Thoughts on the Republican Presidential Primary, Now That Iowa Is in the Books

[Here's another one of the entries I plan to write this year in some depth about various aspects of the 2012 campaign.  In these posts I plan to mostly discuss the mechanics and strategies of campaigning, but to not spend a lot of time on the issues themself.  In general I'll try to keep partisan sniping to a minimum, but just to be clear to anybody new to the Patio Boat, I'm a Democrat and will undoubtedly be spending both time and money in support of Barack Obama's re-election this year.

One additional caveat.  I read Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog pretty regularly and respect a lot of his insights into polling and elections in general.  I didn't link to anything in particular from that blog below, but I'm sure that I've relied on it as a source for both statistics and insight. If you don't read Nate's blog, but you have the intestinal fortitude to make it to the end of this post, you should probably read the FiveThirtyEight blog yourself.

And with those caveats provided, on to the post itself...]

The Iowa caucuses are an interesting phenomenon. The Iowa Democratic Party originally moved their caucuses forward to January back in 1972 to give their ancient mimeograph machine time to print up enough copies of the rules and platform proposals before their state convention. This turned out to give them the spotlight and a very large say in the nomination process. In 1976 the Republicans moved their caucus forward to the same date, and every four years since then the nation's presidential aspirants have descended like a flock of bloviating locusts to espouse the wonders of ethanol subsidies and the corn dogs at the Iowa State Fair.

Although Iowa isn't particularly representative of most of the nation, both it and its fellow small-state early bird New Hampshire serve a fairly useful purpose for the rest of us by providing a credibility check.  It's the electoral equivalent of a sign that says "You shall not enter this ride unless you are taller than this."

These two states strain out both the small fry who never should've tried (Thaddeus McCotter, Buddy Roemer) and the bigger fish who enter with a splash but lack the ability to connect with voters outside their home ponds (Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachman, maybe Rick Perry.)  Because of their smallish scale and the long run-up to their contests, they provide a candidate with limited resources (Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman) a chance to catch on over time by meeting with voters and appealing directly to them.  A good result in Iowa or New Hampshire can lead to the sort of deep-pocket campaign contributions that let a candidate compete in heavily populated states such as Florida, New York, and California -- where small-scale retail politics are swamped by the cost of media buys and the need for professional campaign organizations.

The best thing about Iowa is that after more than a year of positioning and polling, real votes that matter are cast.  It's like the first game of the NFL season. There's been a lot of preparation.  Training camp and pre-season were interesting to the football junkies. But as soon as the first game is in the books, all that preceded it is forgotten.

There were only twenty-five delegates at stake yesterday, but last night's Iowa results brought a lot of shape to this year's Republican Presidential primary, while also raising some new and interesting questions.  Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum finished in a virtual tie, while Ron Paul finished only a few percentage points behind them. The results were close enough that under Iowa's rules the three of them probably each gained seven delegates to this year's Republican National convention.  That's a genuine tie, despite the difference in finishing order, since the point of this exercise is to gain a majority of the delegates to the convention, so that you can secure the nomination.

(Delegate allocation is probably worth a post of its own one day, and is a really interesting piece of tactical campaigning. Much of Barack Obama's 2008 victory over Hilary Clinton resulted from his campaign's focus on securing delegates, while Clinton tried to establish momentum and an air of inevitability by running up vote totals. That point may yet come into play for the GOP this year, since Mitt Romney is certainly playing the "inevitable candidate" card.)

Here's my two cents on how each of the candidates fared yesterday, and what it means for their campaigns:

Candidate (Votes, Pct%, Delegate Estimate) 

1. Mitt Romney  (30,015, 24.6%, seven delegates) —  Mitt did what he needed to do here: cross the Iowa threshold as a credible candidate.  He's still the probable nominee for a lot of reasons, including his experience and contacts from the 2008 campaign, as well as his personal deep pockets. You don't need to be incredibly wealthy to run for President, and wealth alone can't buy you a victory.  But it's kind of like major-league baseball, where deep pockets let the New York Yankees paper over mistakes that would sink a team with fewer resources. Next for Romney  it's "on to New Hampshire!" where the former Massachusetts governer has what amounts to a hometown advantage and a big lead in that state's polls.

