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Iowa Speaks and Michele Listens
-by Scott Rohter, January 2012

Iowa voters went to their Caucuses yesterday and cast the first ballots in the 2012 Presidential Primary, and Republican candidate Michele Bachmann finished almost in last place with only 5% of the vote.  She didn’t win a single one of Iowa’s 99 counties!  Rick Perry received 10% of the vote and carried only two counties.  Newt Gingrich somehow managed to fool enough of the people, enough of the time in Iowa, to get 13% of their vote, but he failed to win even one of their counties.  Ron Paul carried 18 counties and received 21% of the vote.  Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney were in a virtual tie for first place with 25% of the vote each.  But the difference between the demographics behind Romney’s constituency, and Santorum’s constituency is like night and day.  Romney’s core constituency was centered around the five major metropolitan areas of Des Moines, Dubuque, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City, and just across the river from Omaha, Nebraska.  See map link: www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results/2012/gop-primary/ia.  The rest of the state belonged almost entirely to Senator Rick Santorum, including the suburban areas that surround the cities.  Ron Paul’s support also came primarily from the same urban areas that supported Mitt Romney.  The county by county breakdown of the voting in Iowa was as follows:

 

62
Counties for Santorum
18
Counties for Paul
17
Counties for Romney
2
Counties for Perry
0
Counties for Gingrich
0
Counties for Bachmann
99
Counties Total

 

Thus Iowa has spoken and Michele Bachmann has listened.  She suspended her presidential campaign today, and that was exactly the right thing to do!  I am one of her biggest supporters, and she is a total class act.  Now she should step aside and throw all of her support and her remaining campaign funds to Senator Rick Santorum, who surprisingly fared much better than she did, and who could actually still win this race.  He finished in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in first place, in a statistical tie!  He can sure use her endorsement right now, and whatever money she still has left in her campaign.  But I hope she isn’t discouraged by her disappointing finish.  She is a fine public servant with great conservative principles, and sound character, and she deserved to do much better than she did.  I hope she remains engaged at the same high level, and doesn’t back down or tone down her rhetoric one bit, or any of her positions on the issues.  Perhaps she will be available for a place on the ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee, or for a high cabinet level position in a future administration.  Someone with such courage and character as she has cannot remain un-noticed forever!  So keep on doing what you’re doing, Michele.  Sooner or later you are going to be rewarded.  Even a place on the ticket as the Vice President Designate would be a historic, precedent setting moment for our country.  If you choose to remain in Congress long enough, one day you will be rewarded by your peers with a position in the leadership of the House, which by the way could sure use a good shake-up right now!  You can’t always win, but sometimes you can learn a lot more by losing than by winning.  It seems that some of the high ranking people in her campaign did not serve her very well, and were not worthy of her trust.  Her national campaign manager, Ed Rollins resigned.  Her team in New Hampshire let her down too, and her campaign manager in Iowa quit.  If his name isn’t Brutus, then it should be!

The Iowa Caucus is not about picking a winner.  Rather, it is about narrowing the field.  It is not about choosing a nominee, as much as it is about eliminating some of the others who won’t be the nominee.  I don’t know why Bachmann performed so poorly in Iowa, but I knew that if she didn’t do well there, then she probably wouldn’t do well anywhere else.  Iowa was her best chance.  It was do or die in Iowa, but Iowa was her ‘Waterloo’, rather than Waterloo, her Iowa!

I don’t know why Iowans voted the way they did.  I don’t know if it was Iowa’s fault, or her campaign manager’s fault, or the mainstream media’s fault, or her own fault.  I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around, but she still has more character and courage than anyone else in this race.  I heard some pretty shocking remarks coming from more than one local Republican official in Iowa, concerning her Presidential bid.  Things like, “A woman shouldn’t be president.”  Or “I would never vote for a woman.”  Or “Woman are too emotional to be President.”  Or “She is too short.”  Things like that!  Hell, Napoleon was short, but it didn’t stop him from conquering Europe.  If I wanted a basketball player for President, then I’d pick Manute Bol, or Wilt Chamberlain, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, if height meant anything.  I mean really, how stupid can people be?

And there is nothing wrong either with having a maternal side.  Maybe if some of our male leaders did, then they would be less inclined to send our young men and women over seas into harm’s way, and more disposed to actually following the Constitution from time to time, and obtaining an actual written Declaration of War before so-doing.

Nevertheless, Iowa has spoken and Michele has listened, and she has suspended her campaign.  Now the media can simply forget her, although I’m not so sure that they ever really remembered her.  They acted like she didn’t exist most of the time!  At least that’s the way I remember it.  As for me, I’m going to see what I can do to help the next best conservative in the race, which is Senator Rick Santorum, and I hope that Governor Perry will do the same thing, if not now, then at least after South Carolina.  All conservatives really do need to rally behind the one solid conservative, or limited government libertarian, who has the best chance of denying the nomination to Romney or Gingrich.
"The truth, the political truth, and nothing but the political truth.
A journalist has no better friend than the truth."
- Scott Rohter

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