Weigel asks:
Four years ago, a depressed GOP went to the precinct caucuses, very well aware that Democrats had all the energy. The total GOP vote: 119,188. This year, Republicans should be psyched about the chance to uproot Barack Obama. There will be something above 122,000 total votes. An improvement, right? Well… in 2008, 86 percent of the people who chose the GOP caucuses were Republicans. This year, 75 percent of the electorate was Republican, with the rest of the vote coming from independents and Democrats. What the hell happened?
Well, you had an awful field, and no Democratic caucus contest to compete with it. But the underlying dynamics are a party electorate literally dying and the one infusion of new voters, Ron Paul, dissed as "disgusting" by Santorum and "indecent" by Gingrich. Philip Klein worries:
[E]ven if Romney wins the nomination, the Iowa results don't bode well for when it comes to assessing the Republican Party's chances of beating President Obama in November. Though turnout was up from the 2008 caucuses, it was only up by a few thousand votes, even as GOP voter registration grew and more candidates were contesting the state. Romney actually got six fewer votes this time than he did four years ago, but it was enough because nobody matched Mike Huckabee's appeal. Four years ago, Democrats were frothing at the mouth to win back the White House after two terms of President Bush. Starting from Iowa, the enthusiasm they felt was palpable — and they would have been ready to fight for whoever emerged as the nominee. The night he won the caucuses, Obama addressed a crowd with thousands of supporters going wild. We haven't seen any of the GOP candidates attract that sort of affection. And the entrance polls suggest conservatives still have major doubts about Romney.
When the right wakes up from its fevered anti-Obamam dreams, they willl begin to realize who has truly shifted the political landscape these past four years. Erick Erickson adds:
[T]he media would have you believe that the 123,000 people who turned out for the Hawkeye Caucii was a record. This is simply not true except superficially. If you take out the non-Republicans who came into the caucuses last night for Ron Paul, the Republican turn out was less than 2008 — even considering the ratio of independents to Republicans who turned out in 2008. At its best, this turn out does not signal core enthusiasm with the field as it is presently constituted …
Yep. Chart from Keith Humphreys:
Romney “surpassed” Bob Dole to earn the distinction of having the lowest winning share of the vote in the history of the Iowa caucuses. Never has support in a political party been so tepid for its “favorite”. Romney not only set a record by being the first Iowa winner to convince more than three quarters of voters to choose someone else, but also managed to do even worse than he himself did last time around despite four intervening years of hard, expensive campaigning.
Meep, meep?
The Dish 