What's been more interesting is that Romney's campaign —  which has been slick and well-managed, in accordance with the Romney brand —  is the "Anybody-But-Romney" phenomenon that has propelled each of the other candidates ahead of him in the polls. It seems as if a majority of Republican voters really and truly don't want Romney to be their nominee.  The problem for the GOP is that each Anybody-But-Romney candidate has in turn been examined closely and found wanting by their electorate.  This may make pundits impatient, but I think it's been a very beneficial process for the Republican Party and will help them in the general election. Romney is a known commodity after the 2008 campaign, and his presidential campaign experience and resources have shown in his 2012 effort.  But taking the lead in the Anybody-But-Romney race has exposed each of the other candidates to some of the scrutiny and criticism that he or she would face in the general election.  None of the non-Romney candidates have faced that before, and if the Republican party chooses somebody other than Romney, they will have a stronger candidate for it.

Romney's problem now is that his poll numbers seem to have a ceiling around 30%.  If a single genuine Anybody-But-Romney candidate emerges sooner instead of later, Romney could be in genuine trouble. Ironically, although Romney's best campaign pose is the aura of the inevitability of the frontrunner, he genuinely needs multiple candidates to split the vote long enough for him to rack up an insurmountable delegate count.  It's a weird problem.

Current Michigan Governor Rick Snyder faced a similar issue in his 2010 primary as the de facto moderate among a group of candidates who all ran far to the right. That worked well for Snyder as the other candidates split the conservative vote and allowed Snyder to win.  I don't, however, think the same effect will work for Romney in a series of primaries that are designed to whittle down the field.  If Romney quickly finds himself alone with Ron Paul and only one other candidate, he could be in unexpected trouble.

1A. Rick Santorum  (30,007, 24.5%, seven delegates) —  Santorum lost the final count by just eight votes, but that hardly mattered. What really mattered was that his late surge as the final Anybody-But-Romney candidate pushed him from the back of the pack into realms of credibility that he never had before this week. His virtual tie for first place in Iowa has made him a viable 2012 candidate for the Republican nomination.  Santorum took Iowa seriously by campaigning personally in every county in Iowa.  All future Iowa caucus campaigns should study his playbook.  He also seems to have genuinely benefited as a candidate from a year of hardcore retail campaigning. Practice helps, and his post-caucus speech was a huge improvement over what I saw of him a year ago when he first announced his candidacy. One other important note here: although Romney finished a few votes ahead, the Iowa caucus process allows same-day caucus registration among independents or people in other parties. Exit polls showed that Santorum did better among actual Republicans than either Romney or Ron Paul.

Aside from momentum, improved oratory, and popularity among actual Republicans, Rick Santorum has another genuine advantage at this point: the apparent blessing of his one-time boss, media mogul Rupert Murdoch.  If Murdoch does now put the Fox News machinery behind Santorum, that could make up for all sorts of lack of resources and organization in the states that follow New Hampshire.

Santorum's other advantage at this point is that he truly does seem to be the Anybody-But-Romney.  Whereas Romney strikes everybody as willing to say whatever he thinks will gain him votes, Santorum seems to genuinely believe what he says. That's a very attractive quality for voters, though it may prove to be a double-edged sword if the electorate decides that he genuinely means it when, for example, he says that states should be able to outlaw contraception, a position that has already caused a stir in the blogosphere.

However, being the most socially conservative in a GOP primary isn't a problem for Santorum. It's undoubtedly to his advantage.  But Santorum has some tactical problems that he'll need to overcome quickly if he's going to become the nominee. Problem number one is that he doesn't yet have the resources and organization to compete effectively in the large states. That may change in the wake of Iowa —  especially if he can follow this up this result with a strong performance in New Hampshire, where he has also spent a good deal of time on retail campaigning.  Santorum's second problem is that this is his first time in the Anybody-But-Romney shark tank. He will now face the scrutiny and negative campaigning that comes in that role. A pass from Fox News would help him greatly to survive this scrutiny during the primary, but it might not be doing the GOP any favors in the general election to nominate a candidate who would otherwise have failed the Anybody-But-Romney staying power threshold.

When reporters in 2016 talk about the surprises that come out of the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum will be near the top of the list. By then we'll know whether he capitalized on these results, or turned out to be another just another Hawkeye State flash in the pan.

3. Ron Paul (26,219, 21.4%, seven delegates) —  It's hard to see how a candidate wins the Republican nomination when his support seems to come from a coalition of libertarians, independents, and college students. But Ron Paul has completely captured that coalition, and if Mitt Romney has a low ceiling, Ron Paul seems to have a high basement due to his widespread support among that group.  Romney supporters should probably hope that Paul keeps campaigning all the way through to the convention because Paul's support seems likely to go in the Anybody-But-Romney column if he does pack it in.  On the other hand the Ron Paul crowd might just opt out altogether if presented with a Romney/Santorum choice.

