Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are in a dead heat as the top choices for Iowans likely to attend the Jan. 3 Republican presidential caucuses. A Bloomberg News poll shows Cain at 20 percent, Paul at 19 percent, Romney at 18 percent and Gingrich at 17 percent among the likely attendees with the caucuses that start the nominating contests seven weeks away.
Some important points - the Republican "Iowa caucus" is not the ridiculous affair that Democrats stage where you have to stay all night. Here is a description:
In the Republican caucuses, each voter officially casts his or her vote by secret ballot. Voters are presented blank sheets of paper with no candidate names on them. After listening to some campaigning for each candidate by caucus participants, they write their choices down and the Republican Party of Iowa tabulates the results at each precinct and transmits them to the media. [. . .] The non-binding results are tabulated and reported to the state party, which releases the results to the media. Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the county conventions, which choose delegates to the district conventions, which in turn selects delegates to the Iowa State Convention. Thus it is the Republican Iowa State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which select the ultimate delegates from Iowa to the Republican National Convention. All delegates are officially unbound from the results of the precinct caucus, although media organizations either estimate delegate numbers by estimating county convention results or simply divide them proportionally.
As you can see, the Iowa GOP caucus does not actually select any delegates to the GOP convention. But even if it did, the number of delegates at stake is miniscule. But the media reports the results. And at this stage, that is what matters.
Which brings me to my title question - "What If Ron Paul Wins Iowa?" It would be an interesting event to say the least. But I think the Media would do its best to make it meaningless. You'll notice that the Media has never given Ron Paul his turn in the sun, no matter what his polling.
In some ways, that approach is defensible. Ron Paul is almost certainly not going to be the GOP nominee. But then again, neither is Herman Cain.
>Even now, it seems to me that the second favorite for the GOP nomination behind Romney is still Texas Governor Rick Perry. Strangely, Perry has not thrown himself into an all chips in Iowa strategy though his team must know that if Romney wins Iowa, the race is over.
In a month and a half, we may know who the GOP nominee will be as the results roll in from the Iowa caucuses the night of January 3, 2012. If Romney takes Iowa, the race will be over. If it is "Not Romney," then you have to consider who the "Not Romney" is. A Rick Perry win in Iowa could lock up the nomination for him.
Anybody else and unless Perry shows well in Iowa, I'm inclined to call ballgame for Romney.
Remember what comes after Iowa - New Hampshire where Romney will be strong. If Perry wins Iowa, he can survive a Romney win in New Hampshire, South Carolina follows and there is a general distaste for Romney in the GOP. Barring that, I'm not seeing a path for the Not Romney.
