Topic: Decline of the West
Thought I'd take a bit of a post-2011 break to digest the political lessons of the year and await the outcome of the Iowa caucus. First impression: the Republican nomination fight is far from over. Mitt Romney's narrow victory and Rick Santorum's strong second-place finish indicate that GOP primary voters are not resigned to a Romney candidacy. At this point Mitt still has a better chance than anyone of winning the nomination, but it's no sure thing.
Romney's problem: GOP conservatives just don't consider him a member of the club. They're still looking for that elusive, conservative non-Romney. Today it's Rick Santorum and we'll see if he has staying power. Iowa hasn't settled the GOP nomination fight.
Iowa has, however, performed the useful function of knocking off a couple of marginal candidates. I expect that Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry will soon elect to hang up their skates. The former finished fifth despite spending oodles of cash on TV advertising; the latter finished sixth with a dismal 5% of the vote. Ron Paul, who finished third, and Newt Gingrich, who finished fourth, will probably stick around for the time being, but their chances of winning the nomination are slight to nonexistent.
Individual postmortems and campaign forecasts to follow.
