I don’t care if you call it a win or a tie. In Iowa on Tuesday, Mitt Romney had a performance that looks ugly on the stat sheet , but which accomplished quite a bit when you consider it in its broader context.
The two most important things that Mr. Romney accomplished are as follows:
First, Mr. Romney eliminated Rick Perry from the nomination contest. Of course, Mr. Romney got a lot of help from Mr. Perry himself. Maybe we should use the passive voice — Mr. Perry was eliminated from the nomination contest. The conclusion is the same: the man who once looked like Mr. Romney’s most formidable rival has suspended his campaign.
The result was not unexpected based on late-stage polling — in fact, the polling average nailed Mr. Perry’s share of the vote almost to the decimal point.
But it was not long ago that Mr. Perry looked like he might finish in a solid third place, at a bare minimum, in Iowa; a poll conducted as recently as Dec. 12 actually had Mr. Perry ahead of Mr. Romney. And there was some chance that Mr. Perry might have done quite a bit better than third place. I’m not convinced that there was anything that happened to Rick Santorum that couldn’t have happened to Mr. Perry, if only Mr. Perry had received the right injection of momentum — say, an endorsement from the Family Leader, a conservative group — at the right time. — via Winning Ugly, but Winning – NYTimes.com
I think is pretty mcu spot on, read the rest, it is very interesting. A little wonkish, but very interesting.
This is a mememorandum thread.