Who will be the Republican nominee? He will be selected by the end of January after the voters in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida have their say.
Leading up to the Iowa caucuses and following in the wake of their results, the cable news channels and every other news media engaged in a paroxysm of political analysis, interviewing the candidates incessantly from the early hours of the morning until late at night.
I suspect that for many Americans this excess of analysis causes them to “shut down” and ignore the race, the issues, and the candidates. I suspect, too, the avalanche of political advertisements in Iowa exhausted what enthusiasm might have existed.
Divided by eight votes for first place, Romney and Santorum split the lead with Paul in third. The other candidates will begin to fade from contention. Iowa is a popularity contest, not a real political race for delegates to the GOP convention.
I recall spending a day in 1972 with George McGovern as he made the rounds of party bosses in New Jersey. He would be decisively defeated by Richard Nixon. Ron Paul has the same base of idealistic youth who think his ideas would work in the real world. The grownups know they wouldn’t. If Paul were the GOP candidate, he would suffer a similar fate as McGovern.