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Following much thoughtful consternation, I have decided to pull my support and endorsement of Texas Governor Rick Perry for the GOP presidential nomination.  I realize the redstate diary commenters, won’t be kind but this needs to be said.  This decision wasn’t easy but a serious evaluation of the field should inform us that Rick Perry has no realistic path to victory in South Carolina, Florida and beyond. I realize that redstate.com’s Erick Erickson continues to stick by him, that South Carolina is Perry’s state and that he has re-tooled his staff.  But it is too little too late and at...

On Tuesday, Mitt Romney beat Rick Santorum by eight votes in the Iowa caucus (maybe). Nervous Romney supporters, who had seen him down by over a hundred votes at different points in the night, were thrilled. Establishment Republicans were thrilled. And media personalities who’ve hoped Obama can get lucky enough to face Romney, instead of real conservative, were likewise thrilled. But Romney’s camp might want to take a hard and sober look at the cloud that accompanies this silver lining: namely, that Romney has been running for president for 5 years now yet 75% of Iowans still wanted no part...

UPDATED: Mitt Romney got 20 fewer votes in Moulton precinct, Appanoose County GOP chairman says!!!!!

Some people today seem to have trouble with my formulation that the consistent anti-Romney sentiment (for such it is) of around 75 percent — reflected in the Iowa caucuses results — is somehow logically fallacious, and that one could just as easily make the same short-end equation regarding Perry, Paul, Gingrich, Bachmann, et al. They entirely miss the point. From the start of the GOP race, the contest has been divided between Mitt Romney on one side and Everybody Else Plus Ron Paul on the other, as conservatives examined possible alternatives to the front-runner, Willard. This explains the sine-wave shape of...

The Iowa caucuses may not have much predictive value, but they did a wonderful job of unmasking both elitist whingers on the left and incompetent whiners on the right. As they do every presidential election cycle, progressives of pallor wore their indelible disdain for Middle America on their sleeves. Pale-faced University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom launched a 6,000-word jeremiad, littered with factual errors, against his home state's residents. The abridged version: Raaaaaaaacists! Hicks! Christians! Argggh! In the safe harbors of The Atlantic just a few weeks before Tuesday's electoral event, Bloom sneered: "Those who stay in rural Iowa...

Iowa caucus results show it's still early in the game and nothing's certain. So what happened on the way to the Republican presidential nomination? Well, even with a slim official win, Mitt Romney did no better in practical terms this year than he did four years ago in 2008 because of the level of competition. This proves that the road to the 2012 nomination will be anything but smooth, and that he has a tough road ahead if he is to win the Republican presidential nomination. Mitt has a big problem in his seeming inability to relate to the average...

(Newser) – Mitt Romney's 8-vote victory in Iowa was the result of a typo, according to an Iowa man who helped count the votes. Edward True, a Ron Paul supporter, says there were just 2 votes for Romney at his 53-person caucus, but the Iowa Republican Party's website says there were 22. The discrepancy "says Rick Santorum won Iowa—not Mitt Romney," True asserts. Party officials say True is not a precinct captain and shouldn't be talking about results, and discrepancies won't be discussed until all results are certified, which could take weeks.

Caucus Vote Counter Says Romney Mistakenly Given 20 Votes (Video report at link) DES MOINES, Iowa -- Caucus night was chaotic in many places, with hundreds of voters, candidates showing up and the throngs of media who followed. The world's eyes were on Iowa. But in the quiet town of Moulton, Appanoose County, a caucus of 50 people may just blow up the results. Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the...

“This is not a time for us to shrink. This is a time for us to have bold colors, not pale pastels.” -- Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum campaigning at the Rockingham County Nursing Home in Brentwood, N.H. It doesn’t look like Mitt Romney could lose New Hampshire, but then again, he can’t really win it either. Even a 20-point landslide by Romney in New Hampshire would be instantly discounted as merely meeting expectations for the former governor of the neighboring state who keeps a summer home there. The only way Romney could make news in New Hampshire would be...

Des Moines, Iowa (AP) -- The military is investigating an Army reservist who took the stage at a political event for Ron Paul and expressed his support for the Republican presidential candidate. At a Paul rally on Tuesday night in Iowa, Cpl. Jesse Thorsen stood at a podium wearing his military fatigues and said the congressman's foreign policy was "hands down better than any other candidate's."

