Romney and Santorum Finish Iowa in a Dead Heat

I don't remember a close finish in the Republican Presidential Primaries.

According to the latest figures available, Mitt Romney has 30,015 to Rick Santorum's 30,007...a mere 8 votes currently separate them! Romney and Santorum are both headed to New Hampshire to be sparring partners for one another. The Ap projects that Romney will have 13 delegates and Santorum will have 12 delegates from this contest, which is non-binding. The real selection will be made in June at the state convention of the Republican Party of Iowa.


While Romney and Santorum split 50% of the vote between them, 22% went to Ron Paul. He was neck and neck with the other two during the night until the college towns had reported in, then he began to slide back in relation to the leaders. Ron Paul declared victory and announced that he is going to take the fight to New Hampshire, where Romney has a 2 to 1 lead over the next contender.


The second tier of candidates were Newt Gingrich, who finished fourth with 16,251 votes (14%) and Rick Perry, who gathered 12,604 votes (11%). Both men kept this proprtion of the vote throughout the night. Gingrich promises a bloodbath for Romney in South Carolina while Perry is returning to Texas to write his exit strategy.


The third tier of finshers were Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and a tiny core of hangers on for Herman Cain. 


Michele Bachmann managed to attract a mere 6,073 votes (5%) as she fell from the heady heights that winning the Ames Straw Poll gave her this past summer. In her speech, she sounded defiant, ready to carry on the fight to another state. Jon Huntsman finished last among the active candidates, with 745 votes (less than 1%). He has reaped what he has sown with his service as Ambassador to China for the Obama Administration. He believed it to be a path to the White House. Instead he found himself in oblivion.


What Does It Mean?
Iowa is the first stop in the Republican Party nomination process that weeds out the incompetent candidates. For the first tier of finishers (Romney, Santorum and Paul), it is validation that they can manage a campaign and have the infrastructure to manage the logistics of getting out to many small communities to get their message out to the voters. These candidates all have proven that they deserve to be heard and that their message has some amount of traction with Republican voters.

For the second tier (Gingrich and Perry), it serves as notice that they must step up their game or forever find themselves in the "also ran" category.

The third tier finishers (Bachmann and Huntsmann) should quietly exit stage left unless they have a large war chest of donations, got into the race very late, or for some odd reason, chose to make the nearly always fatal mistake of ignoring the Iowa contest.

Candidate Videos

Here are videos of the candidates (where available) reacting to their finish last night.



Mitt Romney







Rick Santorum







Ron Paul







Newt Gingrich







Rick Perry







Michele Bachmann







There was no video uploaded of a Jon Huntsman speech on the Iowa results, so I'll let this interview stand for Jon Huntsman...who is toast any way you slice it in the 2012 presidential race.



The Next Race


The next primary is New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney is the favorite to win on January 10th. It will be interesting to see how  things play out, especially if Newt Gingrich has decided to go negative and attempt to bleed the Mitt Romney campaign in a self-destructive orgy of negative campaigning.

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Michele Bachmann Wins 2012 Iowa Straw Poll

Here are the results as announced on CSPAN of the Iowa Straw Poll:




4823 Michele Bachmann
4671 Ron Paul
2293 Tim Pawlenty
1657 Rick Santorum
1456 Herman Cain
 567 Mitt Romney
 385 Newt Gingrich
  69 Jon Huntsman
  35 Thaddeus Mccotter
 162 Scattering of candidates


What does it mean? 


In my opinion, it measures the willingness of a campaign to sell its soul to win a poll.

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Bachmann Enters 2012 Race Video and Transcript of Announcement

I apologize for the late coverage on this story, but my Internet has been a bit unreliable for the past few days...here is the full video and transcript of Michele Bachmann announcing her run for President of the United States.









