The Iowa Caucuses

Last night's 8 vote margin for Mitt Romney suggests an interesting spring - but an eventual result.   I came away with five conclusions about the state of the GOP primaries.

1. First, Romney needs to figure out how to engage effectively with the evangelicals.   Clearly, he has not.   2. Second, the GOP voters here were energized.  You can say a lot about whether the margin was too close or just enough - but the fact is there were a lot of people participating in the caucuses.   One does not feel the same amount of energy on the left.
3. Third,  Bachman and Perry are history.  (Gingrich should be, but he proved again that his mouth sometimes exceeds his mind.)
4. Fourth, I doubt whether Paul will run in a third party spoiler role - there are a couple of considerations .  His son has a promising career in the GOP but only if the dad knows when to bow out of the race but not the party.   At the same time, the string for Paul looks worse not better.   A lot of people have commented that Romney is a 25% candidate - but the same could be said of Paul (only with a slightly lower number). Some of those voters will never be satisfied without Paul but a lot will look for a candidate who does not seek to expand government.  If Romney can make that point - he will be successful.
5.  As soon as it is clear that Romney is the candidate watch the democrats begin to unload negatively - the professionals believe that negative campaigning works (as evidenced even in the last few weeks in Iowa) but there is good reason to believe that negative attacks by Obama may not be successful.   His future depends more on whether the American people change their mood about his lack of success in solving our economic problems than in cleverly crafted campaign ads.