The fallout from the Iowa results (blogged below) was pretty silly on the right. Trump turned into a whiny baby and alleged that winner Ted Cruz cheated. What Cruz’s people did, apparently, in some Iowa districts, was tell voters that Carson was leaving the race (based on a CNN report which didn’t actually say that), and that they had better switch to Cruz. Typically, Trump was whining and murmuring legal action.
The thing is: Trump was right. But Cruz would have won anyway, and now that the candidates are in New Hampshire, Trump seems to have moved on. He’s going to win bigtime in the Granite State.
Meanwhile, on the left, Hillary was declared the (slight) winner, but not by much. There continue to be murmurings of voting irregularities and miscounts on the Dem side — nothing that reflects badly on either campaign — and Iowa might hold an audit if the results. Anyway, in terms of delegate count, it won’t make much difference, although we could learn, as we did in 2012 Republican Iowa Caucus, that the person we thought had won din’t actually win.
A very good debate last night (as my tweets suggest). At one point, I thought to myself, “Here are two people in the Democratic race for president, fighting over who is the most progressive. That word, “progressive” — Democrats used to run from that word. Now, they embrace it. You couldn’t invoke that word 8, 12 or 16 years go.”
Five more days until NH weighs in.
And since I last posted, we have said goodbye to Rick Santorum and Rand Paul. It is a little surprising about Rand Paul because he wasn’t in the lower depths like Santorum or Huckabee. He was in there with Christie and even polling better than Bush. But here’s the thing about Paul: it really looked like he HATED the process. No fun at all. Maybe it was his contempt for people or having to ask for money. Plus, he’s the only presidential candidate who is running for re-election somewhere else — for his House seat. So maybe it is not surprising he quit.
Anyway, as for Santorum, he didn’t have the ride he had in 2012. Remember this?