Candidate Website


Transcript:

It's great to be in Iowa and even better to be in Waterloo where I was born. It's fitting to be here at the Snowden House, the place that once served as the home of the Waterloo Women's Club. I stand here today in front of many friends and family to formally announce my candidacy for President of the United States. I do so because I am grateful for the blessings God and this country have given to me, and not because of the position of the office, but because I am determined that every American deserves these blessings and that together we can once again strengthen America and restore the promise of the future. I want to bring a voice, your voice, to the White House, just as I have brought your voice to the halls of congress to secure the promise of the future for our generation and generations to come.

I often say that everything I needed to know I learned in Iowa. It was at Hawthorne and Valley Park Elementary Schools and my home, both a short distance from here, where those Iowan roots were firmly planted. It's those roots and my faith in God that guide me today. I'm a descendent of generations Iowans. I know what it means to be from Iowa—what we value and what's important. Those are the values that helped make Iowa the breadbasket of the world and those are the values, the best of all of us that we must recapture to secure the promise of the future.

Waterloo was different five decades ago when I grew up here. That elementary school building was a lot younger and for that matter so was I. Five decades ago when I went there to school the halls were teeming with young children who, like me, had dreams of their future. A future with promise and parents who wanted it to be filled with more opportunities than they had. Five decades ago America had less debt, in fact our national debt was less than 300 billion dollars. A gallon of gasoline was 31 cents, and owning a home was part of living the American dream. Today our debt is over 14 trillion dollars, a gallon of gas is still outrageously high, millions of homes are in foreclosure, and those dreams are distant for many Americans.

Times have changed here in Waterloo, but the people still have the same spirit we Iowans have come to exemplify. We work hard, we live within our means and we expect to pass on a better life to our children. But our government keeps getting bigger making it tougher for us to pass on that life, causing our jobs to go overseas and spending more of the money we make, while we keep less of it.

Don't mistake my happy memories of growing up in Waterloo as pining for the past. I recognize it's impossible to turn the clock back and go back to a different day. Instead, I want this moment to serve as a reminder about the best of who we are as a nation, what our values are, and what went in to making America great to capture its best for the promise of the future. I want my candidacy for the presidency to stand for the moment when "we the people" reclaimed our independence from a government that has gotten too big, spends too much and has taken away too much of our liberty.

Americans have always confronted challenges. Ours is a history marked by struggles as well as prosperity. My early days were difficult as they were for many Americans, especially during the time when my mother struggled to raise us after divorce. But we made our own way. We depended on our neighbors and ourselves and not our government for help. We trusted in God and our neighbors and not in Government. Americans still have that same spirit. But government keeps trying to erase it because government thinks it knows better—that government can create jobs, and make a better life for all of us, even make us healthier! But that's NOT the case. We have to recapture our founders' vision of a constitutionally conservative government if we are to secure the promise of the future.

I'm also here because Waterloo laid the foundation for my own roots in politics. I never thought that I would end up in public life. I grew up here in Iowa. My grandparents are buried here. I remember how sad I was leaving Iowa to go to Minnesota in the sixth grade, because this part of Iowa was all I knew—I remember telling my parents that we couldn't move to Minnesota because I hadn't even been to Des Moines to see the state capitol.

I grew up a democrat. My first involvement in politics was working for Jimmy Carter's election in 1976. But when I saw the direction President Carter took our country; how his big spending liberal majority grew government, weakened our standing in the world, and how they decreased our liberties, I became a Republican. I remember standing in the kitchen of my grandma's house on Lafayette Street in Waterloo listening to my dad, a Democrat debating the merits of the Great Society with my grandmother, a Republican. I remember her prophetic admonition to my father that the Great Society wouldn't work because it wouldn't be my father's generation who paid for it, but rather my brother, David and me. And now that prediction has come true and neither my democrat father nor my republican grandmother would have condoned this spending and debt.

I hadn't planned on getting into politics. I loved the law and went to law school. I went on to William and Mary to become a tax lawyer. Together with my husband we started a successful small business.

