There’s a whole lot of punditry who have been singing the inevitability of Mitt Romney because for the first time in history a single candidate won both Iowa and New Hampshire in an open race. The narrative was stupid — because on election night Romney was ahead by only 8 votes — but a highly effective tool for Romney.
Turns out Romney did not win Iowa. Rick Santorum may have, but we’ll never know for sure because there will be no certified winner due to missing voting records in 8 precincts. That said, of the votes that could be certified Santorum edged out Romney:
It’s a tie for the ages.
There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage.
Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.
GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally.
The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney. The turnout: 121,503.
If the narrative of winning two in a row was so important, will that narrative now be withdrawn?
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Comments
“Turns out Romney did not win New Hampshire.”
I think you mean Iowa.
Yes, corrected. My proofreader will hear about this.
I never believed the “inevitability” claim that begun to get loouder and louder following Iowa and then New Hampshire because of what I call, “The Tim Tebow Rule.”
See, everyone in the sports media, except for a die-hard few, was proclaiming Tebow to be a failure before he even played his first game after being named starter. When he started winning with the incredible comebacks people were still trying to dismiss him. Same after the end-of-season losing streak. But then…with everyone doubting the Bronocs before their playoff game, what does Tebow do…? Win
The similarities with Newt’s campaign are a bit eerie.
What Conrad said. There is a really good video “Obama chooses thug oil over Canadian oil” by a Canadian journalist.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/keystone-calamity/1400506675001
Lots of good remarks, but he, in particular, points out that the Keystone pipeline runs through solidly Republican states. If it had run through Illinois or Michigan, might Obama have made a different decision? The video also shows a map with existing pipelines that traverse in spaghetti fashion the Ogalala aquifer, the reason given by the Obama administration to reject it (politics had nothing to do with it).
As Newt said, “Stunningly stupid”. Go Newt!
Reaffirms my faith in the democratic process /sarcasm.
What happened to the voting records in those 8 precincts?
How insane/rigged is this process, we are supposed to all jump in line behind a candidate because he won
Iowa andNew Hampshire?I’m too much of a skeptic to believe all this is just coming out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Establishment is worried about Newt’s latest surge and is now trying to pump up Santorum in order to split the not-Romney vote. Every time Newt gives a good debate or his poll numbers improve at all, the pro-Romney Establishment kicks into gear with anti-Newt stories.
After Romney and his PACs spend 10 or 20 million attacking Newt, on Special Report they are still attacking Newt for being “over the top” negative, saying he still has 72 hours to “shoot himself in the foot … again”. Charles chimes in, after giving some accolades to Newt:
“yet here he is, again it’s a lack of discipline, he gets off on this tirade against Romney that can only hurt him and that’s the new negative Newt. There are two Newts, he knows which one works, I’m surprised he can’t control himself for a week, so at least he gets until Saturday as the Newt from Monday night who was the star of the show.”
Maybe Charles has a point, but it sure seems he is working from the Romney “crazy” talking points. I’m not sure if Krauthammer believes “capitalism” knows no bounds. Beyond the leveraged buy out/junk bond era that has left a wake of problems, what about buying a presidency? The attack ads are the only reason Gingrich dropped from the lead in Iowa. Freedom of speech is fine, but a constant barrage of distorted and dishonest ads have bought elections before. Free “speech” that is dishonest and dominant is out of bounds, especially when it can dominate the air waves, and/or dominate our “free press”.
In any case … we know Romney is the establishment choice. But here is another quote from Krauthammer …
“he (Newt) did so well at the debate, presenting a vision, making arguments, making the conservative case … he does that in a way that nobody in the field can match”
Maybe Charles can learn to stop worrying and love the Newt.
I’m just going to quibble with your choice of wording a little bit Professor.
Turns out Romney did not win Iowa. Rick Santorum may have, but we’ll never know for sure because there will be no certified winner due to missing voting records in 8 precincts. That said, of the votes that could be certified Santorum edged out Romney:
There IS a certified winner (Santorum), we just won’t have all the votes.
It might be more appropriate to phrase it as “While Santorum will be certified as winning, the actual victor will possibly never be known due to voting records missing in 8 precincts.”
Anybody think that the “Form E” results from those 8 precincts will magically be acquired, tallied and that “low and behold, Romney DID actually win?”
This is irrelevant. Romney wins, Santorum wins, it doesn’t matter. The story has moved on.
The major media apparently believes that conservatives are unforgiving idiots who can be played into apesh’sville over this nonsense.
Romeny Wins!! (with a difference of 9 votes)Romeny/Santorum Tie !! (with a difference of 34 votes)
This is really disquieting.
Santorum is almost certainly the winner. I took a look at the 8 precincts that failed to report, and based on their share of the 2010 gubernatorial primary vote and their county’s 2012 caucus vote, the total vote in these 8 precincts would be something like this:
Santorum 59
Romney 48
Not percentages, actual votes. So it would be nearly impossible for Romney to make up 34 votes through clerical errors in these tiny precincts. The chance of Romney having won is infinitesimal.
Not only that… I think it’s highly probable that the records got “lost” BECAUSE they showed Santorum won. As it stands now, our LSM overlords will not walk back the narrative of two-in-a-row, because, hey, who knows who really won? How very convenient /sarc
Turns out progs aren’t the only ones with the means to get their desired results thru fraud and shenanigans. Truly revolting >:(
Oh, well,it sounded good. Back to the old drawing board of quirky sayings.