If Romney wins Iowa, so what?
Mitt Romney and his supporters are already dancing around a swirling football in the Iowa end zone and they haven’t even made it into the locker room to change out of their street clothes yet. Don’t get me wrong, they could still win but so what? Newt Gingrich made a good point.
“After five years of campaigning and what I think will be something like 20 million dollars plus in total spending, Romney is proving decisively that the moderate vote is about 23 percent,” he said. “People who describe him as the front runner have to ask yourself for the question, ‘if you have to spend that many million dollars to get 23 percent, how can you possibly think he’s the most electable candidate?”
Does anyone remember who won the Iowa Caucus in 2008? Let me remind you. It was Mike Huckabee with 34% of the vote.
How many delegates does Iowa give the winning candidate on January 3rd?
Want to know what really happens in Iowa in January? Not much. A few thousand people who care enough about politics to spend an evening at their local library or church basement will decide who gets to attend the state GOP’s county conventions in March.
They’ll also participate in a non-binding presidential preference vote. (“Non-binding” means the state’s national convention delegates do not have to vote according to the preferences of caucus participants.)
And that’s about it.
In March, the county convention delegates will decide who attends a bunch of congressional district meetings and a statewide convention in late April and June. That’s when most of Iowa’s 28 national convention delegates — a bit over 1% of the total number of delegates in Tampa — will actually be chosen. If there’s already a likely nominee by that point, you can bet Iowa won’t rock the boat.
How many delegates does a candidate need to win the Republican nomination? 1,144.
Its is, to keep my football metaphor rolling, nothing more then an over hyped pre-season game. The points don’t count. Nor do the stats. The only thing that can come out of Iowa is your star quarter back gets injured or a rookie shows some flashy footwork and people start putting in orders for his jersey.
There is the “momentum” argument but even that is about as meaningless as the momentum of winning 3-4 pre-season games. Looks good on paper, and thats about it.
Go Patriots!
(No seriously. I want them to win. Really.)
He is just a fat guy in Maine.