When I saw the problems with our local school district and how academic excellence was being eroded by federal government interference with the local schools, I decided to do more than just complain about it. One of those Iowa values instilled in me was to always leave whatever you were involved with better than when you found it, so I decided to seek public office to make our local school district better. I didn't seek public office for fortune or power, but simply to make life better in our community and education better for our children. And now I seek the presidency not for vanity, but because America is at a crucial moment and I believe that we must make a bold choice if we are to secure the promise of the future.

We cannot continue to kick the can of our problems down the road, because they are problems of today and not tomorrow.

We cannot continue to rack up debt on the backs of future generations.
We can't afford an unconstitutional health plan that costs too much and is worth so little.
And we can't afford four more years of failed leadership at home and abroad.
We can't afford four more years of millions of Americans out of work or in jobs that pay too little to support their families.
We can't afford four more years of a housing crisis that is devaluing our homes and making home ownership impossible for many Americans.
We can't afford four more years of a foreign policy that leads from behind and doesn't stand up for our friends and stand up to our enemies.
We can't afford four more years of Barack Obama.

As a constitutional conservative, I believe in the Founding Father's vision of a limited government that trusts in and preserves the unlimited potential of the American people. I don't believe that the solutions to our problems come from Washington: more than ever, Washington IS the problem, and the real solutions will come from our businesses, our communities, our schools and the most basic and powerful unit of all-our families.

We've started another campaign season, almost when it seemed like the last one just ended. Through all of the rancor of the campaign, let us always remember that there is much more that unites us than divides us. Our problems don't have an identity of party, they are problems created by both parties.

Americans agree that our country is in peril today and we must act with urgency to save it. And Americans aren't interested in affiliation; they are interested in solutions, and leadership that will tell the truth. And the truth is that Americans ARE the solution and not the government!

This election is about big issues, not petty ones. When all is said and done, we cannot be about big government as usual. Then America will lose.

In Washington I am bringing a voice to the halls of congress that has been missing for a long time. It is the voice of the people I love and learned from growing up in Waterloo. It is the voice of reasonable, fair-minded people who love this country, who are patriotic, and who see the United States as the indispensable nation of the world.

My voice is part of a movement to take back our country, and now I want to take that voice to the White House. It is the voice of constitutional conservatives who want our government to do its job and not ours and who want our government to live within its means and not our children's and grandchildren's.

I am here in Waterloo, Iowa to announce today: We can win in 2012 and we will. Our voice has been growing louder and stronger. And it is made up of Americans from all walks of life like a three-legged stool. It's the peace through strength Republicans, and I'm one of them, it's fiscal conservatives, and I'm one of them, and it's social conservatives, and I'm one of them. It's the Tea Party movement and I'm one of them.

The liberals, and to be clear I'm NOT one of them, want you to think the Tea Party is the Right Wing of the Republican Party. But it's not. It's made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who've never been political a day in their life, libertarians, Republicans. We're people who simply want America back on the right track again.

We're practical people who want the country to work again. This is a powerful coalition the left fears, and they should because, Make no mistake about it, President Obama is a one-term president!

In February 2009 President Obama was very confident that his economic policies would turn the country around within a year. He said, "A year from now, I think people are going to see that we're starting to make some progress. If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition." Well Mr. President, your policies haven't worked. Spending our way out of this recession hasn't worked. And so Mr. President We Take You at Your Word!

Waterloo holds a special place for me, but also holds a special place for our country. You sent and still do send your sons and daughters off to fight for America and to protect the freedoms that allow us to gather here today. I honor my dad who served in the United States Air Force. I honor my step dad who served in the United States Army. And I honor my stepbrother who retired full United States Navy. We will never forget those sacrifices; it is part of our past we must remember to secure the promise of the future. It is those values that make our country unique and make us the most powerful force for good on this planet. I believe the United States of America is THE indispensible nation. It is that spirit that separates us from those who would give their own life for others from those who sacrifice others, like terrorists who use little children as human shields.

