Word is coming tomorrow morning on who won the Iowa caucuses. Romney says it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter who won? A competition his people put all those millions of dollars into, that he spent that campaign winning out there? Doesn't matter? Is that he's saying?
Then I thought: you know, Romney's probably right. Because the effect of the word that he did win in Iowa served its purpose. It saved him in New Hampshire. Had Santorum gotten credit for the win out there on Caucus night, Romney would have come to New Hampshire the loser, a guy desperate to win at home what he couldn't win on the road, needing to at least win at home because the country at large had rejected him.
That didn't happen. Romney got all the benefits of being the winner in Iowa. The next week he won in New Hampshire which made him the winner of the first two Republican presidential contests. Suddenly it was his turn. He was the person that good Republicans were meant to vote for, should vote for.
This is what many who are not Republicans find odd about how Republicans pick presidential nominees. They just wait for the person who's been waiting in line and vote for him. It's what they did with Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Dole, Bush and McCain. You vote for the guy who's turn it is and leave it at that.
Ask a Republican why they're all of a sudden telling pollsters that they like Romney. Could it simply be that it's clear now he's going to be the nominee and therefore the right thing to do is to support him? Is this all there is.
Again, I ask, what is it, Mr. and Mrs. Republican, that has suddenly lit up your charts for Romney?
That he's won in Iowa and New Hampshire? What if it turns out tomorrow morning, when they do the actual paper count that he lost Iowa? Would you still be for him? Or the real issue that he waited in line and won credit for winning that first contest in Iowa, and then the easy one in New Hampshire, because clearly no one would have given a guy who was governor of Massachusetts and spent his summers in his house in New Hampshire any big credit for winning in New Hampshire against a wide field of outsiders.
So this is the odd part. Republicans are voting for a guy in the national polls now because it looks like he's the candidate they're supposed to be for - and therefore they are.
One thing I can say. Republicans sure don't act like Democrats. Democrats would tell you they're for the candidate they actually like.