­tual Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion, and, beyond that, for the gen­eral elec­tion campaign?

Perry and Gin­grich both have to do much bet­ter in the next two or three pri­maries in order to remain in the race. For both of them, if they can’t score within the top three at least once in New Hamp­shire, South Car­olina, or Florida, they may as well quit. Michele Bach­mann did so poorly in Iowa that she isn’t going to be taken seri­ously from now on by any­one other than Michele Bachmann.

As long as there is an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive UnMitt in the race, Rom­ney will be pushed far­ther to the right in an effort to crowd out the com­pe­ti­tion. As long as there are two or more can­di­dates per­ceived as viable, the pri­mary cam­paign will get increas­ingly neg­a­tive, par­tic­u­larly with the impact of unreg­u­lated money avail­able under Cit­i­zens United. Both of these fac­tors help the Democ­rats, and will pro­vide fod­der for Demo­c­ra­tic ads in the sum­mer and the fall.

The last time the Repub­li­cans nom­i­nated a first-​​time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date was in 1964, when the Party chose Barry Gold­wa­ter, then con­sid­ered ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive, to run against incum­bent Lyn­don John­son. Gold­wa­ter lost in the biggest anti-​​Republican land­slide in his­tory. This is a les­son the Repub­li­cans remem­bered for nearly fifty years. It seems to me unlikely in the extreme that the Party estab­lish­ment would allow any first-​​time ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date to get the nod this year. That elim­i­nates every­one but Rom­ney and Paul. For all the lib­er­tar­ian and pop­ulist adver­tis­ing rhetoric the Repub­li­cans have been sell­ing for the last three years, they will never go with a Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who actu­ally is a lib­er­tar­ian and a pop­ulist. That leaves only Romney.

Unable to break 25 per­cent in the Repub­li­can pop­u­lar­ity polls, Rom­ney is still viewed as the most viable can­di­date against Barack Obama. This is what inter­nal Repub­li­can pol­i­tics has pro­duced. He will likely get the nom­i­na­tion, not because Repub­li­cans like him, nor because he has any sig­na­ture issues that will carry him for­ward, nor due to any inher­ent strengths or skills or vision.

Rom­ney is likely to be the Repub­li­can can­di­date sim­ply because he’s all they’ve got.

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