An Afghanistan war veteran is in trouble for giving a political speech while in uniform at a caucus night rally with Ron Paul on Tuesday in Iowa. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Reserve told TPM on Wednesday that Cpl. Jesse Thorsen may have violated military policy when he wore his fatigues on stage and praised the Texas congressman’s presidential bid. Thorsen’s commander is now looking into the speech and will figure out what to do next, said the spokeswoman, Maj. Angel Wallace. The Des Moines-based soldier served in Afghanistan but hasn’t been on active duty since October, Wallace said....

Des Moines, Iowa -- Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus with the help of an ominous new trend in politics called the "Tony Soprano strategy": Let your unnamed friends pummel your enemies while you keep your hands clean. The Iowa race was a national showcase for the power of a relatively new type of political action committee, known as super PACs, independent groups that are allowed unlimited donations from corporations and individuals. Such groups are going to continue to reshape the Republican race this year because federal election rules don't require them to reveal their donors until Jan. 31 -...

Following correspondent Andrea Mitchell referring to Iowa as "Too white, too evangelical, too rural" on Sunday's NBC Nightly News, on Monday's Rock Center, correspondent Willie Geist spoke to University of Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom, who similarly fretted: "It's basically a white, very, very Christian state." Geist explained how Bloom has been "in hiding" since writing a scathing article in The Atlantic attacking Iowa as, "An assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that the sun will come out tomorrow." Bloom also ranted: "Those who stay in...

Analyses of Tuesday's Iowa caucuses are the top of most news sites right now--including Current TV's homepage, which features images of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich above a video featuring former U.S. vice president and Current co-founder Al Gore breaking down the results. One image conspicuously absent from the page: Keith Olbermann. Olbermann, the host of Current's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" and listed on the masthead as the network's chief news officer, was supposed to be on air Tuesday night, assuring a concerned Twitter follower earlier in the day that he was "headed into the office now in...

As a supporter of Sarah Palin before her decision last October 5 not to run for President, I have been casting about for a candidate who might fill the void left by her departure. Last night, I believe Providence answered my prayer with a thunderclap from the Hawkeye state and the emergence of Rick Santorum as the "not-Romney" candidate. Let me say at the outset that I have tremendous respect for Newt Gingrich and I fervently hope that he and Santorum can form some sort of entente cordiale against the common foe....Mitt Romney. Gingrich has already made an overture in...

... Mitt Romney set a new all-time record for the lowest winning share of the vote (for either party) in the Iowa caucuses - 25 percent [24.6%] - one point lower than Bob Dole's 26 percent level of support in 1996. That's well below the 31 percent tally that every previous Republican winner except for Dole had achieved... Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich both matched or surpassed the 13 percent level of support that John McCain on his way to winning the Republican nomination received in Iowa... Lastly, Romney failed to equal the 25.2 percent share of the vote that...

As Perry's representative spoke, everyone was quiet, respectful and listened. When she stepped down, there was applause. Then the speaker for Ron Paul stood and talked for a couple of minutes. Again, everyone was quiet and respectful. The group listened, and when the representative stopped talking, they clapped again. Some candidates, like Michele Bachmann, had no speaker. The chairman asked if anyone would like to talk for her. A gentleman said he would speak about Bachmann and gave a very nice pep talk on her behalf. Everyone applauded, and so it went until all but Huntsman was represented.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, the Drive-Bys are all claiming -- and this is part of the narrative -- the Drive-Bys are all claiming that Obama was the big winner and we put together a montage to illustrate that. BASHIR: The big winner in Iowa: President Obama. YELLIN: These results could put a smile on the President's teams' faces. SHARPTON: If I'm in Romney's camp, I wanted to go to New Hampshire and start running against President Obama. Now he has got to run against Santorum. And the longer that narrative plays, the better it is for the president. BROOKS: Pretty...

Had voting in the Iowa Republican caucuses been restricted to voters under the age of 40, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas would have won easily, according to an entrance poll published by CNN. By contrast, according to the poll, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania won among voters between 40 and 64, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won among voters 65 or older. Voters at the caucuses tended to be older citizens, according to the poll, with fully 60 percent of them being at least 50 years of age. Only 25 percent of the caucus-goers were under 40, and...

Mitt Romney won 25.19 percent of the vote in Iowa in 2008 - and lost that contest by 9 points. Since then, Mitt Romney spent millions of dollars. He got better at debating. He annihilated Rick Perry. The SuperPAC aligned to Romney took out a surging Newt Gingrich with negative ads. And Romney focused his energy on attacking Barack Obama. All that got him was 25 percent of the vote again last night. Almost exactly the 2008 result he had in Iowa. He lost the nomination then. This isn't exactly the start to 2012 Team Romney was expecting. 75 percent...