The media's job is to attract eyeballs, so I imagine they are in full spin mode this morning. "Romney and Santorum were a virtual tie." "More than 75 percent of Caucus goers voted for 'Not Romney.'" "We move on the New Hampshire with nothing decided."
They're all lying to you. Romney got as big a win last night as he could have expected, and the contest to nominate Barack Obama's opponent is all over but the shouting.
I am not Nate Silver, so I can't give you the exact mathematical probability. But I can translate the order of finish into terms anyone can understand:
1) (tie) Mitt Romney and a Crazy Person
3) A Crazy Person
4) Newt Gingrich
Now, if you support one of the Crazy People, don't get mad at me. Get mad at the rest of the world, because I am only speaking in terms of electability, and
Brother
Bruh
Dawg
Champ
Everyone thinks your boy is crazy. Your boy has no change of getting the Republican nomination. None.
Besides, if you want to listen to people pretend to take your guy seriously, the media will try desperately over the next few days to convince you that one of the Crazy People is a real challenger to Romney, because they want to keep you watching the Campaign Show as long as possible.
But back to Romney. If Romney was going to lose the nomination, Iowa was a place he should have lost fairly decisively. Iowa's Republican voters skew conservative, which is the part of the Republican electorate with which Romney was supposed to have trouble. Romney gets to move on to New Hampshire next, which contains a much higher percentage of his natural constituency. Combined with the momentum of a better-than-expected showing, Romney is about to mollywhop everyone else in New Hampshire.
I have to cut this short to catch a plane. I will finish this thought tomorrow with the only possible dark cloud on Romney's horizon and why it's highly unlikely to stop him.
Anyway, I just skimmed what Silver wrote about last night, and it seems like he's saying the same thing I am except more artfully and precisely
Mollywhop is an awesome word. I will try to use this in a lecture or paper soon :)
ReplyDeleteI forget where I got "mollywhop," but I agree that is is fantastic.
ReplyDeleteAlso, yay Shana G with the first comment!
I think the assumption that it's over is premature. Not that Romney didn't take a big step. He absolutely did. But the fact that his step was taken with the lowest winning vote total in Iowa Caucus history is also pretty telling about how far away from finished this nomination battle is.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying it's Santorum. It might be, but let's consider what happens if the Newt spends the rest of the campaign trying to burn the party to ground. Let's consider what happens if the evnagelicals can collect around a single candidate.
Too many people in Iowa cast a vote for Anyone But Romney to thinkhe's going to walk.
Good points, all of them. I'm going to cop out and save a response for tomorrow's post, because that will leave with only 360 more ideas to think up.
ReplyDeleteThere's something wrong with your rankings, Bryan. Number 4 should also be "A Crazy Person."
ReplyDelete