Winners and losers: After Iowa, where do GOP candidates stand?

By David McElroy · January 5, 2012

Now that the first votes have been cast in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, let’s take a quick look at where the seven candidates stand. We’ll go in order of finish on Tuesday.

Mitt Romney was the official winner on Tuesday, but he was more like a co-winner. He didn’t originally intend to make Iowa important to his campaign this year, but he did end up putting effort into the state when it became obvious that he could win with a last-minute push. The investment paid off and he’s now off to New Hampshire, where he should be a big winner. Grade: A

Rick Santorum has now become the latest conservative flavor of the month. He gained the most from Iowa, because he came within a few votes of winning the state, which brought him (at least for now) out of the pack and made him into a major contender. The question now is whether conservatives are going to line up behind this strong social conservative as the “anti-Romney.” I don’t think he’s a serious threat to Romney yet, although he has a chance to do well among religious conservatives in southern states. Grade: A+

Ron Paul was touted in the last couple of weeks as having a chance to win Iowa. His surprisingly strong poll numbers made him a serious candidate — probably for the first time ever — but also brought out more serious questions that probably hurt him. Since Iowa doesn’t have that many delegates, perception is more important than delegates in the state. The perception about Paul is that he had a shot at breaking through — and he couldn’t do it. Religious conservatives don’t generally like him and more establishment Republicans don’t like him for different reasons. Other than his rabid libertarian base, I see no place for him to pick up support. He will pick up enough delegates along the way to have some influence on the party platform, but he has no chance. Grade: B-

Newt Gingrich was the GOP flavor of the week about a month ago. Or has it been that long? It’s hard to keep track. It’s hard to see his campaign as anything except dead in the water. Surely everybody other than Gingrich knows that. In a space of mere weeks, he lost roughly half of his Republican support in Iowa. The better voters got to know him, the less they were inclined to vote for him. If he stays in the race much longer, it will only be because of his monstrous ego. Grade: D-

Rick Perry is a failed candidate. When he entered the race, I thought he had the look and feel of someone to challenge for the lead, but his dreadful performances in the candidate debates showed him to be a third-rate politician who wasn’t ready for the national stage. He acts like a man who’s accustomed to being a success — and is shocked that he’s not succeeding. I honestly think he expected to do well, and I suspect he’s puzzled that people don’t like him. He looks personally hurt about it to me. I expect him to quit and head back to Texas soon, where he has some oddly strange people who like the man. Grade: F

Michele Bachmann was always a joke of a candidate to me. Anyone who took her seriously as a candidate was either delusional or a member of her family. (Or both.) She appeals to a small segment of the socially conservative Christian vote, but there’s no evidence that anybody outside of that narrow slice knows her as anything other than a punchline to political jokes. She had nothing to offer politically. She was delusional and egotistical to think she even belonged in the race. Grade: F

I said earlier this year that I’m not a psychic, so I don’t necessarily like to predict election results this far in advance. But I’m ready to make at least a preliminary prediction. Unless something completely unexpected happens, Romney is going to win the nomination. If he does, he will defeat Barack Obama and be the next president. I’m not sure whether it’s more accurate to say that he will be the second term of Obama or the fourth term of George W. Bush. Neither is a compliment in my book.

So the long national nightmare called Campaign 2012 continues. The first chapter is closed and the road looks a lot more clear now. It will settle into a race between Romney and whatever candidate conservatives choose to coalesce around. There’s a slight chance it could still be Gingrich, but I don’t think so. (Gingrich is probably going to stick around and see how he does in South Carolina and Florida.) It’s more likely that social conservatives will rally around Santorum, especially in southern states. Bachmann has already dropped out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Perry drop out any day now, too.

Paul will continue to the end. He’ll pick up some delegates and the eventual winner will court his supporters, probably even throwing him a bone or two at platform time. But in the end, his candidacy will achieve nothing, in my view. About 10 percent of the country is generally libertarian. Paul will get their support, but nothing more. I’ll be shocked if he finishes the race with more than 10 percent of the vote — at most.

So I predict the fall will bring us a Romney vs. Obama matchup. Now that we’ve seen the first votes, what’s your prediction? If you share a prediction in the comments, please explain why you believe a candidate is going to win. Don’t just advocate for the one you personally prefer.

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When I came home from a late lunch this afternoon, there were six or eight people gathered in the front yard of a house a couple of doors down from me. They were all dressed up, as though they had been to church for Easter and hadn’t yet changed. An older couple just moved into that house and I haven’t met them yet, but it seemed that they were with their son or daughter, maybe a sibling, and a couple of very young children. They were taking pictures and it took me back to my own childhood, visiting my grandparents in fancy Easter clothes and smiling for pictures in their yard. Holidays such as Easter and Christmas remind me in a small way of why I want a family. I wish I’d had a wife and children to be taking pictures with this afternoon. I still hope to experience that. And I hope you enjoyed your Easter Sunday, whether it was filled with a loving family or not.

I came home late Saturday afternoon to find that somebody had cut my grass while I was gone — and I had no idea who to thank. I walked around the neighborhood asking if anybody saw what happened, and I finally figured out it was my neighbor, Pedro. (That’s not his real name, but I’ve told you about him before.) He was cutting his own grass and did mine while he was at it. He even swept my walkway and porch steps. And he didn’t want any payment. He said it was no big deal. When I hear bigots talk about how we don’t need any more Hispanic immigrants and hear idiocy such as the notion that “we’re full,” I find myself thinking how much worse off I’d be without people such as Pedro. I’m grateful for his giving spirit. He’s a great neighbor.

I get a lot of email from people asking for advice. I don’t always have time to respond, but when I do, I like to remind them that the only reason I can offer any advice is that I’ve lived through so many of my own mistakes. In the coming weeks, I’m going to start putting out a series of short videos to answer some of the most common questions that I receive. I already have dozens of questions to choose from, but if you have a question that you think might be applicable to others, be sure to drop me an email. If I end up using some portion of your question, I won’t include personally identifiable details. I don’t know when the first video will go live, but I’ll be in the studio working on them.

Modern culture disturbs me. Sane lives are mocked and insane ideas are celebrated. I just read a story about a woman in England who “married herself” in 2015. A man had chosen another woman over her, so her response was to show everybody that she had no need for a partner — and she had a “wedding” with a dozen bridesmaids and they all danced around in the street as she “married herself,” with some guy dressed like a high-church priest. Nothing says, “I didn’t really need you,” like this sort of bizarre exhibition, huh? The woman then wrote a novel about a woman who married herself. None of this will affect me, of course. We’ve always had iconoclasts. I’m a bit of one myself. But it seems as though modern culture has become one huge freak show — and it seems unhealthy.

There’s a little girl at the table next to me at dinner Thursday evening who makes me happy. She’s a second grader and I heard her telling her grandmother, “I have a thousand books and I’m going to read all of them.” A few minutes later, she asked her grandmother, “What does stupendous mean?” (I’m not sure I would have known that word in the second grade.) At one point, I asked her if she likes to read and her eyes lit up. “I’m going to write my own books,” she said. I don’t know what this little lady’s future is, but it made me happy to talk to such a bright and enthusiastic girl.

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