Romney pips Santorum to win first Republican vote in Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA // Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney may have won the inaugural contest to determine who will be Barack Obama’s main challenger in this year’s US presidential elections.

Iowa vote

Obama campaign warns of 'extremist' Republicans. Read article

But his victory in the Iowa caucuses by the narrowest of margins - eight votes out of 122,255 ballots cast - shows that his Republican Party is anything but certain about what kind of candidate it wants to challenge Mr Obama in November.

Mr Romney may consider himself to have the advantage, and the millionaire businessman will certainly try to paint himself as the only candidate with broad enough appeal to mount a serious challenge to Mr Obama.

Nevertheless, his hair-breadth’s victory mirrors a party that is hardly united in passion behind him. His appeal appears to lie in the cold-blooded perception that the economy would be safe in his hands were he president.

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, who took a surprising second place in Iowa, will continue to appeal to America’s religious conservative voters as the campaigns move to other states. His focus on family values helped him in Iowa where the evangelical Christian vote is a significant bloc.

But the man who says he wants to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if Tehran does not allow international inspectors in, has a lot of catching up to do. His campaign remains small and underfunded, and though he should be able to raise more funds now, he has campaigned little in any other state.

The success of Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian who came in third, suggests foreign policy could prove a significant issue with some Republican voters. Mr Paul advocates closing down US military bases overseas, bringing American soldiers home and ending foreign aid to all countries, including Israel – a deeply controversial position in America.

The Iowa vote may have shed more light on whose dreams to win in November will soon be abandoned. The caucuses are traditionally poor predictors of who will win the nomination, but it does usually winnow out the field, said Lyle Muller, editor of The Cedar Rapid Gazette, Iowa's second-largest daily newspaper.

“In many ways, Iowa is about who has to quit,” Mr Muller said.

Michelle Bachman, a congresswoman from Minnesota and a social conservative who wants to phase out welfare programmes, was the evening’s biggest loser, finishing a distant sixth with just five per cent of the vote.

Yesterday, she announced she would end her campaign, saying she had been inspired to run to repeal the healthcare law passed in 2010, which she called “socialised medicine” that “violates our fundamental liberties as Americans”.

She also denounced it as the “playground for left-wing social engineering”.

Tuesday’s other losers were Newt Gingrich, once the most powerful man in the US House of Representatives, and Rick Perry, the Texas governor, who both fared worse than many predicted in the weeks leading up to the voting. Their poor showing will jeopardize their ability to raise money to pay campaign staff and finance all-important television and radio advertising.

Mr Perry has said he is going home to Texas to consider his position. Mr Gingrich so far remains unbowed, but he has seen his support plummet dramatically in the past weeks, and his campaign remains underfunded.

At the other end, meanwhile, much will now depend on how Republicans in other states look at Mr Romney, Mr Muller said, and if the other candidates will start to “gang up” on him.

“To a large degree, the question now is how soon Republicans will get behind him,” Mr Muller said.

Mr Romney would certainly appear to be the favourite, partly because Mr Santorum is perceived as too conservative and Mr Paul, too much of a maverick to appeal to a broader public.

Mr Romney is expected easily to win next Tuesday’s primary contest in New Hampshire, next door to his longtime home, Massachusetts. That will give him significant momentum as he heads into South Carolina, where the first southern contest of the campaign takes place on January 21.

But Mr Romney is viewed with a great deal of suspicion by evangelical Christians, who have significant presence in South Carolina, because of his Mormon faith.

“People will want an anti-Romney,” said Mr Brent Oleson, a Ron Paul supporter adn member of the board of supervisors that governs Iowa’s Linn County. “Paul has his support, and Santorum will see his profile raised now.”

Mr Paul’s success, Mr Oleson added, also proved not only that the libertarian wing in the Republican party was growing, but the party establishment can no longer ignore those supporting a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Mr Paul believes that government should be as small as possible, and advocates the dismantling of eight federal agencies, including the Department of Commerce and the Department of Education. Mr Paul has been the only candidate who strongly emphasised foreign policy in his campaign. He believes the US shoud minimize its footprint overseas. He was sharply critical of the war in Iraq and does not favour any military strike against Iran.

That platform, along with his determination to dramatically reduce the size of government, has gone down well not only with a deeply loyal support base – in Iowa’s straw poll in August, Mr Paul finished second - but with young people. Mr Paul won 117 of the 179 votes cast at the Iowa Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Iowa.

“Sooner or later the party has to deal with the fact that people are tired of wars and tired of meddling in other countries’ affairs,” said Mr Oleson. “That is the central message of Paul. We are tired of overseas adventures.”

It was a message that also resonated well in Linn County’s 25th precinct on Tuesday night. At the caucus here, 30 of the 116 Republicans who had gathered at the Wright Elementary School gymnasium on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s second-largest city, voted for Mr Paul, six ahead of Mr Romney.

The result did not suit Steve Schneib, 62, a sales representative for a clothing manufacturer, however. Mr Schneib had arrived too late to cast a vote he said would have gone to Mr Perry.

He acknowledged that Mr Paul had “worked really hard” but was not impressed with Mr Romney and his Mormon faith.

“Mormonism is a problem for evangelicals because we believe the Bible is the word of God. They have introduced the Book of Mormon.”

Still Mr Schneib said, if Mr Romney became the Republican nominee, he would support him. So, he said, would most Republicans.

“They will vote for whoever is nominated. They do not want four more years of Obama.”

okarmi@thenational.ae