Perhaps the valor of our American fighting heroes was never captured better than in the sacrifice made by the Sullivan brothers from right here in Waterloo. The Sullivan family was much like other families in America during the depression. They were fortunate to get by. Most of the family worked here in Waterloo at the local meat packing plant. When a close friend of the family died at Pearl Harbor, the five Sullivan brothers enlisted in the Navy, but under the condition that they be allowed to serve together. One of the brothers wrote, "We will make a team together that can't be beat." Born and raised here in Waterloo, the five Sullivan brothers had always stuck together. However, one fateful morning after a long night of intense battle, a Japanese torpedo struck the USS Juneau, the ship on which they served killing most of the crew and launching the rest into the water. The oldest of the Sullivans, George, searched tirelessly for his brothers, but they were not to be found. He had survived the attack, but later perished at sea. All but 10 of the 697 brave men of the Juneau, gave their lives for their country. In spite of the intense pain of losing their five sons all at once, the parents of the Sullivans became an inspiration to America speaking to millions on behalf of the war effort. To honor the Sullivans two ships were named for them. The motto of the last ship—We Stick Together!

Theirs was a demonstration of the Holy Scriptures that says: "Greater love hath no man than this, but that he lay down his life for his friend."

That is the kind of love we Americans have for our country. We Americans stick together. We triumph together. In the words of Daniel Webster, we are, "One cause, one country, one heart." That is the kind of commitment it will take to face the great challenges of today. The people of this great country have that level of courage and they are longing for a President who will listen to them, who will lead from the front, and not from behind.

I'm Michele Bachmann and I'm running for President of the United States.

Together, we can do this. Together we can reign in all the corruption and waste that has become Washington and instead leave a better America for future generations.

Together we can make a team that can't be beat!

Together we can secure the promise of the future.

Together we can - and together we will!

God bless you and God bless the United States of America!

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Republican Hopefuls Debate in New Hampshire

This is a video playlist of the second forum in the Republican Party 2012 Presidential nomination race. It was held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.

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2012 Poll Season Begins: Pew Research Center March 2011 Poll

You can download a copy of the entire poll that the above graphic was swiped from at The Pew Center for Research. It is an interesting read on what people might be thinking.

Commentary

Most interesting to me, is that it shows Mitt Romney as the favorite choice of self-identified Tea Party members as a Presidential candidate. I wouldn't have expected that. Most Tea Partiers I am familiar with seem Starstruck by Sarah Palin, Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann. Mike Huckabee's strong showing was a surprise, also.


My dictum regarding Republican Presidential Primaries is that too many conservatives are choosing to run, most of them claiming the mantle of Reagan. This has had the effect of diluting the conservative vote to allow a more moderate candidate to gain momentum and win the nomination.


The 2008 presidential primaries are a prime example of this, where several conservatives vied for a limited pool of votes. This allowed John McCain, aka King RINO, to waltz to the nomination. Even when it became clear that he was the man to beat, people like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul stayed in the race, acting as enablers for John McCain to win the nomination.


I see the signs are pointing to a repeat of the same disaster in 2012. Here is the parade of names in consideration, in alphabetical order:  Michele Bachman, Mitch Daniels, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Jim DeMint, Mitt Romney and John Thune. Those are just the most credible of a sea of more than two dozen people under consideration as probable to run. This is far too many.


How did the Republican Party ever get in a situation where there are no hurdles for a campaign to go through in order to prove their viability to run in the presidential primary? What we have is a sea of candidates (AND supporters) who have egos so large that they cannot conceive of a Presidential Primary Season without them participating. 


I think we have people more interested in personal gain than interest in serving the nation. There is nothing wrong with making a living, but to continually leverage gullible voters into cash by writing books, appearing on television, giving speeches and establishing online cash cows, AND running laughable Presidential Campaigns is doing more harm than good to the party, and the nation. Just look what 2008 wrought: President Barack Hussein Obama II. What will 2012 bring? 

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