Weakness in Battle

Optimism? Enthusiasm? Not a trace! The Republicans are completely divided. How can they run Barack Obama out of office? The closeness of the Iowa results illustrates this perfectly.

The first test in the Republican struggle to find a presidential candidate failed by the narrowest of margins. Mitt Romney’s second attempt at the nomination ended with his having to share victory with outsider Rick Santorum, who was virtually unknown a month before the Iowa caucuses. Only eight votes separated them while Ron Paul, the “enfant terrible” of the Republican Party, was nipping at their heels.

The Iowa caucus results contained two central messages. The first is that there’s absolutely no agreement on how best to defeat Obama. Three factions within the Republican Party are warring among themselves: the pragmatists who want to hang on to the moderate center and favor Romney; the arch-conservatives who are trying to force the country to the right and have discovered Santorum as their new hero; and finally the protest faction who want to lead America to historical nirvana and support Paul.

The other message concerns the actual participation in the caucuses: Not many more people participated in the 2012 caucuses than participated in 2008. The party had expected a significant increase in participation and this was not the signal the Republicans wanted to send to the White House.

On the contrary, the party just hasn’t caught fire. Optimism and flaming passion for hounding Obama out of office, as the candidates have sworn for weeks to do, weren’t exactly evident in the Iowa outcome.

In the final analysis, Romney will probably be the party’s candidate, but only because they don’t have a better competitor. Paul will soldier on and garner his share of protest votes but probably not as many as in Iowa, and he won’t win in any case. A candidate able to establish himself as a serious conservative alternative to Romney probably doesn’t exist.

Santorum will be torn apart in the coming weeks exactly as all the other anti-Romneys before him, from Michele Bachmann to Newt Gingrich. Media stories and negative campaigning will increase people’s doubts about him and eventually end his lofty surge. Gingrich, on the other hand, can only redeem himself from his miserable fourth place Iowa finish with a decisive victory in New Hampshire, and then he has to be the clear winner in South Carolina. He will have Santorum, a genuine reactionary compared to the on-again, off-again Gingrich, standing in his way in his attempts.

After the Iowa results, a clearly divided Republican Party limps glumly toward the great battlefield showdown with Obama.