If Paul does make it all the way to the convention, he'll likely have a decently sized delegation because he seems certain to pick up delegates in states that apportion their delegates instead of awarding them all in a "winner takes all" primary.  More importantly, the eventual nominee will almost certainly have to accomodate him in some way to make sure he stays in the GOP camp.  Paul departed the GOP and ran as the Libertarian candidate in 1988. He was the third in total votes that year, though he only gained 0.5% of the total.  He'd be a much, much bigger obstacle to a GOP general-election victory in 2012 if he bolted the party again.

One of the really interesting things to watch in coming months will be how Ron Paul fares in the future contests, how long he stays in the race, and what he does once it's over and he's not the nominee.

4. Newt Gingrich (16,251, 13.3%, possibly one delegate) — Just a few weeks ago Gingrich had the Anybody-But-Romney tiger by the tail.  Today he's trying to recover from a slip to fourth place in Iowa, and an equal decline in national polling.

It might've been possible for Gingrich to recover from this finish in Iowa -- John McCain got about 13% in Iowa in 2008 -- but instead Gingrich's post-caucus concession speech will go down in the classics of primary defeat with Howard Dean's Iowa scream. That moment resonated not just because of what it was, but because it seemed to embody the problems of a fading campaign.  So it was last night with Gingrich, who blamed his defeat on negative campaigning by Romney without seeming to understand his own role in providing the grist for the Romney machine's mill.  At times defiant, angry, and pedantic, Gingrich quickly moved from quasi-endorsing Rick Santorum to lecturing Ron Paul about foreign policy to seemingly preparing to deliver a platter of cold revenge to Mitt Romney in future primaries.

As I said in a Tweet after watching it: "Bitter Newt is more entertaining than Pompous Newt."

This is another place where the shape of the 2012 GOP primary is going to be interesting.  If Gingrich decides to stay in the campaign to savage Romney, he risks continuing to split the Anybody-But-Romney vote and actually helping Romney by serving as a spoiler. I doubt Gingrich sees it that way, though.

5. Rick Perry  (12,604, 10.3%, no delegates) —  All that hoopla, money, and endorsements when he entered, but today Rick Perry was back home in Texas "reassessing his campaign."  It sounds as if he'll stay in at least until South Carolina. He's probably hoping for a Santorum implosion, after which he can regain the mantle of the Anybody-But-Romney candidate.  That's not a bad strategy for him at this point.  Perry seems to be campaigning better than he did after his disastrous entry into the race, and his campaign still has more money and national infrastructure than any of the other non-Romney candidates.

If Santorum can't cut it in the spotlight, Perry might have a resurgence.  It makes sense for him to stick around for a few more states, even if he really can't win the nomination this year. The GOP traditionally turns to the 2nd-place finisher from the previous election as their next nominee. If Perry can right the ship and show good form down the stretch, he might have a chance to take another crack at it in 2016. He's almost certainly never going to get another shot at it in the future if he departs the race with just a 5th-place finish in Iowa to show for all the money he spent.

(BTW, I thus far managed to avoid discussing Rick Santorum's Google problem, but I should mention that when you enter "Rick Perry" into Google, the first couple of results on Google's suggested-headings list are not advantageous to a GOP candidate.  Weird Internet problems for 21st century campaigns are another one of those topics that's probably worth a post later this year.)

6. Michele Bachmann  (6,073, 5.0%, no delegates) — The winner of last year's 2011 Iowa Straw Poll is now one-and-done in the contests that matter, since she announced today that she's leaving the race. Her semi-concession speech last night was a pretty loopy moment in a pretty loopy campaign.  She said that "The process has worked and Iowa has clearly spoken" ... then proclaimed that it was on to New Hampshire.  Huh?!

But I think we can give her a pass on the final bit of intellectual incoherence in her often incoherent campaign.  It must've all looked so good last year when she was the first of the candidates to ride the Anybody-But-Romney bubble that I can understand wanting to sleep on it one last night before folding her tent.

This was a pretty good case of the Iowa voters spending a good long stretch with a candidate and deciding that what we had here was not a presidential nominee.  Well done, Iowa.

7. Jon Huntsman  (745, 0.6%, no delegates) —  What I like here is that the AP story about Bachmann pulling out of the race said this about her finish: "Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said Wednesday she's ending her bid for the Republicans presidential nomination after her last-place finish in Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses."  If Bachmann finished "last" with 5.0%, what does that say about Huntsman's 0.6%?

One of the saddest images last night came from a caucus site where the volunteers were counting votes by stacking each candidate's ballots on a piece of paper for that candidate.  Little stacks of red ballots for Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, etc, stood there in neat piles.  But there was nothing at all on the sheet laid out for Jon Huntsman. You don't need to win Iowa to win the nomination, but what does it say when nobody in a precinct will vote for you, even if you didn't compete seriously in that state?

