Primary season kicked off last night with the always interesting Iowa caucus. During this campaign season so far, I had completely written off the chance of Mitt winning the Iowa caucus. You see, last time around Mitt spent a LOT of money and time campaigning in the state, visited all 99 counties, had his sons driving around the state for months in the Mitt bus and the state of Iowa shafted him for Huckabee at the last second. So depressing. So this year I was expecting the same kind of ridiculous shenanigans out of the Hawkeye state. Mitt and his campaign must have agreed, because he opted out of the straw poll and spent very little time and money in the state.
Naturally, I was shocked last week when the poll numbers coming out of Iowa began to change. Gingrich dropped and Mitt moved into a very tight lead with Ron Paul, Santorum, and Gingrich close on his heels. Still, I didn't hope. I have tasted the bitter disappointment that comes with getting your hopes up with these kinds of things and I was trying to have a healthy level of skepticism for self preservations sake.
Caucuses began at about 8:00 last night in Iowa so of course I started tuning in to live results online at about 8:00. They had predicted that a winner would be announced at around 10pm but ten came and went and there was only about half of precincts reporting. All night, hour after hour, Mitt and Santorum were in a dead heat. 30 votes here, 15 votes there...it was painful to say the least. At one point Mitt was leading by 1 vote with 98 percent reporting! So ridiculous!
After Nate and I had spent so many hours watching and waiting for the results, we felt like we couldn't give in and go to bed so we ended up staying up for the long haul. Finally, at 2:30 a.m. it was made official that Mitt had won by a margin of 8 votes. 8 votes! Closest caucus in Iowa history. It really does go to show you that every single vote counts and every vote is important.
I am so happy for Mitt and his family. He looked like a happy little boy in his closing remarks last night and he had a right to be extremely happy. He too had written Iowa off and even though the results were 30,015 to 30,007 a victory is a victory and Mitt came out the winner.
Even though the mainstream media is and will continue to tout Santorum as the victor because of his meager budget and come from behind finish, his performance was no more impressive than Mitt's was. Mitt took a very evangelical state which is no easy feat for a member of the LDS faith.
Aw.....such sweet, sweet vindication. Four years in coming, but still..oh so sweet.
On to New Hampshire!
