It's hard for me to put it better than this reader:
I have to say, setting aside the drama of who won, and the fact that it is silly to read too much into an under-attended caucus of 100,000 Iowans, there is something very crystallizing about the Iowa results. Could the GOP be any more divided into three clear camps?
You have your hardcore Christianists, who think of every issues in the prism of Jesus and the Bible, who are incensed at gay marriage and abortion and general secularism. That's your Santorum third. Then you have your old-school wealthier Republicans, who like a foreign policy with a big dick and want to make some damn money, regardless of the state of the economy, and who could really care less about what a candidate really believes as long as he says the right words … boom, Romney. And then you have your purists, your libertarians, who probably have no beef with gays or blacks per se, but don't mind a candidate who certainly makes no effort to pander to those minority groups. so long as the big bad awful government just goes away. Paul.
I dont see how these three groups – and all three are alive and well in the modern GOP – can come together under one candidate, no matter how pretzely he or she may be. It's a fractious party that simply cannot match Barack Obama and his knack for universal, inclusive rhetoric. The nominee will be a well-funded Romney (a Romney battered by months of hostility from Santorum and Gingrich), and I just cannot see the Republican base rallying around this guy.
(Image: As eries of shifting Des Moines Register front-pages from Charles Apple, via Ben Smith)
The Dish 