Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s bid to become the next President of the United States gained traction late Tuesday night when he won Iowa’s 2012 Presidential Caucus. Beating runner up Rick Santorum by a mere 8 votes, Romney’s victory shows he has not yet gained the complete trust of conservatives and Tea-Party voters.
“Romney eight-vote margin in Iowa, over the lightly regarded Rick Santorum, inevitably diminishes his achievement,” reports LA Times. “It reminds party activists, Republican voters and the average campaign watcher of Romney’s shortcomings as a candidate and makes him look like anything but an overwhelming front-runner for the GOP nomination. He remains stuck at a relatively modest level of support, highlighted by the anemic 25 percent of the vote that he received in the first test of 2012.”
“Romney’s success reflects the overall weakness of the Republican field. The challengers he now faces, as the primary season gets under way in earnest, will be hard pressed to stop him. The man with perhaps the best chance to give him a run for his money—Gov. Rick Perry—is back home in Texas, licking his wounds and, presumably, preparing to end his candidacy.” Perry took away 12, 604 votes, or about 10% of the total caucus pie.
Iowa Republican chairman Matt Strawn announced early Wednesday that Romney ended up with 30,015 votes to 30,007 for Santorum. Santorum’s camp was taking the showing as the moral equivalent of a win, because their support grew so fast in the last couple of weeks.
“Thank you so much, Iowa, for standing up and not compromising, by standing up and being bold,” Santorum told cheering backers heartened by his virtual photo-finish with rival Mitt Romney. “You have taken the first step toward taking back this country.”
Coming in at third place with a respectable 26,219 votes, Tea Party and Libertarian favorite Ron Paul also took his showing as a win, vowing to continue his fight, even as his GOP rivals have dismissed him as a fringe candidate and as party leaders have flatly declared him unelectable.
“We have tremendous opportunity to continue this momentum,” Paul said to his supporters. “It won’t be long that there’s going to be an election up in New Hampshire, and believe me, this momentum is going to continue and this movement is going to continue and we are going to keep scoring. So tonight, we have come out of an election where there were essentially three winners, three top vote-getters and we will go on, we will raise the money, I have no doubt about the volunteers.”
Newt Gingrich, a former front-runner who finished in fourth place in Iowa with 16, 251 votes, about 13 percent, signaled that he would campaign more aggressively against Romney, whom he has linked to a series of bitter TV attack ads.
Michele Bachmann gained 6,073 votes, and Jon Huntsman gained 745 votes.