Frankly, I've decided that I don't understand Jon Huntsman's campaign strategy at all if he genuinely wants to be the nominee. He chose not to compete in Iowa because it skews so conservative.  But Iowans don't like to be ignored, so only 745 of them chose to ignore the snub to vote for him. That averages out to fewer than eight voters in each of Iowa's 99 counties. So, after taking a pass on Iowa and receiving the drubbing that resulted, he's hoping to do well enough in New Hampshire to go into South Carolina, Florida, Michigan, etc., with enough momentum to win the nomination.  But does he genuinely expect to gain momentum in South Carolina, which may skew even more conservative and evangelical than Iowa?  You can't win the nomination by only winning Utah.

I can only conclude that Huntsman just hoped that Mitt Romney would depart the race early for reasons unknown, even though that seems a sucker bet given Romney's deep pockets and 2008 experience. Without Romney in the way, Huntsman might've had a chance to gather much of the establishment support that has gone instead to Romney. Huntsman's problem now is that after taking a pass on Iowa, he's about to take a Granite State drubbing. And as far as I can tell, I don't think that Huntsman has ever made a compelling case for why a voter should vote for him instead of for Romney.  I strongly expect that on the morning after the New Hampshire primary we can look for a source within the Huntsman campaign to tell CNN that Huntsman has returned to Utah to "reassess his campaign."

8. No Preference (135, 0.1%, no delegates) —  Really? These candidates have campaigned in Iowa for as much as two years, but 135 of you bundled up to brave the January weather, sit in a caucus meeting, then say that you have developed absolutely zero preference among them?

In truth, this is a pretty low number for a "None of the Above" option. I think that's driven by the genuine divide you can see between Romney voters and the Anybody-But-Romney voters.

9. Other (117, 0.1%, no delegates) —  I saw a tweet last night that said that six of these votes were for "The Lizard People".  I can't believe the lamestream media has thus far excluded The Lizard People from the GOP debates. I demand that we see them on stage in Saturday's debate, so that the American people can decide for themselves!

P.S. Yes, this means that Jon Huntsman only finished 739 votes ahead of The Lizard People.

10. Herman Cain  (58, 0.1%, no delegates)  —  Ladies and gentlemen, the Herman Cain book tour and late-night pizza run has departed the public stage. Few people thought he'd really be the nominee, but I don't think anybody anticipated the salacious details of his implosion. Gary Hart, you now have a new first mate on the S.S. Monkey Business's eternal tour of the Isles of Libido.

11. Buddy Roemer  (31, 0.0%, no delegates) — The former Louisiana governor dropped out long ago, but his name apparently remained on the ballots. He tweeted at one point last night that he had nearly enough voters to form a bowling league. As it turns out, his 31 votes were more than three times as many as the difference between Romney and Santorum. I can't help but wonder what those 31 people think about that this morning.

[Update, Sunday, Jan. 8: My apologies to Buddy Roemer, who is apparently still running for President on a platform of campaign finance reform, despite not having made the cut to appear on stage for a single one of the sixteen GOP debates to date.

Um, sorry for saying that you'd dropped out of the race months ago, Buddy. I shoulda just said that you'd dropped out of sight months ago.

I suspect there are interesting things to be found both in his message and in how totally ineffective he's been in getting that message out.  That's a real challenge, isn't it? How do you get a message out about reforming the current campaign finance system when those proposed reforms mean that you might not have any resources with which to get that message out effectively.]

So, that's the field. Here's my guess at what the campaign will hinge on over the next few months. There are some interesting possibilities:

1) Can Rick Santorum capitalize on his Iowa finish to accumulate the money, resources, and endorsements that will let him compete with Romney in states where Romney has a long-established presence?

2) How long does Newt Gingrich stay in the race? If he does go full-scale negative on Romney, does it stick?

3) If Santorum fades, can Perry find a second wind from the Anybody-But-Romney vote? It seems improbable, but it's not out of the question.

4) Will Ron Paul campaign all the way through to the convention? His enthusiastic support could be a significant asset for the eventual GOP nominee.  If he bolts the party again, it could spell disaster in the general election.

You'll note that none of those "interesting" items involve Mitt Romney himself.  I fully expect the Romney-Bot 2012 to continue on to the end in just the same way it has campaigned for the last two years.  I don't, however, know if Romney's advantages in money, endorsements, and organization will overcome the fact that a majority of Republican voters just don't seem to want to vote for him.  My guess is that the answers to the four items I list above have more to do with the final outcome than anything Romney is likely to do.

We shall see.