...Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum almost upset Mitt Romney's expensive campaign in Iowa.
Even though the Iowa Caucus is usually insignificant to the final election results, it does offer some messages that some of the candidates should heed.
After one term as the governor of Massachusetts, since 2007, Mitt Romney has been running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
Even though Romney won in the mostly insignificant Iowa Caucus (by only 8 single votes over Rick Santorum), we all should be aware of some of the details about Mitt’s big win.
Various Comments & Details re: Romney’s Big Iowa Win:
>>> Mitt spent over 5 years running for this nomination and he spent the most money of all the candidates to win in Iowa. Rick Santorum only started running just this last year and he spent the least money of all of the candidates.
>>> Only 125,000 votes were cast in the whole Iowa Caucus. (That’s only .0005% of the nations registered voters) It was a costly victory for the former Massachusetts governor as each Romney vote cost him more than $100 each, and he only won by 8 single votes. Santorum, who gained the most national attention and finished behind Romney by those 8 votes, ended up spending only $1.65 per vote. (Not exactly a mandate for “Mr. Romneycare”.)
>>> As an even bigger loser, the 5th place, Texas Governor Rick Perry had put out $480 for each of the 12,690 votes he received in the Iowa Caucus.
>>> And to top it all off, Romney’s arch 2008 primary campaign rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, showed up the day after the Iowa Caucus at a New Hampshire Town Hall Meeting, just to endorse Mr. Romney. It was obvious that McCain was not comfortable in making the endorsement as he continually showed his impatience at the event. McCain was also laughing as he congratulated Romney on his “eight-vote landslide victory in Iowa”. Romney had a fake smile on for the whole endorsement and he basically just ignored McCain.
>>> During the question and answer session after the New Hampshire Town Hall Meeting, an Occupy Wall Street infiltrator challenged the candidate about his belief that “corporations are people.” Mitt just showed that he was not amused.
>>> A second New Hampshire questioner asked why Romney was flip-flopping on the universal health care he installed when he was governor of Massachusetts? No Romney response on that one.
>>> An Asian American woman accused Romney of saying “degrading things about China”. She also complained that “after 20 years of Reagan trickle-down economics, it didn’t help me. My tin can is still empty.”
>>> When Romney challenged the Asian woman to name a place where income is higher than it is in the United States, another voice in the crowd responded with, “The U.S. has the highest income inequality in the entire developed world!” Romney again had no direct response.
>>> Then, in trying to regain control of the question session, he proclaimed his latest common response for interrupting the discussion; ROMNEY: “Excuse me, but you’ve had your chance.”
>>> When the end of the questions finally and mercifully came, the candidate gave a final rallying call for the party to “get the White House back”. All but a few in the small group rose as they put on their coats without any applause.
This poor response to the very slim Iowa win continued as Mitt left Iowa on his campaign plane to Manchester, New Hampshire. On the 737 plane, which is jokingly referred to by the reporters as “Hair Force One”, his staff applauded, (as is apparently required), whenever Mitt boards the campaign plane.
Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, had also noticed Mitt’s awkwardness in dealing with his slim win in Iowa while aboard his campaign plane. Here is what Mr. Milbank had to say in a recent column:
"When he [Mitt] went to the back of the plane to visit the press corps, he made a labored attempt to demonstrate that he was at ease. He noticed an aide’s manifest for the media and
pretended that was funny. “Is that right? A seating chart? Ha, ha, ha.”
“What do you think of your eight-vote landslide?” the Associated Press’s Glenn Johnson asked.
“No interviews yet,” the candidate said. “We’ll be back later,” he said, repeating this three times. (He did not come back later.)
In need of a new subject, Romney looked at the staffer sitting in the row ahead of the press corps. “Is this the referee?” he asked. It wasn’t clear why he regarded this staffer as a referee, but he continued to joke about the demarcation between staff seats and media seats. “The line? The DMZ? Is that it? No, I know what it is: It’s the emergency exit! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Ahh.”
The candidate fielded a couple of questions about his activities on caucus night, and then tried to answer a question about his margin of victory. “Ha, ha. Uh. I think landslides are terrific,” he said. “I just didn’t, uh, see that in last night’s figures. I’m not sure about you. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
Maybe he should have gotten more sleep.
Driven to Manchester on a bus he dubbed the “Landslide Lounge,” Romney continued to wrestle with words when he took the stage at the high school [town meeting]. “What a, uh, big night we had last night, or what a big morning we had, uh, last morning, this morning, in, uh, Iowa”.
And this man seriously wants us to elect him as the leader of the free world.
There is a very good reason why Mitt Romney’s national approval rating has never been above 25% and why a radical conservative, with virtually no resources, such as the former senator Rick Santorum almost beat Romney in Iowa. And this is after Romney’s having run for the GOP nomination for the last 5+ years.
Fortunately for the Democrats, it is appearing that Romney will eventually become the Republican candidate, even though he still doesn’t seem to get it that the message that the real GOP conservatives “just don’t trust him”.
Copyright G.Ater 2012
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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