Iowa Says None of the Above

Some three weeks ago, I wrote:

I am predicting a Ron Paul win in Iowa with Romney in #2 and Gingrich a close third (which will kill him going into NH).

The actual tally was Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in a dead heat, with Ron Paul close behind -- really a three-way draw. Newt Gingrich fell faster and farther than even I could imagine, coming in at a distant fourth place.

Romney, the putative "winner" (by all of 8 votes in an entire state!) did not break 25%, which is a nice way of saying that 75% of Iowa Republicans voted against him.

Rick Santorum, who was a non-person through more than a dozen televised debates, rose very, very rapidly in the last week prior to the Caucus as Iowa's Republican voters scurried around desperate to find someone in the field that they knew nothing about.

Anyone but Romney!

And why did no one know anything about Rick Santorum?

Well, in part, because he has the charisma of book paste, and in part because he typically keeps going back to issues that have nothing to do with jobs, economics, national defense, or anything else that a president should be concerned about. 

The core planks in Santorum's political platform, you see, are hating on gays and hating on contraception. Santorum opposes contraception, describing it as "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," and he says there is no right to privacy, not even in your own bedroom.

Santorum does not believe in evolution and wants "intelligent design" taught in schools.

Santorum does want to bomb Iran and he salutes torture, going so far to tell former POW John McCain just last year (2011) that McCain simply does not "understand" how "enhanced interrogation" works.

No, you cannot make the stuff up!

And who does Rick Santorum want for President?

In 2008, when John McCain was running for President, he said:

"If you're a Republican, if you're a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that's Mitt Romney."

Right. Hard to disagree with that now.

• Related Posts:
  ** Driving Seamus & Other Lapses in Judgement
  ** Mitt Romney Fires, Aims, and Flops Over Wounded
  .