Things are moving fast and furious

Yesterday, two new developments occurred in the race for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination. First, the Iowa results were recounted; it seems that Rick Santorum actually won by 34 votes (but this will yet change; eight precincts haven't been heard from), instead of Mitt Romney winning by 8. But this is not an actual vote that decides the Presidency (or even the nomination) the way a few votes gave Florida (and ultimately the White House) to George W. Bush in 2000. It's basically a tie, and Santorum and Romney will probably both get about the same number of delegates from Iowa that they would have gotten if the original result stood. All that means is that Santorum can now claim to have won Iowa — a state where he had campaigned hard for months, and which Romney had essentially ignored until two weeks before the caucuses. If Santorum points to this and minimizes Romney's win in New Hampshire (which he is doing now, on the grounds that Romney “almost lives there”), the real comparison is this. Romney won New Hampshire decisively, as he was expected to; Santorum, by contrast, got what was really a tie in Iowa, a state where Romney was given little chance.

The second development was Rick Perry's departure from the contest, endorsing Newt Gingrich. This probably means that Gingrich will win South Carolina today. But how keen will the “values voters,” who support Perry, be for a man who cheated on his first wife with the woman who then became his second, and then cheated on his second wife with the woman who then became his third? I think this stalls Romney's quest for the Presidency a bit, but it will resume.